Wednesday, May 30, 2012

God's No, God's Wait, and God's Yes (Finally)

Almost exactly one year ago, in May of 2011, my husband graduated from the University of Texas with a Doctor of Musical Arts in Organ Performance (as in the instrument; you will not believe how many people think that has something to do with bodily organs). By the time he graduated, his name had been out for Call (he is also a Lutheran pastor) since November 2010. Everyone told us, "Oh, don't put his name out there too soon. 6 months, maybe less." Yeah. Right.

My husband had served part-time as an assistant pastor at two congregrations concurrent with his further graduate school work post-MDiv. First, he worked at a congregation in Indiana while earning his Mastor of Sacred Music from Notre Dame. Then, he worked at a congregation in Texas while earning his doctorate. Both of these arrangements were part-time and everyone knew that they would end when his schooling ended. It allowed my husband to "keep his hand in" so to speak and it gave the congregations the help they needed. Due to the fact that the call in Texas was part-time, we could not sustain ourselves on that salary alone once Chris' TA position ended with graduation. We were afloat.

There were a few good nibbles here and there, even down to an onsite interview with one congregation (which then decided not to Call another pastor after all). Nothing came, though, and we moved to Nebraska to live with family. Chris went into Candidate Status (which just means "available for a Call and not currently in one") and took a part-time job as head organist and choirmaster at a church in Lincoln. I amped up my tutoring hours. Chris took on lots of other projects and work (weddings, funerals, compositions for CPH, a semester teaching a course at Concordia in Seward). Still nothing. Little nibbles. Here and there. Then, nothing.

I don't know if "Candidate Status" spooked people (what does that mean? Did he do something "bad?"), or if they did not want to pay the scale for a pastor/organist with a doctoral degree, or if they thought he'd leave for a University job (of which there were very, very few anyway), or what. But the fact remained: nothing. Dead silence.

We lived our lives here in Nebraska as best we could day to day. We had a normal routine. Thomas started preschool. We enjoyed the extra benefits of being near family: weddings, Baptisms, holidays, birthdays, etc. But in the background the question loomed:

Where is God?

And we asked him. "Where are you Lord? What are you doing? Here we are, wanting to faithfully serve your church, and there is no place for us. What are you DOING?"

God was hiding. He does that: "For the LORD will rise up as on Mount Perazim; as in the valley of Gibeon he will be roused; to do his deed -- strange is his deed! and to do his work -- alien is his work!" (Isaiah 28:21). Yahweh's alien work hurts, it kills, it raises your hackles.

First we repented and pleaded. Then we asked and asked. Then we demanded.

You see, when God hides, you don't look to the hidden God with his alien work, you look to the revealed God and his promises, which are his proper work. And you hold him to those promises. So then the prayers became this:

"We've had enough. You have promised to provide for us, you have promised to hear our prayers and answer them, you have promised to be gracious for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ. So, Lord, we are holding you to it. It's time to be the God of Promise. It's time to be the God of Grace. It's time, Lord. It's time to say yes."

That's faith talking, by the way. It sounds bad to our ears, but faith clings to the promises of God and holds him to those promises. Faith sees and knows that all of what happens is in the Lord's hands and by his doing, and holds him accountable.

We're not the first ones to talk like this.

Take Job, for example. The Lord had declared him righteous (Job 1:1,8), so Job held God to that declaration. When all his friends said "repent, do something differently, you must have done something wrong" Job said, "No! I know that the Lord has declared me righteous and blameless and I am holding him to it." Job goes so far as to confess that he will have an Advocate and that Advocate will bring his case before Yahweh, who will have to see that he has done wrong by Job. And even if Job were to die and decay, yet in his flesh he knew he would see God, his Redeemer (Job 19).

We are like Job. In our Baptisms, we have been declared righteous and blameless by God. We have gained an Advocate, Jesus Christ the Lord, who pleads for us before the throne of his Father. When God hides and works his alien work, we too can hold him to his promises in Christ Jesus. We too can confess that no matter what God does to us in the meantime, we know that we will see him with our own eyes and in our own flesh on the Last Day when he will vindicate us for Christ's sake.

That's faith talk. And there comes a point where that is all you have left. Faith and its clinging hand, holding on for dear life to the promises of God despite all appearances to the contrary. It is not a fun or easy place to be.

Almost a year to the day on which my husband graduated, he received the paperwork for a Solemn Call to serve as Strategic Mission Developer based out of Leipzig Germany. The Call was issued through the LCMS Board for International Mission. Finally, God said yes and worked his proper work. It was not the type of thing either one of us had ever envisioned ourselves doing (that's the way Yahweh likes to do it -- he sends you out to do the very thing you never thought you could. That way you know it is only because Christ is working in and through you that anything happens). And we responded by saying, "Here we are; send us." So it's off to Germany we go to find out what the Lord has in store for us there, and to serve him and his church throughout the world. That's a big yes from God after a lot of "No" and "wait".

God hides himself at many times in our lives. Deaths of loved ones, miscarriage, infertility, joblessness, depression, illness, injury, etc., etc. During those times when God is hiding and doing his alien work, the faith of the Baptized reaches out its hand and clings to the promises of God, holding on for dear life. And God will reveal himself, God has revealed himself, and God does reveal himself in Christ through Baptism, preaching, absolution and his very body and blood. There faith clings, and there faith will not be disappointed.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The Other Side of Organ Donation

My Dad with Thomas shortly after his birth in May 2008

Today I am seeing all over the web headlines about how Facebook has created a new tool for organ donation. ABC says Diane Sawyer has an exclusive interview with the woman at Facebook who came up with "a new idea; find out what it is" (she's a little behind the 8-ball since it's already all over the internet, but I digress). In every media report and television show plot line that I have ever seen dealing with organ donation, the focus is on the recipient and the sorrow of the other family is washed over a great deal. The assumption is that the grieving family will feel a whole lot better after their loved one's organs are donated, so the program focuses its attention on making them agree with a sob story about the person across the hospital wing who needs a new heart, and then leaves after effects of such a decision to the imagination. And what we are to imagine, I suspect, is that the family, though still sad, relieves a lot of its grief in the act of giving the organs away. It makes them feel better. That's what we're supposed to believe, anyway.

As commendable as using something like Facebook to help others is, as commendable as organ donation can be, I think it's wrong that no one really looks at the other side: the families of those who donate the organs. It was not something I had thought much about until I lost my Dad three years ago. And this may not be a popular thing to say, but organ donation is not a cut and dry easy thing which stems the grief of the family members.

This was taken in Austin about one month before my Dad died. They were visiting for Christmas.
A little over three years ago, while we were living in Austin, my Dad suffered a massive heart attack in January of 2009. My parents lived north of Chicago at the time. At first, my mom was in such shock that she told us not to come. They were working on him hard, putting in a stent, so it seemed like things were going to be okay. Thank goodness my brother Adam had the good sense not to trust mom's shock in those moments. He called us just a couple of hours later as he was on the road to Chicago himself. "Are you on a plane?" "No," I replied, "Mom said not to do anything yet." "Get on a plane, Liz." That was pretty much all he said. We raced home from my doctor's appointment, shoved what clean clothes we had into suitcases, and frantically called airlines.

That was Friday. We arrived in Milwaukee at about midnight on Friday night, or what was really now Saturday. A friend of Adam's picked us up and rushed us to my parents' house. The next morning, when I entered the hospital, the very first thing they said to me was, "look, we think your Dad is brain dead and here is why." They started poking and prodding, showing me his non-response, opening his eyelids and shining light. "See, no response." It was completely insensitive and awful. I had only just arrived. I had not even had the chance to BEGIN to come to grips with the fact that my father was laying there in the ICU unconscious, not looking a bit like himself. My husband wasn't even with me at the hospital yet because our son was still back at the house sleeping (he was just about 10 months old, the only grandchild). They hadn't even had a chance to see my dad yet, either. I couldn't understand why they would insist on doing that first thing when I arrived. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't just give me a few minutes alone with him before they started bombarding me with all the "proof" that he was brain dead.

Do you know why? They wanted his organs. They wanted them now. And the neurosurgeon wouldn't be around until later to legally declare him brain dead. My mom wouldn't do anything until all three of us kids arrived. They wanted to cram it into our heads so that we would quickly decide to release him for organ donation.

I'm sorry. It's true.

You see, my Dad was an organ donor. It was on his driver's license. In the state of Illinois, prior to a declaration of brain dead from a neuro specialist, the family has to okay organ donation. After the neurosurgeon declares the person legally brain dead, the family has no more say. By law, the doctors call in the transplant people and they start their tests. They didn't want to wait for the neurosurgeon, you see. They wanted to take his organs sooner. And they did not care one shred for how we felt.

We refused to make any decisions without the neurosurgeon's consultation. That made them angry. At one point, while we were all in the ICU lounge, my mother took our male neighbor and close friend in to see my Dad. This neighbor and my Dad had been close friends. They were in there talking when the doctor came into the room. He asked my mother again about organ donation. My mother said she would not consent until her children were ready. The doctor eyed our neighbor suspiciously and then asked, "Whose children are they?!" I think he was trying to find out if we were actually my Dad's step-children or if my mom was a second wife. She looked at him and said, "They are our children. Mine and the man in the bed's." She left the room and cried in my arms in the hallway. It was the first time she had cried. When we related what had happened to my husband and my two brothers, they went together to the doctor's office and basically told him to back off and leave my mother alone. After that he was all simpering politeness.

Once the neurosurgeon finally arrived and declared my father brain dead, we no longer had any choices or say in the matter. The transplant people came in and started their work. They took blood samples and tissue samples. They poked and prodded. They pushed and pulled. They, as my mother tearfully said to me later, "stole his dignity." Then they cajoled and talked with us. They told us how wonderful it was. The process was explained and the organs that they were going to take were discussed. They explained that they would take him when they were ready and that the ventilators would be turned off in the pre-op room. We had no say in when this would happen.

I asked them only this question: "Will you take his eyes?"

"Yes. Someone who is blind can use the corneas and will be able to see someday."

"Please," I said, "please don't take his eyes."

"We can't do that. We have to take everything. It's the process. This is how it works."

You see, to me, the eyes were what made my Dad my Dad. To take them was to take him in a very tangible way. And I could not stand that.

To be fair, I should say that my brothers do not feel completely the same way about this as I do. We all grieve differently and the impact of things like this is different for each person. For one of my brothers, especially, I think this was a source of comfort. To know that my Dad was doing one last great thing. You see, it was completely natural that my Dad would sign that organ donation card. He was generous to a fault. He was blustering, and loud, and angry and not always easy to live with. But he would die for you. He would give you his last dime. He would give you "the shirt off his back" as they say. So in a way, organ donation was natural for my Dad. But that did not necessarily make it easier for all of those who grieved him. It did not lessen our grief. And it should not be the source of our hope, as it is so often made out to be.

Our hope is not in organ donation and feeling that our family member did such a great and wonderful thing. Our hope is not in knowing that someone else will live a better or longer life because of it. Sure, those things are true. Sure, organ donation is good in that respect. But our hope is in somethng much greater: It is in the resurrection on the Last Day. My father is Baptized. And he will live, and in his flesh he will see God with his own eyes (Job 19). Perhaps that is what gave me the most pause with organ donation, especially my Father's eyes. You see, he'll need them again on that Last, great day. I know the Lord can and will restore him despite organ donation.

I'm not saying don't be an organ donor. I'm not saying organ donation is inherently bad or that every experience will be as terrible as mine. What I am saying is, let's be honest about it. Let's be honest about how hard it really is. Let's be honest about the fact that even all these years later, I feel, at best, ambivalent about it, and that's how others might feel, as well. Let's be honest. And, let's not place hope in an organ donation or the act of organ donation, but in the Lord and the promises He has given. His promises are to wipe every tear from our eyes; to carry our sorrows; to give us His body and blood for forgiveness, life, salvation, and yes, healing; and to resurrect us on the Last Day.

Just this year, my mother sent us all a copy of a letter she later received. It was from one of the recipients of my father's organs. This person was so very grateful, and it sounded as if this person's life would very much improve. What did this person receive? What else? His corneas.

With my Dad in December 2007 at a little diaper shower arranged by my mom.