Seeing the Course Ahead. Taken from 'A Force of Will' by Mike Stavlund

There is hope-even when there is no happy ending

When Mike Stavlund’s four-month-old son suddenly died, a flood of cards, flowers, meals, phone calls, and gifts let his family know that they were loved and cared for. Less welcome were the books, in particular the religious books. Often impossibly upbeat, saccharine sweet, and with all kinds of confident promises, they were too painful to read and too offensive to bear.

Instead Mike wrote this book, one week at a time during that first terrible year. A Force of Will explores the stark reality of loss, the alienation from all of life, the feeling of suffocation at the hands of the well-meaning people gathered around, and the sense of being abandoned by God.

The book is available from your favourite Christian retailer, visit the Christian Bookshop Directory to find your local shop. You can also order online here, and the ebook is available from your ebook retailer.

Palliative Faith

The intricate surgery that my son experienced at three days of life was called palliative—a repair designed to work well enough, and for long enough, to get the patient to the next point in his or her treatment. Palliative repairs are those that come in a series—one repair builds on the one before it and aims to enable the surgery that will follow. Which seems unsatisfying. One might wonder why the surgeons can’t just get everything right the first time—until, that is, one recalls the rate of growth in a newborn. Simple things like stitches and scars would heal and grow with the body’s structures, of course, but the more necessary artificial implements would not be so simple. If the surgeons attached a Gore-Tex shunt to Will’s walnut-sized heart, for example, they would install an intentionally oversized piece that wouldn’t actually work well until he grew to a size proportional to the repair. Then, for a matter of days or weeks, the repair would work at optimal efficiency, in fact encouraging the very growth that would make it less effective later on, until it was finally so inefficient that it would need to be replaced.

Though many might disagree, I think our faith is palliative, too. Faith needs to work well enough to get us further along, and we are allowed to make adjustments as we go along the journey of life. 

The faith that worked for me when I was seven, nestled into an upholstered easy chair with an illustrated Living Bible on a Sunday afternoon, was palliative. I sat there, reflecting on what I’d heard in Sunday school that day, and decided I should ask Jesus to come into my heart so that I wouldn’t have to be afraid of death. It was a beautiful moment, and one that I treasure. But I’m glad my faith has changed since then.

There was the faith that carried me through my teenage years—a deterministic understanding that if something happened, God must have willed it. I struggled during those years to understand how the world worked, entertaining long internal debates about whether I should pray for success on my many fishing trips, or whether it was fair for me to thank God for my avoidance of an auto accident when that seemed unkind to the person who was actually in the wrecked car. Looking back, I think I was developing a faith that God embraced, and accepted at face value, even as I struggled toward greater engagement with God and life and the realities all around me, and as I began to develop a view of the world that didn’t put me at the very center. This faith was palliative, preparing me for the growth to come.

There was a faith that sustained me in college as I took nightly walks during cold Chicago winters to beg God for a girlfriend who would become a wife. Staring up at the stars, I offered my confident assertions that I would be a great husband, arguing that reason and justice required I be given a wife. This faith was shaped when the answers to my prayers came and I found myself as a new husband to a beautiful and wonder- ful wife, yet with a fresh and painful awareness of my own brokenness and inability to love her as I had imagined I would.

This growing faith was tweaked and challenged through several years as a pastor, tested as we joined with some friends to start a church on which we eventually performed a kind of organizational euthanasia and were left feeling orphaned and alone, bereft of community. This faith was stretched during a ten-year journey through infertility, moving uncertainly up the ladder of increasingly invasive treatments, until we felt the mixture of absolute joy and panic that comes with the news that you’re pregnant . . . with twins!

It was faith that pulled us through the harrowing experience of trying to thwart a miscarriage, of sitting in the worrisome place of a six-month stretch of bed rest. It was faith that sat with us in the silence of those initial ultrasounds when the room was just very, very quiet and the doctors and technicians were visibly nervous, shuttling into and out of the room with forced smiles. It was faith that gave us hope as we plunged headlong into the world of intensive care and surgery and life support and constant monitoring. And today, it is faith that tries to make sense of a life that is all at once painfully absent the life of a precious firstborn son, but also full of the life of his engaging and completely healthy twin sister.

Our faith ought not to be a faith that chooses belief over practice, and it shouldn’t be selfish or self-interested; it ought to be a faith that works for us, yes, but one that benefits those around us even more than ourselves, and that leads us to the ultimate end to which we’re called—a greater capacity to love. If it looks inward, it ought to do so such that it can give outward in ever increasing measure.

Coffee Maker

A couple of days before the funeral, I was sitting at the kitchen table, keyboard clattering away as I tried to write myself to clarity about some imponderable idea, tried to come to some acceptance of some unavoidable reality, tried to anesthetize myself against some overwhelming pain.

My dear father-in-law walked in with a smile on his face and a package under his arm. He and my mother-in-law had just returned from Target, she with some adorable clothes for her granddaughter, and he with a state-of-the-art coffee maker, which he promptly displayed to me. I was startled by this act of generosity, and grateful as always for a new toy. And yet I was shocked as I heard my mouth form these words: “Thanks, Dad. That’s perfect. And when you go back home after the funeral, you can just take it with you.”

Owing to his generous spirit, he wasn’t offended by my apparent ungratefulness, but hesitated for just a second before he went on with his day. Still, the next day I forced myself to apologize for my rudeness, though I was at a loss to explain it. “I have no idea why I said that! I’m so sorry. We’ll be happy to use the coffee maker, every day.”

But the truth is, it’s still sitting in the back of a closet.

I think what I was longing for on that confusing morn- ing was to turn back the clock. I was looking for a small, containable, familiar life. I wanted to go back to using our undersized, weathered stainless-steel French press and its familiar routine of heating water, grinding beans, combining the two, stirring the slurry, filling the rest of the pot, putting the lid on, waiting three minutes, and pouring exactly two full cups of coffee—one for me, and one for my wife.

What I didn’t want—what I couldn’t handle—was a life that was any larger than that. I didn’t want any family to be around us. I didn’t want houseguests. I didn’t want to extend myself in any gesture of hospitality. I wanted to go back to my smaller life of four people—two adults, two tiny children. That smaller life that had been contained by these four walls and its withering 24-hour schedule. If that life had been full to the brim of feedings and medications and baths and tests and interventions and surgeries and home visits and terrifying uncertainty, at least it was familiar and approachable and pos- sible. At least it offered some hope at the end of the day. But this new life I was kicking back against was utterly unfamiliar, dark, and seemingly without hope. It was a life, but it was a life without Will. That old life was a mirage, if it ever really existed. It was gone from my grasp, impossible to reclaim.

I just wanted my old cup of coffee.

Taylor's Gift. Life After Loss.

March 14, 2010 started quite literally ‘on a high’ for the Storch family.  Parents Todd and Tara with Taylor (13), Ryan (11) and Peyton (9) were enjoying a family skiing trip in Colorado.  No-one would ever have expected the day to end with Taylor being flown to hospital by air ambulance.

It was the very first day of the holiday and Todd, Taylor and Ryan set off on their run down the mountain while Tara and Peyton waited in the village below.  At first, all went well, but then Taylor got into trouble.  She shot towards the trees bordering the run, hit one head on, and then bounced into another.  Despite wearing all the right protective gear, she was unconscious when Todd and Ryan reached her.  Ryan rushed to call the ski patrol while Todd stayed with his daughter.  And all in a moment, the joy and brightness fled out of the day.

At 12.15pm the following day doctors told her grieving parents that Taylor had died, and asked a question which would change countless lives: ‘would you be willing to donate Taylor’s organs?’

Donate Taylor’s organs? Who thinks about such things? It doesn’t even cross parents’ minds that their child might die in a skiing accident – let alone whether or not they should donate their child’s organs.  But now, in Taylor’s hospital room, the unwanted question stood at attention before them.  Todd and Tara didn’t say anything out loud, but they both knew what the other was thinking.
What would Taylor do?

* * * * *

Taylor was outgoing, vivacious, and caring.  She described her teenaged self in a poem written for a school project just a week prior to her accident:

I Am

I am outgoing and friendly.
I wonder how long is forever.
I hear support from my family whenever I need it.
I see myself helping people in every way I can.
I want to be on the Ellen DeGeneres show.

I am outgoing and friendly.
I pretend I can do anything I want to.
I feel touched by the generosity of my sister.
I touch people’s lives.
I worry about failing.
I cry at the thought of losing a member of my family.

I am outgoing and friendly.
I understand how to make people feel happy.
I say with pride that I am a Christian.
I dream about becoming a teacher.
I try to make every day like my last.
I hope to become successful in life.
I am outgoing and friendly.

'Would you be willing to donate Taylor's organs?'
 

Taylor had a kind heart and loved to help others.  Her parents knew without a doubt that she would want this.  Much later, they would say it was her life, not her death which led to the decision.  So they agreed to the organ donation, then held each other and wept.  Knowing that her organs would help others was the only thing which allowed them to make any sense of their loss.

In fact, Taylor’s gifts helped 5 people.

Her heart saved the life of a young mother. 
Her kidneys and pancreas transformed the life of two men who had been on dialysis for eight and two years respectively.
Her cornea helped a young woman see better and eradicated her severe headaches and eye pain.
Her liver went to an unnamed recipient.

* * * * *

Grief is not linear. Each person grieves differently, and so it was and is for the Storch family, including of course Ryan and Peyton. Tara’s grief was paralysing and physical.  Todd needed things to do.  He quickly found that very few people are registered as organ donors.  He and Tara established the Taylor’s Gift Foundation to promote organ donor awareness.  Although based in the USA, the Foundation links to organ donation sites and movements around the world, including the National Donor Database, Live Life then Give Life, the Donor Family Network and Transplant Sport (all UK based).  As a direct result of its work, many people have signed up to donor registers worldwide.

Taylor’s story is one which can touch us all.  She was a much loved daughter, part of an  'ordinary' family living an ‘ordinary' life, going along from day to day as we mostly do, until a chain of events altered their family structure forever.  Although the Storch family lives in the USA, the grief of losing a family member is universal.

 

The Storch Family

 

Taylor's parents plumbed the depths of grief which any parent losing a child faces, and they acknowledge that it could have torn their marriage and family apart. 

A wise couple who had themselves experienced loss counselled them to allow each other to grieve in their own way and emphasised the importance of not doing anything that would drive a wedge into their relationship.  Todd learned to accept Tara’s need to sleep away the days, and Tara learned to let Todd work, or meet up with friends.  They didn’t have to like it, but they had to respect it.  Todd calls it the best advice they’d ever been given, and says it saved their marriage.

In just three years since that bright spring day in Colorado Taylor’s story is known internationally, and her legacy is significant.  She left the world a better place, not only for her organ recipients, and their friends and families, but also those who have received organs because donors signed up after  hearing her story.

In Todd’s words, ‘We were given the privilege of organ donation.  It wasn’t just a decision, it was a privilege.’

By registering to be an organ donor you have the privilege of one day saving someone’s life.  It costs you nothing, and it’s the greatest gift you could ever give. 
If you’re in the UK, please sign up HERE.

For more information on the Taylor’s Gift Foundation site.

Taylor’s Gift (International Paperback edition) is out in the UK in May.
For book information, sample chapter and video, click here.
You can pre-order the book via your local Christian bookshop, or any other bricks and mortar or online bookshop.

 

Why Biblical Fiction?

Mesu Andrews' latest Biblical fiction title, Love in a Broken Vessel, is the third book she has written set in Bible times. 

Love Amid the Ashes, her first, is based on the story of Job, not necessarily the first subject who might spring to mind for a novel.  Her second, Love's Sacred Song, followed a year later and tells the story of the young King Solomon, and Arielah, a young girl promised to him as a 'treaty bride'.

Love in a Broken Vessel revisits a several-times-retold story: That of Hosea and Gomer.  When marrying Hosea becomes her only means of escape from a life of abuse, Gomer does what she’s good at - she survives. Can Hosea’s love for God and God’s love for Israel restore Gomer’s broken spirit?
Here is a sample chapter.

Mesu likes writing books based on Old Testament stories and characters, and says they're the result of her own struggles to understand biblical figures.  She looks for stories which she has found difficult or confusing, and works through them until she becomes 'settled in my own spirit with what I believe those stories say'.  She researches the historical backgrounds and Biblical records carefully to create stories which are believable, and yet which remain true to the Bible narrative.  Mesu herself says that her stories are "history, yes, and spiritual insight, yes, but it's all because I think it is necessary for a Christian to understand the Old Testament for them to understand the New Testament."

Her readers clearly appreciate this focus and level of attention to detail:

"Set at the time when Solomon ascended to the throne, I found this book extremely interesting. From a religious point of view, it definitely made me want to explore Ecclesiastes a bit more. ...I loved the personal tale that was told of at least one wife offered to him, by a desperate father who was actually bartering for the freedom of his beloved daughter. ...I enjoyed the sense of place that the author brought to this novel."
Alice Collins, A GoodBookStall review (UK) - for the full review see here. On Love's Sacred Song.
 
"Mesu, thank you for your books! As manager of a Christian book store here in the UK, it's taken quite some time for the local people to take to American Christian fiction, and your books break that hesitancy! Great plots (of course), characters, and deep spirituality, emotions, thoughts and creativity. I can always sell what I believe in, and these books DO sell, with customers coming for more. Personally though I just love your well-written, richly descriptive and attention-grabbing books. You give insight into what's a well-known and skimmed-over Bible story and bring them to real life. MORE, please, Mesu!”
 
“Andrews’s research shines through on every page as she delves deeply into the cultural, historical, and biblical records to create this fascinating and multilayered tale.”
CBA Retailers + Resources on Love Amid the Ashes
 
“Andrews weaves a beautiful tale and takes readers to an ancient Jerusalem rich with history and customs and a culture that struggles to follow the one true God. This novel is well researched and well told.”-RT Book Reviews, 4½ stars, on Love’s Sacred Song

Biblical fiction is a small category, but it is a strong one with enthusiastic readers.  Personally, when I read a novel about the time of the crucifixion, it resulted in my thinking completely differently about what it would probably have been like for Jesus' followers in the days between his death and his resurrection.  We often skim straight from one to the other, so I'd never really thought much about the bit in the middle.  That one book made a difference to how I read the Bible. 

Mesu's books do the same.

All three of Mesu's books are available in the UK through all Christian bookshops, and online, in both print and ebook form.

The Dance by Dan Walsh and Gary Smalley

Combining the literary talents of bestselling author Dan Walsh and the relationship expertise of bestselling author Gary Smalley, The Dance is the first novel in The Restoration Series. Readers will get caught up in these flawed but sincere members of the Anderson family as they rediscover genuine love and start a transformation that ultimately affects all of them.

Below is an extract from Chapter One to wet your apetite! The book is available from your favourite Christian retailer, visit the Christian Bookshop Directory to find your local shop. You can also order online here, and the ebook is available from your ebook retailer.

Marilyn Anderson drove her car into the charming downtown section of River Oaks, Florida, holding her cell  phone three inches out from her face. She hated talking on the phone with Jim when he was upset. She’d been dreading this day for months. And this call. Things like this should be said in person; she knew that. But she also knew that would never 

happen. She’d never muster up the nerve.

Sitting there at a stoplight, she looked at the phone. Jim was inside it. Him and his angry little voice. “Please, Marilyn,” Jim said. “I’m just getting back from a horrible lunch. Another tenant is cancelling their lease. You have no idea the pressure I’m under right now. Can’t this wait till later?”

Marilyn sighed. She wanted to yell back her reply but didn’t  dare. “No, it can’t wait,” she said.

“Well, it’s going to have to. We’ll talk about this when I get  home. Love you, bye.” He hung up.

Love you, bye? Did he really just say that? 

The light turned green. Marilyn gently applied pressure to the gas pedal. I have to do this. There’s no other way. Tears flowed down her face, but she refused to turn the car around. To silence the guilt that had been hammering her all day, she blurted out, “God, I know you understand me. Even if no one  else does, I know you do.”

Jim Anderson’s workday ended like so many others, right at 5:00 p.m. His daily routine had unfolded according to his precise intentions. He locked the doors of his office suite for the day and 

tried to suppress dark thoughts about his cash flow situation.

It had slowed to a trickle from where it was a few years ago.  His company—Anderson Development, Inc.—was located on the outskirts of the quaint downtown area of River Oaks, Florida, an idyllic planned community built along the St. Johns River, not far from Sanford. You wouldn’t find this admission in any real estate brochure, but River Oaks had clearly been modelled 

after similar planned communities like Celebration near Disney World or the lovely town of Seaside in the Florida panhandle.

A few years after moving to River Oaks in the mid-nineties, Jim had started his own commercial real estate company. Business had boomed, and for years the money poured in. Right up until the bottom fell out of the market. Several businesses that leased properties from Jim had gone belly-up, and now another one was about to bite the dust. It was all he could do now to  keep his nose above water.

For Jim, the name of the game was looking prosperous and successful while he scrambled to find new tenants to close the gaps. But no one wanted to get on board a sinking ship.

He drove his Audi A8 along River Oaks’s tree-lined streets. It was hard not to look the part living in a place like this. Marilyn had fallen in love with it from the start. Every home was an architectural masterpiece. Most were built in old Southern tradition or, like the Andersons’ house, with a decidedly Victorian flair. Large two-story homes with wraparound front porches, big windows, lots of ornamental trim. And, of course, every lot was professionally landscaped. Even the smallest homes were priced out of the reach of all but the upper middle class.

Jim arrived at Elderberry Lane, then turned down the onelane service road running behind his house. All the homes had freestanding garages in back. Who wanted to see garage doors or grimy trash cans at the end of driveways? From the front, the homes looked pristine, immaculate, the epitome of neighbourhood bliss.

After Jim clicked a button inside his car, the first of three garage doors lifted. Jim pulled his Audi into its spot and was instantly annoyed at the sight of his son Doug’s little red Mazda. Look at it. It’s filthy . . . still filthy. He’d been after his son to get that thing washed for a week. He grabbed his briefcase and suit jacket and shut the car door.

What had Marilyn fixed for dinner?

He walked through the utility room, surprised to find a laundry basket full of his clothes sitting on a counter beside the washer. Stopping to inspect, he lifted one of the shirts. By the wrinkles, he could tell it had been sitting there for hours. What was Marilyn thinking, leaving his clothes in the basket like that?

As he left the utility room and headed for the main house, he noticed his breakfast dishes still sitting on the glass table on the veranda by the pool. It was mid-July, but that morning had been unseasonably cool, so he’d asked Marilyn to set breakfast out there. He’d invited her to join him, of course, but she was busy doing . . . something.

Why were the dishes still there? She knew better.

He opened the glass patio door off the great room. “Marilyn?” he yelled. No answer. He noticed something else. Or, the absence of something. There were no dinner smells, no activity in the kitchen at all. As he walked inside, it was obvious dinner had not even been started. What the heck?

“Marilyn,” he yelled again, loud enough to be heard in the center rooms of the house. She must be in one of the bedrooms. He walked through the tiled hallways toward their master bedroom suite, the only bedroom downstairs. “Marilyn?”

Again, no answer.

The bed was made, sort of. The fancy pillows were on the floor, not stylishly arranged as they should be. He walked into the bathroom suite. She wasn’t there. He hurried out to the stairway, called her name again as he ascended. In all three upstairs bedrooms, there was no sign of her. No indication that anyone had even been up here today. That wasn’t unusual.

Of their three children, only Doug lived at home, and he stayed in the little apartment above the garage. Their daughter, Michele, lived in her dorm at college. And Tom, their oldest, was married with two children. He and Jean lived in Lake Mary, about twenty-five minutes away.

Jim came down the stairs, certain now something was wrong. 

Pulling out his phone, he checked to see if he had any messages. He did not. The only call from her was that quick chat right after lunch, when he couldn’t talk. But that was hours ago. He called Marilyn’s number, waited for her to pick up. It rang a few times, then he waited through her voice mail message. “Hey, where are you? I’m home, and you’re not here. Dinner’s not even started. What’s going on? Call me as soon as you hear this.”

Jim remembered the message center on a short wall beside the refrigerator. He looked; something was written on the yellow pad. He hurried over, but it was only a note from Doug.

Jason picked me up around 3. Eating dinner at his place. Be home by 9.

Jason, Jim thought. He couldn’t stand that kid. Jason was into hip-hop, wore big baggy pants he had to hold up with one hand, his boxer shorts always sticking out for the world to see. 

Jim reread Doug’s note. So, Doug left the house at three; that meant Marilyn hadn’t been home then or he’d have told her instead of writing the note. Where was she? Maybe something had happened with one of Tom’s kids, and she’d had to leave in a hurry. He quickly dialed Tom’s home phone number.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Jean. Is Marilyn there? She wasn’t home when I got here. Are you okay, are the kids okay?”

“Everyone here is fine.”

“Any chance Tom might know where she is?”

“I doubt it, he just called me. He’s stuck in traffic on I-4.”

“I can’t figure out where she is.”

“She’s probably fine. Maybe she just stepped out to get something she needed for dinner.”

“Dinner’s not even started.”

“Hmm. I don’t know what to say. I’ll ask Tom when he gets home. Call us when you find out so we don’t worry.”

“I will.”

He hung up and called Michele. By this time, she’d be done with her classes for the day. She was a senior doing a summer semester at Southeastern University, a small college in Lakeland. Of course, he didn’t get her. He never got Michele whenhe called, always her voice mail. “Hey, Michele, it’s Dad. I’m looking for Mom. Got home from work and there’s no sign of her here at the house. I’m getting worried something might’ve happened to her. It’s not like her to leave without telling me where she’s going. Give me a call as soon as you get this.”

After hanging up, he made another pass through the house, this time looking for any signs of foul play. As he cleared each room, his heart beat faster. Something must have happened. Had she been abducted? Had there been a home invasion? It seemed unlikely; crime was almost unheard of in River Oaks. Other than the house being a little messier than usual, there were no signs of a break-in. None of the high-ticket items appeared to be missing.

But where was she?

The garage. It just dawned on him, he hadn’t seen her car there when he’d pulled in. He ran out to the garage to confirm it.

Marilyn’s car was gone.

Had she been in an accident? He hurried back to the message board by the fridge, where they kept a list of important numbers. He was just about to call the local emergency room when his cell phone rang. It was Michele. “Thanks for calling,” he said. “I’m getting a little frantic here. Your mom is missing. I think something may have happened to—”

“Dad, calm down,” she said in a gentle tone. “I’m sorry I’m the one that has to tell you.”

Jim’s heart sank. He collapsed on a bar stool and braced himself for bad news. “Tell me what?”

“Mom isn’t missing, Dad. She’s left you.”