Medicine of Immortality "It's a cold, and it's a broken, 'Hallelujah!'"

MY friendsPosted by Rick on May 24th, 2011

Rachel’s post on friends has made me ponder my closest friends and think about what I value in those friendships. Many of my friends live far away and I hardly get to talk to them. Throughout the week, I have been talking with Rachel about the characteristics of my best friends, and there is some sense in which the people to whom I am attracted to for deep friendship have specific and rare characteristics. They are all VERY different, but these qualities are common to all of them.

“Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.” – Ps. 119:165

First on the list, is someone who is not easily offended. This characteristic is probably at the top of my list because I offend people so often! I have no excuse for that. I am sure I have angered a number of people on many occasions, but I have never been able to get close to grudge holders. It simply wouldn’t work out well for me. All my closest friends are with me in the mess – not as teachers, but as companions. People who hold grudges (with anybody) for more than a day always lean toward a law-based faith. I am not faulting people for this sinful leaning (I lean too far the other way), but my closest friends are grace-based people who lean closer to antinomianism than legalism. They have an acute awareness of God’s grace, and they are skilled at sharing that grace with others. I have found that I have little desire to establish deep friendships with those who get offended – probably because I have been burned a couple of times and my wife has been burned even more in this area. While I have tried to re-establish trust after situations like this (where they held grudges at me or another person), it has never developed. It’s one of those areas that personally skeeves me out.

“Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality.” – Kahlil Gibran

“Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.” – Henry Ward Beecher

Another thing I highly value is an acute awareness of human sinfulness. My closest friends are the type of people who aren’t shocked when they hear a pastor they know has molested his daughter or that a mutual friend has recently come out of the closet or that someone has confessed a porn addiction. They know how to have compassion on both victim and perpetrator. They do not excuse the sins, but realize that there is a thin line between faith and apostasy.

“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” – Mother Theresa

Many of my closest friends are intellectually driven, but their strongest driving force is compassion. As I think about my closest friends, they are the ones who feed the hungry, befriend the homeless, comfort the sick and dying. They have an awareness of the vapor of this life and they are committed to easing the pain of others.

“In the end we are all separate: our stories, no matter how similar, come to a fork and diverge. We are drawn to each other because of our similarities, but it is our differences we must learn to respect.” – unknown

My closest friends can separate people from positions. One of the things I love best about my wife is her ability to have a heated debate where we disagree vehemently, and when the debate is over, there is no animosity. I think of all the times we have debated in front of family, where someone has been saying, “Okay, guys, calm down” the whole time, not realizing that we are not mad at each other. One of the debates I remember most fondly was on whether soda and cardboard are food. It lasted a little over an hour, and the whole time, I think my mother-in-law thought we were going to get a divorce. We love a heated debate, but we recognize the difference between people and positions. As I think of my closest friends, they are the ones I can debate on finances, eschatology, or politics – even following our discussion with a blog post, and they don’t take it personally. They continue the debate!

“The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other’s dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him” – Cyril Connelly

My closest friendships are ones where I feel on an equal level. I do not mean a social, educational, theological, or economic level. I have close friends that have more or less money than me. I have close friends who have as much education as me and close friends who have not gone to college. Some of my closest friends are ELCA Lutherans, Charismatics, Catholics, and Dispensationalists. I do not feel the need to have those types of things in common. I am talking about an equal respect for each other – where I do not worry about them looking down at me and they do not have to worry that I am looking down on them. I have some friendships where I feel like I am always being parented. I have others where I feel like I am a beacon of advice. I get along with those people well enough, but those people will never be my closest friends, and I will never be theirs. Close friendship, at least for me, means being able to be stupid without being judged but also having the ability to open up and be serious.

Here’s to FriendsPosted by Rachel on May 20th, 2011

I feel blessed by my friends. Whether they’re new or go way back to my childhood, they all play an important role in my life and I’m thankful for each and every one of them.

I’ll start with Evie. If you want loyalty, that’s what she’ll give you. I don’t think there’s anything I could do to make her decide not to be my friend anymore. She’s just always been there, and always will. I feel close to her partly because we’ve grown up knowing each other, but also because we have a lot in common—both in strengths and weaknesses. There are things I admire in her, and other things where I just can relate. I’m thankful for her, and especially thankful that I know she’ll always have my back.

Then there’s Keisha. I feel like we have a strong bond because of our love for music and making music together. I love to play and sing with her. I also feel that she and I could just sit and talk about matters of the heart for hours, and I’m always refreshed by her honesty. We’re so alike in so many ways, but I don’t feel like our friendship is dependent on our similarities. I think we just really both care about each other. I love spending time with her and she’ll always be special to me!

I also have to mention Lynne’. She’s another childhood friend who has become a closer friend as we’ve grown, gotten married and started families. I love that our journeys have been similar in our timeline of marriage and having babies. Now that she lives far away, I miss her a lot. We’ve played music together, scrapbooked together, made sushi together, and just had good talks together. I love that she has a positive attitude about life but doesn’t pretend to be perfect or have it all together. (Okay, I’m not sure why I couldn’t find a picture of us…what’s up with that??)

Hollie is my friend/superhero. She works miracles with coupons. She is always honest but simultaneously kind. She will always be extremely special to me because she helped me survive my years living in Monroe, when I had very few friends. She reached out to me and I felt like I could relate to her in a culture I wasn’t familiar with. She and I had babies at the same and were even at the hospital at the same time. I wish we could still live near each other.

Rachael is another super cool friend whom I admire greatly. Her faith is of great encouragement to me. Again, I love her honesty (a running theme with my friends), and she makes amazingly delicious marshmallows. She and I both have 5-year-old girls who were born in September, and we’ve both done the homebirth/birth center thing.

I can think of a lot of other friends that I am thankful for, but these are the ones I wanted to highlight. So, go ahead and feel special, ladies. You are!

The Good FightPosted by Rick on February 26th, 2011

Well, I’ve totally failed as a blogger. I am not sure that anyone reads this anyway, but I am writing for myself, so I excuse myself. The truth is, every time I gave a number in the title bar of my post, I felt like I was ticking off part of my life.

In the past couple of years, I have come to a greater awareness of pain and suffering. This is not to say I had never experienced them. I come from a broken home—a drug dealing dad, a stepdad that left my mom for another man, a teenager when my mom married a black man in a mostly white, conservative town. I had trouble with my courtship of Rachel. I’ve watched my wife get abused by church courts. I’ve seen her lose all of her friends…twice. I’ve experienced deep tribulation from an early age, but for the most part, I came out above it. I came out positive and joyful. In the last couple of years, the tribulation has been less, but the pain has been more. I’m deeply wounded, and it has made me more aware of mortality. I’ve always been aware of my mortality; I’ve been rather obsessed with remembering the day of my death. In the last year, there have been very few “personal time” hours where I haven’t thought of my own death. But in addition to my own pain, I’m an empathizer. In less than two weeks, I’ve known four people who have died, visited another who is likely on her death bed, and learned of fatal illness in the lives of friends. The last couple of weeks have been filled with funerals, hospital visits, and trips to rehabilitation centers. All along, I’ve been attacked with the thought: “This is all meaningless. When you die, you die. That’s it.” I don’t believe that. It makes no sense to me. But neither do a lot of sensible things. I am caught with fleeing such thoughts, or dealing with them. As someone desiring to come to a greater self-awareness, I choose to deal with them. Those thoughts are not true. My blessed hope is Christ.

In the midst of all this pain, suffering, death, and doubt come St. Paul’s words: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” Both of the funerals I’ve recently attended were for 89 year olds. One was a veteran of WWII. His first grandson was born in the last year. One of my best memories of him was how proud he was to become a grandpa for the first time. He lived a very full life, but it was not easy. He fought the good fight. He finished the race. He kept the faith.

The other funeral I went to was for Rachel’s Aunt Billie. At the memorial service, we viewed several slides of her, and what I noticed is that she was smiling in every single one of them. She was so happy. But here was a woman who lost a son when he was 28. He husband died a few months later. Her other two sons never married. Her daughter is a liberal Methodist. None of her kids kept the faith. I would have a difficult time smiling. I have a difficult time smiling when I am blessed with faithful, healthy children. I am a burdened person by nature. I take on other people’s burdens. Aunt Billie never stopped smiling. The smiles didn’t stop with the slides. Every time I saw her, she was smiling. Her last words were “Going somewhere else.” She fought the fight. She ran the race. She kept the faith.

I have visited Dorothy in the memory care unity every week for the last year. She is the shining light of the unit. She is always smiling, always friendly. She is the only one that comes to worship with her own songbook. She wears gloves so that she can shake hands with everyone without getting the germs. She is so THANKFUL for visitors. This week Mary Lou is in the hospital. I cannot utter a short prayer without her slipping out of consciousness. Yet she is thankful that I’ve come. She is fighting tooth and nail. She can barely stay awake, but she’s running. She is keeping the faith.

Mary Lou can no longer move anything other than her arms. She really can’t use her fingers. She cannot even hold up her own head. She has no teeth, so she’s hard to understand—unless we’re praying the Lord’s Prayer or singing “Jesus Loves Me.” Then, all of a sudden, her voice is loud and clear. She’s not just fighting the good fight; she is dropkicking principalities and powers. Mary Lou can barely move, but she is not only running the race, but hurdling over demons. She is keeping the faith, and it is radiating warmth and light to those around her.

A friend’s father, Mr. Sutton, was recently diagnosed with ALS. My former pastor writes that he is “handling this better than any of us. We have been reduced to sobbing in our session meetings. When I have walked behind him in the processional, slowly to let him walk at his own pace, I have had to guard myself from being overcome emotionally.” He describes him as “the most gentle, the most humble, the most compassionate man I have ever known.” He is “actually leading his family and our congregation through these difficult issues with his own health problems. It reminds me in a way of Benjamin Morgan Palmer’s leading his children through their own deaths from the plagues of New Orleans in the 1800s.” Mr. Sutton is fighting the good fight. There is a 90% chance he is nearing the end of the race, and he is only gaining speed. He is adorning the faith with the glory of Christ.

And here I am. I’m on the battlefield, but I am looking for the medic. I’m running the race, but I need an IV. I’m keeping the faith, but I’m not sure how long this war is going to take. I know that I will have to give my life up. I am in the mess. I am under the shadow of the cross. I’m under attack, but I am shielded by Christ. I am being healed by the Great Physician. And I am thankful for those warriors who gave their lives and for those who are on the front lines. I am drawing my inspiration from them ever so slowly. I am putting on my armor. I am girding up my loins. I am tightening my helmet. I am beating my shield. And this really big sword is aching to shed some blood.

2/52: PortlandiaPosted by Rick on January 14th, 2011

Week 2, and I’m still here. With the added challenge of vacation in Portland, I’m a bit surprised. I got a call saying that we’re in at the new place. We just have to put down a deposit. Yay.

It’s been a busy week at the Macphersons. I absolutely love Portland. The girls went out last night, so today is guy’s night out. Looking to see if I can find good mexican before we leave.

I did have my interview at Providence, but didn’t get the position. They said lots of positive things: that they felt I had a strong call, that I was mature and patient, that I was more open than a lot of 60 year olds, that I was bright and articulate. They had only one negative—that I need to further “integrate my past.” I didn’t quite understand all she meant by that, but her description was kinda like, “You should try to do some therapy to understand the ways you were negatively affected by your past history.” She’s right. I don’t tend to dwell on ways I’ve been wronged or given the short stick. I think she was trying to see how woundedness would help me in my ministry, but the things she was asking me about were not the things that have really wounded me in life. I’m much more wounded by the loss of recent friendships than the loss of my father. But she had mentioned that she was affected in several ways when her father left her—things like a sense of abandonment. I never had a sense of abandonment. Anyway, something I need to explore.

We’re going home tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll get in town early enough to get our deposit down tomorrow.

Okay, good enough. 50 more weeks to go.

We Live, We Love, We LearnPosted by Rick on March 20th, 2010

So, if anyone has known anything about our lives in the past few months, you’ll know that we had a couple of bad experiences with long-time friendships, and those experiences have brought us a lot of hurt.

The two families in question were two childhood friends of Rachel and their spouses. When Rachel and I were first getting to know each other, both couples did not support our courtship. But after things progressed, they changed their minds. Couple #1 repented. Couple #2 pretended that they had always supported us, and said that they really thought what couple #1 did was wrong. Of course, couple #2 had also shunned us, but we didn’t really care that they were trying to cover up our past since they liked us at that point.

After we got married, we moved away, and we became really close with couple #1, with them even visiting us a couple of times. After about a year, we tried really hard to get back to Spokane because we missed both Rachel’s parents and both couples. It took us three years. When we finally got back up, couples #1 and #2 had become really close. Things got tense with couple #1 soon after we moved up, in large part due to how much time we spent with them. We relaxed our relationship, things got better, but damage was done.

Over time, couple #1 made some comments that indicated that there were jealous of how much time we spent with couple #2. Of course, we were jealous of how much time couple #1 spent with couple #2. Couple #2 made comments about how they were jealous of how close we were to couple #1. A triangle of jealousy ensued. In the end, we lost out.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood dimm’d tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”

Things fell apart. Both relationships were damaged. And for four months, we tried repairing them. Couple #2 told us they had to pray about being our friends and would get back to us. They never did. We drove couple #1 nuts by trying to get back to a close relationship with them – something they were not able to give. We’re still trying to work on reconciliation with them, but our expectations have been drastically lowered.

Losing those two friendships hurt, but what we hadn’t realized is that we had two other sets of great friends with whom we hadn’t really worked to develop our relationships. Both were also Rachel’s childhood friends and their spouses; both remained friends and supported our relationship in its early stages. And in redeveloping those friendships, I realized that I had put up a wall with both couples #1 and #2. Because of our past history, I didn’t truly put my trust in them. In fact, I always had a deep distrust of couple #2. I used humor to deflect my true feelings a lot. I had never shared my heart in the way that I was now able to share my heart with couple #3, and to a lesser extent, couple #4. And since then, we’ve also developed friendships with 2 other couples. Couple #5 is more a fun-couple – a couple with whom we can have fun, but there is still a wall preventing anything deeper. And we’re okay with that. We’re not trying to turn it into more than it is.

Couple #6 is a set of new friends. We’ve hung out with couple #6 three weeks in a row, and I sense a great compatibility with this couple. Not only is there much commonality in interests, but I feel the same sense of brokenness. They too are in a healing process. They too are in an uncertain time. They have faced judgment. And with this brokenness and uncertainty comes an openness that goes both ways. I don’t mean a relationship that’s based on gossip about our hurts either. It’s not. It’s based on our common faith. It’s based on a willingness to say that we’re broken, hurting, fragile, vulnerable, and a little bit lost – something that’s hard for me to admit. But something that was so easy to release the first time we spent time with them.

Despite losing closeness with two sets of friends, God has used our pain to draw us closer as a couple and closer to Him. He’s provided us with friends who are, by no means, a replacement for our old friends, but who are sets of new beginnings or rejuvenations of seeds long untended.

We’re BackPosted by Rachel on March 9th, 2010

We’ve been away for a while due to blog problems but we’re hoping to wake up things a little around here. Life has been crazy for the past several months. There’s been good crazy and bad crazy. I don’t even know where to begin and I know that at least for now, I can’t get into all of it. But God is always there, and I’m always trying my best to listen.

In September, I went through some trials that left me feeling very down and very self-absorbed with my problems. As the months have passed, I’ve found that in moments, I am able to rise above the pain, and in others, I’ve succumbed to my own weakness. God continues to be gracious and I continue to wrestle with my own sin and pray for the healing of relationships.

My family has been, as always, amazing. Rick is a constant source of comfort and encouragement, and Kyrie and Antonio fill my life with joy and moments of being as carefree as I remember being as a child. Sometimes there is no better description for my children than little angels. And goodness knows they’re not really angels—their behaviour can be exhausting and infuriating—but the love and the innocence that they display from their sweet spirits really help to lift mine. It’s such a joy to be a mom, even though I have those moments when I wonder if I really am called to be a mom. Sometimes I’m just really truly not good at it. At all.

God has been kind enough to open my eyes to friendships that have always been there, waiting for me—and introduce new friends into my life. He has never abandoned me, even when I think that He has.

It’s been difficult for me to enter into the season of Lent this year. Antonio was sick on Ash Wednesday, so I wasn’t able to attend a service. Being able to hear the words “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” while the cross is drawn in ashes on my forehead by the thumb of the priest is something that is so profound to me that I can hardly articulate my feelings about it. It helps to set the tone for the entire season. I have not chosen to give up anything specifically, nor have I conscientiously added any particular disciplines. However, I do find myself returning to the Lord, and drawing closer to Him, and seeing the sickness of my own soul and the desperation with which my whole body aches for salvation.

HomePosted by Rachel on August 12th, 2008

Some of you know, some of you might have guessed, and the rest of you are probably all in the dark regarding our whereabouts for the forseeable future. I’ll clear it up: we’re staying in Spokane. God has answered the prayers of family and friends and has blessed Rick with a great job here. I am finally home.

There are a lot of things I will miss about Monroe, which may come as a surprise to some, but there were certainly attachments formed during our first four years of marriage living in Louisiana. I remember Isaiah and I driving the rental truck down, pulling into the driveway of the first house that Rick and I would live in, enjoying temperatures in the 70’s on New Year’s Day, having fun with friends, sighing contentedly at the deep blue sky streaked with pink clouds after a thunderstorm, and admiring the sunset over the peaceful bayou. I remember seeing the positive line on a pregnancy test with Kyrie, and again with Antonio, in the little bathroom of our house. I remember painting our dining room red because I need to live with color. I remember painting walls, sewing curtains, and hanging pictures to make our house a home. I gave birth to both of our babies in Louisiana. Antonio was born right in his sister’s room. There are so many special memories that we’ll carry with us. And I know I’ll never forget the challenges we faced as a new couple, and then a new family, living across the country from my family. It was good for me, and I’m thankful for the experience. I wouldn’t change it if I could.

Now that we are back in Spokane, I feel like everything is right. I feel joy when I just look into the starry night sky or smell the fresh, beautiful Northwest air. Every blade of grass that I see blowing in the wind seems familiar to me. I hear voices all around me in the buzzing of bees, songs of birds, and even the distant sounds of machinery or cars whizzing by that seem to be welcoming me home. It fills me with a joy and a feeling of belonging that I can’t fully describe.

A few from the FourthPosted by Rachel on July 6th, 2008

We really enjoyed celebrating the fourth of July with our friends gathered at the Hathaway home. Thanks to Ryan and Taneisha for their hospitality!

We did some fireworks on the street…

And then I had some fun capturing sparkler art with a slow shutter speed (I knew the bulb exposure setting was good for something).

Since I’m too lazy to repost them here…Posted by Rachel on July 6th, 2008

Those of you who haven’t already seen the ocean vacation photos can view them here and here.

The ImpossiblePosted by Rick on June 1st, 2008

The day you all thought would never come has finally arrived.