We Remember: Love, Adrian
Pulling this from the archives . . . because I know no finer story for this Memorial Day than that of our very own hero.
“I bet Hitler is getting the quivers in his backbone if he has any left. I’d like to get at his mustache with a pair of my tweezers. Would I ever pick souvenirs.”
It goes without saying, I suppose, that somewhere along the way when sorting through the belongings of an aging parent, somebody’s going to stumble onto it.
Tucked away in a closet, or stacked behind the dusty crates in the attic, or even mixed in with bottle caps in an old cigar box in the bottom drawer, there is hidden the prize that no one even knew their parents had.
A few years ago while rearranging some of Lane’s mom’s things, we tripped over the treasure that left us all sprawled out on the floor laughing and weeping and learning and knowing.
We found every letter that Adrian ever sent to Estrid, most of which were written between 1941 and 1946 while he served as an Army Staff Sergeant in World War II.
Saturday
John 11 -- because Lazarus never seems to run out of things to say
Saturday is a cave, a friend wrote.*
Saturday’s gray clouds groaned and contracted last weekend before the sun crowned early Sunday morning in the midst of dismal overdue Spring. When Resurrection Day, Redemption Day, pushed out pink with loud celebration, it felt as though it could be my first.
And I wonder, if perhaps in some way, it was.
Soon after, songs of redemption joy still ringing in my ears, I considered again the waiting, the dark cave that is Saturday. The moments . . . the days . . . the months . . . the years that split us wide, straddled between Friday’s devastation and Sunday’s resurrection.
We pondered together, my Sunday morning adult fellowship and I, Saturday waiting.
Waiting and Watching till Morning
That first year we were married, we stapled nine W-2s to our income tax return.
Lane substitute taught and coached in a handful of districts and worked as an assistant manager in a jewelry store. I had my day job in fundraising and PR, but thought I should earn a little extra cash to buy a new bike so I could ride to work and save gas money. (Once said bicycle was in my possession and use, the need for a shower and a discrete spot behind the building to throw up out of the view of my coworkers brought a quick end to my genius plan.)
W-2 #9 came from my job as the night attendant in our apartment complex.
How hard could it be? I sat at a desk a couple of nights a week and read a book, then picked up my paycheck every two weeks. I’d have my pockets full of spending money in no time.
Except that twice each night I had to walk rounds. (more…)
The Hazardous Work of Discipleship
1969.
That’s what I keep hearing.
I thought 1997 was bad. I remember lying in the back seat looking out the side windows at what seemed like 20-foot walls of snow on either side of the highway while Lane hurtled the car through a blizzard. We were still two hours from the nearest hospital with a NICU, and I was making good on threats to deliver a baby several weeks early.
No, I’m told. 1969 was worse. (more…)
Redeem This
An extra hand never hurts, so when she offered to hold the tape, I slid the one-inch end over to her behind the bushes. Besides, she needed something to keep her mind busy while we prowled around.
I wondered, as I watched her scale a small pile of debris, if I could come to dread the smell of campfire — that scent that most often means I’m outdoors, with folks I love, and at least for the moment, without a care.
In college, I always resisted washing a campfire-steeped sweatshirt for days, just to hang onto the time a little longer, if only in my head and my nostrils.
She wonders when she’ll stop waking to that smell and remembering it wasn’t a dream.
We Remember: Love, Adrian
“I bet Hitler is getting the quivers in his backbone if he has any left. I’d like to get at his mustache with a pair of my tweezers. Would I ever pick souvenirs.”
It goes without saying, I suppose, that somewhere along the way when sorting through the belongings of an aging parent, somebody’s going to stumble onto it.
Tucked away in a closet, or stacked behind the dusty crates in the attic, or even mixed in with bottle caps in an old cigar box in the bottom drawer, there is hidden the prize that no one even knew their parents had.
A few years ago while rearranging some of Lane’s mom’s things, we tripped over the treasure that left us all sprawled out on the floor laughing and weeping and learning and knowing.
We found every letter that Adrian ever sent to Estrid, most of which were written between 1941 and 1946 while he served as an Army Staff Sergeant in World War II.
The letters began arriving in Estrid’s mailbox shortly after the two met at a Lutheran youth convention in 1940. They really didn’t live too far apart, just a little over a hundred miles by car from Strandburg to Claremont. But in the days before highways and when getting a new tire to replace that always flat one took months, they didn’t see one another often even while Adrian remained stateside.
Take away internet, texting, even private phone conversations, and that left two smitten youths to tuck their dreams, thoughts and hearts into envelopes and entrust them to the trains that carried mail to the countryside.
I spent the better part of a year after we found them blanketed in those thousand letters, learning a man I knew all too briefly. I compiled the pages into two volumes, often calling Lane to the computer as I typed through eyes misted blind to share another tattered leaf of this beating heart.
In his eighth-grade educated hand, he revealed himself in sometimes tender, sometimes bold, sometimes comic words to the woman who made him feel like the luckiest and most alive man living.
After Adrian shipped out, the letters continued seemingly without end, back and forth from tiny South Dakota towns where Estrid taught school to “somewhere in France.” The two turned to handing over their soul-words to V-mail and the Army censors.
::
Our community nears completion of a new memorial to honor our local veterans. But it seems the heroes don’t get much more local than a dad and granddad. I thought to honor his memory this Memorial Day with some of his own humble, faithful words.
On love, home and family:
“You ask what I would like for Christmas. I tell you a little box of cookies would be the real thing or some little thing to eat. This is my first Christmas away from home. It’s a lot different than the ones I’m used to.”
“Don’t get me wrong now that I’m homesick. So far I don’t know what that is. We would all like to be home but there is a job to do first.”
“I’m feeling o.k. I always mention this and I’ll always tell you the truth.”
“The night before I was to leave I found him crying alone, in secret. My Dad is a big strong man, ‘He’s my Daddy you know.’”
“I feel like I have a job to do here with the rest of the boys. And then again I’d like to go back home and see Dad and help keep the farm going, which I had a lot of hope in continuing after the war. I hope my prayer that I may see Dad again will be answered. If it is God’s will. Mom and Curt want me to come home. If the Germans would quit I’d surely try and see if I could do something about it.”
“The Telegram of my Dad’s death took 21 days to get to. I never wanted to be home so much in all my life as I do now.”
“I had a letter from Alice today and she had sent a clipping about some Estrid Franzen and a troop of girl scouts.”
“Now the war is over for sure this time they tell me. It’s a beautiful night out. I still wish I was somewhere else.”
“I could see home and we fought all the harder to end it sooner.”
“Sometimes I think I’d like to be a city dude for a while. Maybe after I get home I’ll decide farming is too much like work and start selling prunes and vinegar.”
“It seems so long since I heard from you. These cold blizzard days are so long without mail or anything. Boy how I need to hear from you again!”
“I told Mom about our engagement this morning and she said ‘Well.’ I could tell she was pleased.”
On the war:
“I am ready to go any time my Uncle Sammy calls.”
“The people of England really know what war is. The children 5 and 6 years old have not seen street lights yet.”
“I see some front line action once in a while. All I can say is that at times it is terrifying. I think I prayed almost all nite a while back, even in my sleep.”
“I wonder if Hitler rests well at night. . . . One of these days he may rest in pieces if he don’t hibernate some place where he won’t be found.”
“But the American soldier can really take it. Call it bravery or as we say ‘guts’ when a U.S. soldier was wounded or shot we never heard them cry or groan or yell for help.”
“While I was on my way westward ‘limping’ a French Crouix De Guerre with palm had arrived at home. I don’t see where I deserve it. I guess me and Patton had good press agents.”
“I’ve groaned within myself over one incident. . . . It’s a story I’ll tell every time anyone talks about war as being glorious and being a hero.”
On the Army:
“I made expert at the machine gun today in record fire. I can say I feel a little proud over this. Mostly to think that the folks will be pleased. I drove a tank for the first time yesterday. It sure is fun to sit at the controls of those big babies.”
“We sure are having a stepped up training so maybe we will go over the pond sometime this summer or next fall. We surely are not ready to go yet.”
“This land looks almost worthless to me. I suppose that’s why they have Army camps in places like these.”
“Tomorrow I’ll try to whistle or toot like a train. Then maybe I’ll get a medical discharge for being nuts.”
“Seven days to get the discharge papers ready. It sure did not take them that long to get in the Army. According to hospital records, I’m not here anymore. Where I went nobody knows.”
On his faith:
“They have nicknamed me ‘Reverend.’”
“Love someone even if you don’t like them. . . . They are all my friends. There are some fellows I don’t like. But they don’t know it.
There is a Pentecost . . . also a Seventh Day Adventist. They try to convert me. . . . Better come down here Estrid. It’s two to one and I’m outnumbered and need some help.”
“Rev. Vick was right when he said the greater the danger we are in the closer God is to us. Us boys up here know that very well.”
“The suggestion you made to pray together at nine o’clock every Eve. is a good idea. So at nine tonite we will meet together in prayer.”
“God has a reason for keeping me here. I know I’ve had the experience of a lot of things concerning sin, faith, hope, trust, and surrendering self. These past three years have been hard and I did not realize how much so until recently.”
::
Surely the handwriting was Adrian’s. But so often as I read I heard the voice of another red-headed tenor. Through corny jokes and deep-root faith and tender words flowing from a God-softened heart, I recognized the familiar language of his son, the one I hear echo in the walls of this home every day.
Adrian and his bride taught their men that language of faith and love.
Of the thousand and some letters Estrid carefully returned to their envelopes and secreted away, only one was penned in her elegant hand. While she clearly wrote as often as he, Adrian faced the limitations of austere Army life and could not carry with him what was not necessary for survival and battle.
But one letter he carried. And he came home from war with that one letter: tattered, wrinkled and sweat-smeared. The date was torn off in case he’d be captured. And in that letter he and Estrid shared the bedrock faith that carried them for a lifetime.
“Whatever comes, dear Adrian, don’t ever lose sight of the fact that you are not alone. God is right there with you every minute of the day and He’ll never let go . . .
::
Photos: Top: A thousand and some letters from war Middle right & left: Army microfiched and censored v-mail letters Middle right: A "battle weary" SSgt. Adrian Lindquist Bottom: The letter from Estrid that he carried into battle
Don’t Duck
I admit it.
I’m a poor brainstormer.
It’s not that I don’t ever have ideas.
I do. But I tend to overthink them.
The packing tape of my mind is just a little too sticky sometimes and I can’t get them out of the box.
And I’m even worse with somebody else’s ideas. They hardly have them out of their mouth and onto the table — or the whiteboard if you’re one of those — before I’ve figured out why they won’t work.
I’m a lot like Philip, not so much like Andrew.
:: (more…)
A Certain Uncertainty
From a certain uncertainty to a certain Hope, this was written with thoughts of Loren and Betty, and Scott and Jennifer. Gentlemen, start your engines. It’s gotta be time soon.
It’s been the beginning of the end for a long time now.
Seems everything I’ve done lately has been the last.
The last file jacket I set up for a new claim.
The last statement I took from a witness.
The last settlement I negotiated with an attorney.
The last mediation statement I drafted.
I traveled last week, charged with the bittersweet task of training the last of the new employees to take over my work.
I returned today to find lights out in a few more cubicles. A dumpster stands outside my door, overflowing with outdated manuals and unwanted reference books. Eery silence and the occasional echo replace the voices and bustle that drove me to distraction just weeks ago.
Where to Host Your Next Pity Party
When David and his men came to Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David’s two wives had been captured—Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the LORD his God. (I Samuel 30:3-6)
I think that Sanchez swallowed a cricket.
One that hasn’t thought to die yet.
This is a cat that has never learned to meow properly. For the longest time she made no noise at all aside of purring and the crazy snorting she would do when she tried to breathe. (Perhaps in sympathy with me for my allergy to cats, she was determined to be allergic to us as well, and has spent much of her short life with chronic nasal congestion.) We’ve speculated that perhaps because she was abandoned at such an early age, she spent too few days with real cats and has no idea how cats sound when they talk.
Eventually she learned to make noise, but it sounds much more like a cricket than a cat. Like the cricket in her belly keeps singing.
Or perhaps a toad with a really high voice.
A high-pitched toad who sings for her supper.
All day long.
::
Her food dish happens to be on the way to almost anywhere in our house, so any movement by any person triggers her hunger dance. She hops off the couch, charges for the food bucket and begins her warbling. Absent an immediate response, she tosses her head sideways toward the bucket, signaling the location of the food, in case we forgot where we left it.
The warble turns to a yodel as she nears hysteria at her deprivation.
Understand, she likely ate just twenty minutes ago.
::
Unless it’s actually feeding time, it ends the same every time. Failing to provoke the desired response (a heaping scoop of the nastiest smelling food I’ve yet to find), she climbs into her toilet to pout.
No kidding.
She has prime real estate to host her own pity party. The mother of all pity parties. An enclosed litter box where she can get a little alone time and sit around in a pile of poop.
What better way to celebrate her deeply held belief that the world has just pooped all over her?
::
She doesn’t live in a world where she gets her way all the time. She doesn’t get to eat whenever she wants. She gets scolded when she hangs out on the kitchen table or in the sink. People don’t want to play with her whenever she wants to play, even when she smacks us in the head to try to entice us to join in her fun. People want to play with her when she’s not in the mood and since she’s small enough to hold, she can’t do much about it.
She’s not in control of her world. She is not the mistress of her own destiny. She doesn’t always get her way.
No matter how backwards that all seems to her.
::
When she climbs out of her box, she smells bad. Like a cat toilet. Sometimes she has . . . um . . . stuff stuck to her. And even though she might suddenly be in the mood to play or hang out, folks don’t want to be around her just yet.
The smell of misery sticks to her a little too long.
She needs a little time to air out.
::
David faced a stark choice when he and his men returned to find that the Amalekites had attacked his people, destroying their homes and taking the people off as slaves. People that included two of his wives. People that included the wives and children of his men.
They wept until there was nothing left in them to weep with. Strength gone, unable even to continue their mourning, the men became embittered. Needing someone to blame, they spoke of stoning David.
David had the choice to crawl into the litter box, blame God and the world for all his troubles. He could have jumped right into the stink with his men.
But he didn’t.
We won’t pretend this wasn’t a devastating circumstance. We won’t suggest that the other guys just overreacted.
But David chose to respond differently. He sought, and he found, his strength in the Lord.
He found his hope. His only hope.
::
Raiders did not just burn my house down and make off with my family. Even so, my life doesn’t always go the way I want it to. People don’t always do the things I want, and certainly not when I want. Circumstances don’t always work out in my favor. I don’t get all my questions answered. And some of the answers I do get aren’t what I was hoping for.
I can become bitter about that, crawling inside the toilet and scratching around in the poop clumps.
And then I can smell bad so folks want to keep a lot of room between them and me.
Or I can stay out of the litter box, face the disappointment and find strength in the goodness of my God.
That’s where I’ll find my only hope as well.
::
Would We Medicate David?
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon —- from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me — a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?”
My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42, NIV)
I think that if King David hung out with us today, we’d want to make sure he was on medication. Near Psalm 42, I have scribbled down some notes to the effect that “David is manic.” There’s a sense when you read this Psalm of David, and so many others, that he experienced wide emotional variances, such that “mood swings” hardly seems sufficient to describe them. He so often would go through wild changes, seemingly from one moment to the next. And I believe that Psalm 42 embodies that more than any other.
He begins by describing his yearning for God. Like a deer panting, thirsting after God, anxious for the time he can go meet with Him. He goes on to lament his lament. Tears are his food, he is tormented by those who mock his faith in God, and he mourns the loss of the days when he used to lead the throngs in jubilant worship.
But then he suddenly changes gears. He challenges himself. “Why are you downcast, O my soul?” The Message puts it like this, “Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why are you crying the blues?” He takes this sudden turn and reminds himself that he need not despair. No, he can put his hope in God. He can praise God. He continues in The Message to say, “Fix my eyes on God — soon I’ll be praising again. He puts a smile on my face. He’s my God.” And he remembers all those things about God that give him strength to go on.
Five verses ago, his tears were his food, “day and night.” But now? Now he says that “by day the Lord directs His love, at night His song is with me.”
No sooner does he replace his nightly tears with God’s very song than he about-faces again, demanding of God, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning?” In the very same sentence that he calls God his Rock, or in the Message, “my rock-solid God,” he accuses God of having forgotten him. His bones suffer “mortal agony.”
And then he immediately jumps back to “What are you thinking, Soul? Why are you downcast? Why so disturbed?”
Put your hope in God.
So maybe David did have a little emotional instability. I read David, and sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to hang out with him. Would his constant emotional turmoil followed by rejoicing and then more turmoil completely wear me out? I like even-keel. I like stable. I like constant. I like predictable. David would drive me absolutely nuts.
But then again, maybe David wasn’t that unstable at all. Relatively speaking anyway. Maybe he was just like the rest of us, but just really bad at wearing a mask. Maybe he was just terrible at hiding what was going on inside him. Maybe he just didn’t have a clue about burying his pain and pretending all was well.
David was willing to turn himself inside out. He was willing to put words on what he was feeling. He was willing to get everything out in the open. He wasn’t afraid to admit his bones were burning up, that food tasted like sand, that his soul was parched, that he was overwhelmed by horror, that he felt pursued to death and in the most anguished need of his God. He never pretended that it wasn’t true. He was more interested in just putting his hope in God.
He was quick to remember God’s unfailing love, His new-every-morning mercy, His unending faithfulness, His limitless justice.
For David, the eloquent and authentic psalmist, was still as much the shepherd boy as he would also be the king. The giant slayer was also the young and naive keeper of the flocks. The mighty warrior could sit quietly and play the harp.
He knew the despair of being separated from God, and the safety of being intimately connected to Him. He fully experienced both, and never masked over either one.
David might make me uncomfortable. I know he would. But if I look at myself honestly I have to admit I have the same kinds of wild emotional twists and turns that he did.
I despair. I rejoice. I lose it sometimes. And other times I find it. I just like to make it look like I cut it right through the middle.
And still, God stands there with me, on either side of that line, just like He did with David.
::
The Conversation