Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
August 23, 2009
9:30 AM

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First Lesson ~ Romans 12:1-8 (Peterson)
MP3

Second Lesson ~ Psalm 121 (Peterson)
MP3

“Strength for the Journey”

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Many of you know that I spend much of the winter in the Dominican Republic. When we are there we frequently attend worship at an International Church. The pastor died a little over a year ago from cancer but he left his message written in a book called a Leaf in the Wind. In this book he describes what it takes to serve God.

“I want to be used of God. What should I do?” My typical response is—don’t do anything. All you have to do is say “yes” to God. Place your life in His hands. He’ll do the rest. God will work the circumstances to see to your preparation for the work He has for you. I assure you, God is sufficiently wise and powerful to make you what He wants you to be, send you where He wants you to go and have you do what He wants you to do. For George, this meant many years of service in the slums of Haiti. For others, service takes other forms.

In the second chapter of Mark, we are told a story of 4 dedicated friends who wanted to get their paralyzed buddy to Jesus to be healed. Jesus was inside a house and the crowds had filled the house and all around it so that there was no way to get inside. I sometimes think about some of us dealing with that kind of situation. Would we appoint a committee? Draw a plan? Say it can’t be done—too bad? Or argue aimlessly over the best way to do it? They climbed onto the roof, removed a section and carefully let the man on his sheet down at the feet of Jesus. This was not an easy task but Jesus regarded their care for their friend and he was healed. The Bible has many stories about caregivers who had exceptional strength and wisdom from God. Our real life stories show many other examples.

My mother was a care-giver. She had little formal education as we think about it today but she was wise in ways that count. She looked after her birth family, then her husband and children, then all those around her who needed it. She was a cook, a caretaker, a counselor. She was selfless when anyone around her needed care. I tell you this to say that in many ways she influenced my life for indeed, I am a caregiver. When I was younger, I used to wonder how she did it because she was a tiny person and the tasks were often so large. I no longer wonder for I know that God gives strength for the tasks along our journey.

I was born in Cumberland City, Tennessee which was a crossroads with a country store and a jetty where the river boats came and went. At that time, it had no post office or medical facilities. Old Doc Martin lived outside of town. I was born almost a month early at a time when there was no pre-natal care and no pedi-ICU. The doctor got there after I was born and said I probably would not live since I weighed only about 3.5 lbs.. My 18 year old mother cared for me alone for the first several months of my life since whooping Cough was epidemic at the time. Somehow we got it anyway. But God gave her strength and she brought us through all that. By 3rd. grade I began to gain to a normal size.

Not long after I was born, my dad who was working on the railroad laying ties and a second job as a deputy for the sheriff was shot through the head. He was taken to a hospital many miles from home and with his jaws locked, they removed a tooth to give him liquids to sustain him. He promised God during that time that if he could live, he would become a preacher and serve God in the church. He lived and he did as he promised. My early life was consumed with his school and serving churches. So it was that my mother became my mentor. Through early experiences of harsh discipline, sexual abuse, and poverty, God through my mother, held my world together. Thus, early on, I was a survivor and already learning the caregiver routine.

In 1957, I was a teacher at Hattie Cotton School in Nashville when the school system was integrated for the first time. One “Black” child in first grade was enough to cause some angry racists to dynamite our school building and I spent the next 9 months teaching 6th. Graders in a band instrument closet on the 3rd. floor of a Sr. High. It was a year of turmoil and every student in that class spent a special weekend at our house outside the strife ravaged city for R & R. Many times I prayed “God Give Me Strength” as they all wanted to do everything all of the others had done plus one more thing of their own. And God did give me strength to deal with my own feelings and to be there for those 26 students who did not understand the world in which they lived.

Moving far away from home so that my husband could attend BU for his doctorate was very difficult. My mom’s wisdom was my beacon through that time of loneliness. I was not a yankee and every time I opened my mouth, everyone in the room knew it. I didn’t know how to deal with the customs, the weather and the traveling, I desperately wanted a family and nine years passed before Dave and then Donna filled that void. God gave me many children in the Concord School where I taught whose needs were great and so I was able to retain my good disposition and my sanity. God was there in my journey to a “foreign” land.

Personal illness along the way when not much more than surgery was available for malignant tumors did not lay me low. Only a few days after the surgery, The strength came to allow not only a quick recovery from surgery but the patience to wait out the recovery for the 7 years that the doctors thought necessary to be sure that there would be no regrowth. Shortly after I was on my feet, the Bishop asked us to come to Dover to pastor the church here. His message to me was to not become involved in the church to any great extent since for many reasons the church was in turmoil. How could I do that when Ralph needed me to help him with names and other things? The Bishop’s message was for me to get a job, go to the University and get a degree, watch after my family. I was so confused after living 90% of my life in the church since age 1, that I didn’t know what to do so I did it all. I went to School at UNH, getting a M.Ed. and a C.A.G.S., Taught at Woodman Park School and looked after my house and the children. God gave me the strength to step out in new directions. Slowly, I was able to resume an active part in the church and St. Johns has, in the main, been my home for almost 40 years.

Divorce, alienation of friends and moving away from a community of support brought me to a period of depression. Finding my strength seemed too hard and then once again God facilitated my association with a group of children in Newington, Greenland and New Castle who had learning difficulties and I was able to make their life more meaningful. In so doing, I found my own meaning. Once again my life was back on track.

Grandchildren are the greatest gift from God but they can also be the source of much friction with God. My two became the greatest trial to my faith. When my 13 month old grandson was diagnosed with cancer at the top of the brain stem, I railed and screamed and cried at God for this child’s pain and suffering. I called Him names for the pain of the 7 of us in the immediate family. And still God’s love and patience was there. And the strength for the Journey was there as ways for my service became evident The University allowed me to shorten office hours and put all of my classes on 2 days. I could then spend 4 days a week caring for Jeffrey when he got home from the hospital and during his chemo and radiation and 2 difficult surgeries. I was able without guilt to become his caregiver while his mother continued to work to maintain the health insurance which he needed. How I could have stayed with him 5 nights a week with him only able to sleep on my chest and still had time to do my work at the University and maintain a home with Stephen, I will never know, but prayers went out and the strength came, not just for a few days but for months on end, for the journey. Just when I thought we were home free, the other foot fell as Jeffrey’s older sister got in with the wrong crowd and drugs became a gigantic issue. Again I questioned God about whether we’d had enough and the answer was to pray and love her as I always had. Everyone I knew and many across the Upper Room network prayed and still the problem existed. Then a court mandated rehab gave another opportunity. St. Johns sent a quilt, members wrote supportive letters to her and we loved her and cared for her through it all. God was with us through that journey and Stef is now a drug free wife and a wonderful mother of two.

2 strokes temporarily rendered me to be the one in need of care, but I still had things I needed to do. This was not the end. I had the determination (Is that stubbornness?) but God gave me the strength and the support of my near and dear, Stephen, and great physical therapists got me on my feet and ready to continue the life I had before me. All the more, I knew that God’s work that I was to do was as a caregiver. I had already been a volunteer counselor for the Counseling Center of Dover/Rochester for many years but there were other things even closer that needed my attention.

My best friend was losing her son, Michael and I thought I could do nothing to help him or her. I kept feeling that God had something for me to do in all of that so I did what I do best, I made dinner every night for weeks and went to eat with the family. It was hard for me to be there and see the pain but God had a job for me and gave me strength for the journey. Some of you have met my friend, Ben. For 20 years I knew him in POP as a happy farmer, a home on the mountain with a million dollar view and then in a wink of an eye, his world fell apart. Skin Cancer, Macular degeneration, and the need to leave the DR which he loved, laid him low. What could I do to help him climb out of depression? God’s message to me was just to do what you do best…Pray and bake cookies. So well spaced care packages, daily prayer and a visit this summer has been my response to God’s Challenge. Currently, my sister’s illness leaves me feeling so helpless. She is 10 years younger than I am and yet her physical condition is so devastating to the plans she had for her life in retirement. Since I am far away, it is difficult for me to be a caregiver but God has shown me that I can go more often and be an emotional support on the phone and computer. I visited this spring for a week to stay with her so that her husband could go on a business trip and then again this summer to cook the strawberry jam that she so wanted to make for her church fair. We communicate every week and more often if we want. I can hardly bear the thought of her needs, and yet I will be there for her as God gives me strength for the journey.

Let’s face it, God means for me to be a caregiver and God will give me the strength to do what needs doing. After all, God gave me the best role model in the world in my mother.

George DeTellis, the pastor whose words started this message put it this way. When you give your life to God, you become a leaf in the wind. Things will happen that you never could have imagined or planned. The knowledge of how to proceed and the resources to accomplish the work will be provided. The wind that will send you will always be there as your source of courage, strength and empowerment.

AMEN

©2009 MaryAnne MacKenzie

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