Life...to the max!

..................................................................66

        Kids, these days, are encouraged to grow up way too fast.  Agree or disagree?  Even genetically, physiologically, developmentally, we humans are on the grow.

        Of course, should you happen to believe in them, we're no longer cave men.   :-)  With the pending Olympics in London this summer, I'm fascinated by the articles that are being written to bring young, agile bodies into such precision as to shave off 1/1000th of a second to reach out and win...as if winning is the only game in town.

        Now...don't get me wrong.  Development, improvement, strengthening, growing healthier?  All good.  What are the boundaries of not enough...and too much?  Is increasing health in all 8 dimensions of one's life, no matter which third of life you are living in, the better goal?  Or...must one win.......at what cost?

        Some times life issues and circumstances intervene.  Then there needs to be a real fight for health.  That, too, I am learning...and relearning as the years waft by.

        Now...and again...my few paragraphs of "preaching" done, a question looms that sounds cute, engaging, etc., that gets asked of too many children and adolescents is, "What do you want to do, be, become, achieve, excell at when you grow up?"

        I can tell you one thing, the lad in this photo at about 4 or 5 years old had no clue.  If we didn't know better it looks like he just got off the boat from Russia, or somewhere similar over there.  :-)  Truth be known, I also didn't have a clue at 20.  Some souls I know are in their third 3rd of life and are still trying to figure that out.

        There are better questions to stir the imagination of a child..and even we adults.  In some ways (see me smiling...) I, too, am still wondering, what do I want to be and do when I grow up?

        However, in spite of some of the "stuff" of my life, I know beyond any doubt that at this point in time, I am doing exactly what I was designed for...to both be.......and do.  In fact, I have that delightful, yet delicate, and slightly disarming "disease" that I'm running out of time for all I want to be...do...experience...encourage in others on their own journeys.

        That I genuinely and deeply love what I do cannot be spoken or written with enough emphasis.  The being and becoming part, for this olde man, still has both it's hurdles and low points...as well as moments of unexpected delight and thorough surprise at watching those I mentor summit their own life issues (+ and -) in ways that surprises even them and those they influence.

        I am grateful to be who I am and where I am...knowing there are still hours, months, years (hopefully) to keep growing and being further set free.  This olde dude is far from perfect...much to keep working on...and I am, with the grace-filled love and care of a few others close to me.

        Who could haver ever imagined that that ragtag tyke standing on a sidewalk in a snowy Oregon would one day be standing with some of the most outstanding young developoing leaders anywhere on the planet on the snowy and frozen shore of Lake Michigan a few weeks ago.

        Crazy wonderful...extra blessed am I with such priceless opportunity...which will be shared this next month with our LDG Partners in better detail.  These good men represent the hope of our future...all around our world.

        I've heard their stories...they some of mine...and daily I get to encourage forward other men and women just like them.  Who knew on that snowy day in Oregon?  I am confident the One who created us all knew...and still knows about me.......and you, too.

        So...no matter your gender, your age, your economic status, your ethnicity, your education, your hopes and dreams (don't be losing those...), what do you want to be.....and do.......when you grow up?

(.....................to be continued.....................)

        

 

...................................................................67

        ...don't know about you, but it's been a weird week in the health category for me.  After a wonderful six days in New Mexico celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary surrounding the 18th of March, we came home, and this olde dude immediately succumbed to the harshness of an early and fairly severe allergy season...plus some other concerns.  Ugh!  It's not been a fun week seeing four different docs...but I'm still breathing.  :-)

        Making it to some mentoring appointments, but needing to cancel other meetings, I've had some extra ponder time in these curious days...especially tackling the task of foraging back into my personal history over all 7 decades.  This remembering back...and hoping forward into the next decade of my life has taken some very important and needed twists and turns.

        Remembering, too, some very important times of rich, deep, hard, welcome counseling, from years ago, to even this past year, some thoughts have emerged I've never thought or felt before.  Last night I sat in the quiet of our home for awhile after sending the last post...reflecting some more on a book Judy and I began reading on our time away.

        She read while I drove.  We had interludes of very important personal conversation between us.  Those were welcome times on the road.

        The book is titled Primal Wound.  Though it was written years ago by a caring woman who had an adopted daughter who wanted to understand deeply the process of growing up adopted...and being an adoptive parent...her wisdom, thoroughness, and insights in her writing makes this an extra meaningful book.  However...we soon realized in the reading that this book is not just about the feelings and experiences of adoption.

        The core prinicples shared and what one is encouraged to ponder fit anyone who has, frankly, any kind of abandonment experience...from slight to severe.  It is a nourishing book...not just for oneself...but for others you and I know.

        OK...back to last night's time of quiet before sleep.  Looking through the few pictures of my childhood I found these two: one with me and the family; one of me with me with a brother who was killed when I was 8 (that story will be shared later, as well).  My parents in that pic were in their early 40s.  My sister was 20 years older than me...my brother 16 years older.  There we are...smiling nicely...for the moment, happy

        This second picture I stared at for a long time...a very long time.  I never knew that man...my brother.  The little I know of him I just wrapped up in family facts...part of our family story...just like you have yours.

        But last night, as I stared at that picture of the two of us...I shed tears, for the first time, ever, over not knowing him.  Grief squeezed my heart over the loss of him.  That surprised me...in a deep and sacred sense.

        It was by divine appointment last evening, as I sat in that silence and wondered what life would have been like for him...for his precious wife and daughter (my first neice who arrived two months after he was killed...I got to be an uncle at 8yo)...for my parents, my sister and all the others who knew him then.  What would it have been like to have known him as a brother...even though this year he, had he lived, would be turning 86? 

        There was a deep, quiet, clear release within me that has probably been waiting for years to be let go.  Now, by divine deisgn was the time.  Those were moments I believe I've been needing on my continuing journey.  ...tonight, I still sit here quietly looking at that picture...........

        That has me wondering about you, too, the unknown reader...and about other friends I know and value.  Are there places in your life of which you need to let go...or reclaim? 

        Whether you were abandoned or the abandoner...whether you were the one who hurt another or were hurt...where do you still need to be set free?  If an olde man chasing 70yo can be in the process of doing that...I'm confident you can too.

        We were all meant to live free.  We were designed to live free...no matter what has taken place in our lives.  I choose freedom...as often as I need to keep choosing.  Though I will not know all who read this...I sincerely pray the same for you.

 

(.....................to be continued.....................)

 

....................................................................68

        What are the artifacts of your own childhood?

        For whatever the strange and various reasons I do not have many.  In the 80s, when moving my mother into an assisted living facility in Corvallis, OR, I discovered that the few boxes I'd packed in my college days with my "things" from my life and placed up in the attic had been opened and much was missing...especially pictures.

        Early in my childhood my parents moved from Eugene to Corvallis to open up several businesses.  One of the first was Roberts Ice Cream Parlor...a popular place back in '43.

        Just north of town was an army base called Camp Adair.  Many of the soldiers (this was the time when WWII was raging...but also beginning to come to some sort of conclusion) and their families, so I was told, frequented this place for the homemade ice cream.

        One of those couples was from New York City, by the last name of Tenebaum.  This I learned much later is a familiar name within the NYC Jewish community.

        The story goes that the young Mrs. Tenebaum took a liking to the Roberts baby...me...in her working for my parents at the parlor.  Thus they trusted her with me.  She became my nanny for the better part of the first two years of my life.

        One of the artifacts left behind in the opened boxes of my childhood contained a gift she got me.  Most kids get teddy bears...I got an elephant.  She was the one who tucked me in most nights, as the lore of my life has it, and wooed me into sleep with five words repeated over and over again...sleep well, Wesley, sleep well.......sleep well, Wesley, sleep well.  Thus, the name of my nightly companion became Sleep Well.

        Years later, I don't remember exactly when, but knowing that I was going to be in NYC, I began to chase down the Tenebaum name to see if I could find this woman.  It took awhile...as the calls went something like:  "Hello, my name is Wes Roberts and I am looking for a couple by the last name of Tenebaum who toward the end of WWII lived at Camp Adair near Corvallis, OR."  I don't remember how many phone calls, but it was many.

        Then one day in this pursuit I struck pay dirt.  A man said he had a cousin who matched that, but wanted me to give him more information and he would call me back.

        The phone call I did get was from the nanny...who, by this time was one excited little old lady.  I was a bit excited, too.

        I let her know when I would be in NYC.  We made arrangements to meet in Grand Central Station.  Again, I don't remember the exact day, but I do remember standing at the bottom of the grand staircase at the station (this picture was taken there in 1967) waiting for quite awhile...looking at the face of that famous clock in the center of the station and at the face of every older woman who descended the stairs.

        Just about the time I was wondering if I'd made a mistake on the time, this lady in a dark coat appeared at the top of the stairs all a flurry, and came right up to me confessing she had missed a train.  It was like she knew who I was.

        As ladies of that era were prone to do she pinched my cheek, hugged me, pinched my cheek, hugged me, pinched my cheek.  Well you get the drift.

        She wanted to know all about the family.  Told me all about hers.  Talked about the tragedies and good moments in both families.  Then she had to catch a train and was almost gone.

        I stopped her and told her that I wanted to thank her for Sleep Well.  With a quiet look of astonishment, that uncorked her tear ducts to even think that I still had that little bundle of nightly comfort.

        She was so moved she couldn't speak.  So...she pinched one cheek and kissed the other and was gone...back up the stairs.

        I can remember just standing there pondering the moment for a long time.  Arrivals and departures were being called over the speaker in the station.  People were in a rush to move into the next moments of their lives.

        And I?  I had the quiet sense I'd just been pinched, with love, by an angel.

        That was my only adult contact with this precious woman, who I came to realize was one of the first people, in an amazing tally of good souls, to literally save my life.

        Sleep well, Mrs. Tanenbaum, sleep well.

(.....................to be continued.....................)

.....................................................................69

        No life is a mistake.

        No matter how a life begins, anywhere, life is on purpose, by divine design.

        No one should be denied their life, their hopes, their dreams, their very own unique, God-ordained possibilities.

        Today I spent two hours in the Imaging Department at the Skyridge Medical Center in Lone Tree.  Hospitals, and all that goes with them, are not my favorite places.  However, even there I found myself eavesdropping on conversations...some times good moments are being shared...some times hard or sad stories are overheard.

        While waiting for my MRI (a story for another day), another patient was was being transfered to a guerney to be put into the MRI machine.  A nurse and a technician were trying to comfort the woman who very weakly kept asking, "Are the children OK?  I just need to know if the children are OK."  There was no way of knowing what had taken place.

        This evening there is a slight haunting to remembering her over and over again asking. "Are the children OK?".  Do you know any children of whom you need to be asking that question?  I do.

        Finally, it was my turn to be adjusted and slid into the MRI unit.  If you've ever been put into one, those are loud and tight spaces.  I closed my eyes and "enjoyed" the ride...but that question went with me, "Are the children OK?"

        There's a lot of reflection going on in this olde soul, these days, as I arrive at the threshhold of being 70...a point in time that seemed almost impossible early on.  Changing years has not been all that hard...but, owning the truth, changing decades has been different.  Changing that first number from a 6 to a 7.  Challenging.  Encouraging.  Slightly daunting.

        I wonder what this "man-child-me" was even thinking when this picture was taken.  I wonder how often children still ask in one way or another, over their first years, "Am I OK?  Will I be OK?  Will life be OK?"

        Do we ever stop asking that question in one form or another...no matter our years or circumstaces?

 

(.....................to be continued.....................)

 

......................................................................70

        70 years ago tonight this man was 70 days away from taking his first breath. That is something to ponder.

        As all of us, in the beginning of our individual existence, as with me, somewhere in time near Eugene, Oregon a man and a woman connected.  As creation would have it...I began. 

        The surprise was, this man and woman were in their early 40s.  Way back then, so the story goes, nothing much happened to most couples of that advancing age...with regard to...a baby? 

        Just as a tree grows from a simple, single seed...I was underway.  From God's point of view...no mistake.

        However...later in life I learned that some thought this pregnancy was a mistake.  Being translated that meant...I was a mistake.  In later years I was reminded of that "fact"...often.

        In fact (and you may smile at this...), somewhere later in 1941 my mother was in the hospital for "exploratory surgery" because the attending doctors were suspicious she had a tumor of some sort growing in her abdomen.

        There was a tenacious, fiesty, nurse on duty at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene who knew my family.  She sought out the "advice" of a young intern from the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland and convinced him, very late one night, to try out one of those "new fangled pregnancy tests" to see if, by chance, that tumor had a head, and arms, and legs, and a beating heart.

        She doubled up on her insistence...most likely even bent the rules for back then, because as the story goes, she could not get ahold of the doctor for permission.  Why the urgency?  The lady in the hospital bed was already diagnosed and preped for surgury.  This nurse would be going off the shift soon.

        But...she insisted.  Very early the next morning of what ever day that was, my mother was going into surgery to take out the "tumor" that was growing.  Time was getting short.

        That nurse lady went off duty.  Then she took up residence in my mother's hospital room to wait out the night to confront the doctor with the evidence the next morning.  She knew she had been right.

        You see, the nurse was my Aunt Fonda Roberts.  She was married to my father's brother, Leland, my uncle.  She died in my early adolescence...but this I can tell you...every time she saw me, no matter who was around she would tell how she saved my life.  I thank God for that woman who would not give up on what she suspected.

        That was no mistake...........

(.....................to be continued.....................)

 

...found this graphic today

...in the midst of all the political bickering in our country, yup, even in our whole messed up world

...somewhere, maybe even in some ancient and sacred writings, I remember something that dares to suggest that we humans consider the possibilities:

Come, now, let us reason together.

...which takes me back to this graphic I saw today

...is this even possible?

...what will you and I do to make it a reality?

 

...what...........?!?!!

...you are serious?

...really?!?

...you're not kidding?

...we're really not in control?

(...like we often think we are...)

...read this...

...so who is in charge?

...seriously.

 

...indeed, he rests in peace:

        One week ago my wife's family gathered to celebrate the life of our brother-in-law, Carl Shannon, who passed through the "thin veil" at 6:17pm on Monday evening, 20 Feb '12.  He will be missed...much.

        Many years ago we gave him and his wife, Martha (Judy's sister), mugs like this with their name on them.  A lot of other friends have similar mugs in their cupboards, as well.  For whatever the inner reasons, when I arrived in SoCal to be with the family I co-opeted Carl's mug for the long weekend there.  A "coffee toast" was fitting each morning.

Indeed...here's to my brother-in-law.

And all the rest of us.......

        Coming back home last week, and continuing to clean up some computer files, I came across this spoken-word poem.  It was a fitting find to encorage me back into life here and to remember him and his very special family: