Category: Being human

It was lunchtime. I was sitting in my 2^nd grade classroom eating from my Snoopy lunchbox. I was only 7 years old. I was with one of my best friends. In my lunch that day I was fortunate to have a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. 

It was amazing.

In that moment, my friend Mike and I dreamt of the future. I told him that someday I wanted to be so rich that I could eat Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups every single day. I would have them all over my house. I would just be constantly eating them. My greatest aspiration was to be able to eat Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups constantly. 

I still love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. They truly are amazing. I especially love the various holiday ones. I think they have a bit more of a peanut butter to chocolate ratio? 

So, how have I done in life? The good news is that I can now afford to be able to buy as many Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as I would like. I could indeed fill my entire house with containers of them. No one would stop me from having a peanut butter cup breakfast, a peanut butter cup lunch and a peanut butter cup dinner. I don’t do that, of course. 

But to a 7-year-old sitting in lunch in the 2^nd grade, that was the ultimate dream. 

Why do I tell this story? 

In this world there are Reese’s cup eating moments. They are truly wonderful. The only problem is that these moments do not last. I could try to just sustain them all the time. This seemed to be the answer to 7-year-old me. I could become a Reese’s cup addict. I could just eat them all the time until it takes over my life and my health. 

But even if I tried this it would not satisfy me.  

That is the problem with these moments. No matter how good they are, they do not last and cannot be sustained. And efforts to try to sustain them generally are not only ineffective but destructive.

Nonetheless, we get glimpses of really good things in this world. They are but a moment and then we get pulled back to other things. Most of the other things are mundane. Some are painful. This world and this life are not just Reese’s cup moments. There is a lot more to it. It does involve times of eating bran, oatmeal or even spinach. Sometimes it is having to swallow nasty tasting medicines.

But what about those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup moments? 

C.S. Lewis talked about something that he called, “joy.” He used the word “joy” for lack of any other word to describe something entirely unique. He described this “joy” as the experience “of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction”.^[1] These were, he thought, glimpses of the eternal. What he talked about was of course much more complex than eating a Reese’s cup. Lewis himself explains that “Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing”.^[2]

It is the idea that within this life we get glimpses of things that are amazing and filled with glory and wonder, but then which leave us yearning for more. There is in this life a sense of the incomplete.

It may be in the experience of the love of another person. It could be in the glory of music. You can feel it in the glory of a sunset. The beauty is intense. You do not know what to do with it. It makes you feel like you should somehow hold onto it but then it is gone.

Lewis was truly a thinker. He became an atheist at the age of 15. Later in life, as he honestly sought to understand himself and this world, he noted a sense that there were deeper mysteries than the obvious realities of the physical world in front of him. Deep within him was a real and mystical longing for something more. These experiences of “joy” were to him secret clues to a deeper understanding of human existence. They were a linking back to his very creation and to one who created all things and who has known him (and each of us) “before the creation of the world.”^[3] In this sense of “joy”, if Lewis truly was going to insist on being honest with himself, was a challenge to his long-held atheist beliefs. C.S. Lewis eventually came to faith as a Christian. To his rational mind the Christian faith was the only thing that ultimately made sense.

When we marvel and enjoy a beautiful sunset, the light passing through brightly colored autumn leaves, the wonder of a moving piece of music, the love of another person, or the joy of the taste of a Reese’s cup, we are experiencing a bit of how God created us to be. He wanted us to enjoy His creation. More than that, He wanted us to enjoy Him in His glory and wonder.

Someday He will restore us and all of His creation. That He has promised. He has a plan in place to do that. The Scriptures teach the story that starts with creation, detours off through sin, brokenness and separation and then the path back to restoration through Christ.

But for now, we see glimpses of what God’s real plan for us was and is. These glimpses come and go.

C.S. Lewis captures some interesting ideas well in his book, “The Last Battle.” This is the last in his series of books about the “Chronicles of Narnia.” In that book his characters reach the new heaven and the new earth. In that story, however, heaven is not a bunch of people floating on clouds in long white gowns. It is instead lush grass and hills and trees. The place is familiar. They see the home, the places, and the people that they have loved in this life, but they are better. They are perfected – or better described – they are as they were intended to be rather than in the flawed (good mixed with bad) manner that we experience them now. 

Imagine getting to heaven and finding it to be like your home town, or your favorite places to go, or places where you often had glimpses of “joy”.

His characters can feel the grass and run through the fields with joy. They run “farther up and further in” and as they do, they experience more and more of the things that meant so much to them in life, but which are now “better.”

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”^[4]

They then find, greet and experience one after another of their dear old friends and family that had gone on before them.  As they do, it is described:  

“And there was greeting and kissing and handshaking and old jokes revived, (you’ve no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years)…”^[5]

Aslan, the lion then explains:

“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Recently my father passed away. In working through my grief, memories of him keep coming to mind. As a child I remember how he and my grandfather would talk on and on. Some days as we finished working on the farm I thought they would never finish talking. We would be waiting to go home to dinner (or “supper” on the farm). Often I would give up on them and plop down on the grass of my grandparent’s lawn waiting for them to finish talking. Recently my mother told me that she was imagining my Dad greeting my grandfather and the two of them talking and talking again. In my mind I saw them by the picnic table and then walking together through the farm as they talked. Down the lane, up the hill and through the grass, looking over the orchards. “Farther up and further in!” 

Today I had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. It was delicious. As I savored it I remembered.  A 7-year-old me was sitting with his friend Mike and eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. He was enjoying every minute of it and not worrying about the calories or whether he ought to be eating it. 

It was a glimpse of the eternal, wrapped up in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

---

^[1]  C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, pp. 17–18.

^[2] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p. 72.

^[3] Ephesians 1:4

^[4] Excerpt From: C. S. Lewis. “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-chronicles-of-narnia/id1509784076

^[5] My father had a great sense of humor. He loved his “Dad jokes.” https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/90599897/posts/3032127408

It was the beginning my 10^th grade year at Decatur Public Schools. “What is geometry?” the teacher said. “The little acorn fell to the ground and grew and grew until one day it looked at itself and said, “Gee, I’m a tree!” 

I still giggle when I think about that joke. When my girls had geometry, I told them that joke. Each time I tell the joke I think about my 10^th grade geometry teacher. 

My teacher was my father. This past Sunday morning, my sweet father passed away in his sleep after a 16-year journey with cancer.

When I think about my Dad a lot of ideas and stories come into my mind. I loved to hear him laugh. He had a great sense of humor. He always had a little twinkle in his eye. A few weeks ago, we were talking to him about making sure that he got enough nutrition. I told him that it was important that he drink. “Ok,” he said, “Do you mean whiskey or what?” I looked over at him and saw the little twinkle in his eye. It made me feel so good to see that my Dad was still there. 

As a 5-year-old I remember an assignment where the teacher asked us about all of our favorite things. They asked us our favorite colors and our favorite foods. They asked us what our favorite activities were. I didn’t know they were going to tell anyone our answers. I told them very openly and honestly that my very favorite thing was getting to ride on the tractor with my father while he worked.

If I knew he was out working in the field I would walk to where he was and wait in the row for him to come by. He would stop the tractor. I would climb up on the back of the tractor. I would sit on the fender right behind him, bracing my feet on the upper arm of the 3-point hitch. I was happy to just ride along and be with him. I would watch him work and think about how I wanted to be just like him. I dreamed of the day when I would be driving the tractor. I watched how he plowed the field. I looked at everything he did hoping to be able to model it when it came my turn. 

He loved the farm. As I grew and started doing more and more on the farm I came to understand. This week as I tried to process things I found myself slowing to look at the fields of my parent’s farm. I imagined being alongside him again picking and sorting peaches, or moving bulk boxes of apples, or shaking and grading cherries, or being a small child walking out into the field for hopes of being able to ride with him on the back of the tractor.

It wasn’t just about how to drive a tractor or plow a field that I was watching. It was so much more than that. In everything that he did he was teaching me – teaching us – how to live. 

He taught hard work. He was not afraid of work. I used to be amazed at his energy. He could work and work and never complain. I would struggle to lift the crates of apples. In the cold storage he could not only lift the bushel crates and stack them, but he would take and stack one crate on top of another crate and then lift both of them high over his head. By doing this he could get them stacked one level higher than his highest reach.

I was always amazed at how he would wheel around on the small little forklift loading the storage and the trucks. In the peach orchard he would pull his ladder from tree to tree picking the higher branches. Even now in my mind I can see him walking over to the back of the trailer with a full picking bag, lifting it over the sorting net, and releasing the peaches out of the canvas bottom. Some of those days in the orchard the sun, heat and clouds of peach fuzz would get just miserable. In spite of the heat and heavy work, he never complained. He and Grandpa would chatter on and on as they worked together. In the mornings before we would go out to work, it was often Dad who would get up and make breakfast. To this day, I am the one to make the pancakes in our house, because it was usually my Dad who made the pancakes when we were growing up.

I was so proud of my parents being teachers. Dad was a very smart man. He knew so much about math and chemistry and physics. He was very much an educated and thinking man. When computers became a reality, he took on learning and then teaching computer science. It was no surprise that he would be the one to do this. This week two of my friends from High School reached out to tell me that they became teachers because of my Dad. It is no surprise that Bob and Mary became teachers. I told myself that if both of my parents and my brother and sister were all teachers I would not become a teacher. I now am proud to realize that I practice medicine with the heart of a teacher, teaching my patients, residents and coworkers as I do my job.

It was such an honor to be his son, growing up in Decatur. Everybody knew him and respected him.

He taught so much more than just math and science, however. I was amazed at how he ran his classroom. I never heard him yell or saw him get angry. He didn’t need to. The students loved and respected him so much that they just wanted to please him. If they were getting out of hand he could just stand-up front and look at them and they would immediately settle down. 

He taught us how to have a quiet and settled dignity.

He taught us about integrity. He taught us that the most important thing was not what people thought about you, but what you and what God thought about you. 

He taught us about faith. He taught us that God sees the intentions of your heart. If deep down your heart is in the right place, the rest will follow.

He taught us about kindness. He really believed Jesus when he said to “turn the other cheek.” He would have rather been taken advantage of than to strike out in anger against another person. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t want to hold people accountable for their faults. It was just that he was willing to be patient and by example let them eventually correct their wrongs.  Just like the dignified teacher at the front of the classroom, he didn’t feel the need to yell. He would wait and provide the example and by so doing teach.

I learned contentment. He taught that greatness was not measured by what the world thinks about you. Greatness is measured by doing what is the right thing. He made it clear to us, that if you live the life that God has intended for you live, especially a life that is focused on your family, you will achieve far higher greatness than many who are celebrated by this world.

I learned confidence.  We have the family story about the night that he had to figure out how to clean and dress out a deer. He went to his bookshelf and pulled down a book. He read how to do it and then, without ever having done it before, he just did what needed to be done. Time after time in my own life and work, I think of that story and just push ahead. If something needs to be done, I channel my inner, “Dad” and just figure it out and do it.

So, who was our Dad? 

• He was a funny man with a twinkle in his eye and a great sense of humor.
• He was a brilliant man, pushing himself to come off of the farm, to go to college and then to lead and educate in his community. 
• He was a kind man, loved by all of us and so many in the community. 
• He was a loving man. We all always knew we were deeply loved by him. 
• He was a man of integrity. He would rather have suffered personal loss than to do something that would go against his conscience. He believed and trusted God that if he did what was the right thing to do, God would work everything out.
• He was a teacher. He taught in the classroom certainly. But he also taught in the orchards and fields and in our home. He taught so many rich and good lessons. He was an excellent teacher.

My parents have been married for over 64 years at Mom at the time of his passing. That is just amazing. I have thought and prayed for how my Mom goes forward without him at her side. This is an important question honestly for all of us. As I prayed and thought about this something important occurred to me. We are not being left without bright, vivid and living images of him. For you see, so much of who we are has been molded and shaped and  formed by him.

I am in no way perfect, but there are parts of my personality and who I am that I really value. In those things I see my Dad. Sometimes when I was with him I would not have so much to say to him. That was because I didn’t have to explain to him so much of who I am. Who I am is very much him.

This past week I have been able to observe and watch an amazing legacy. I see so much of him in all of my brothers, sisters, children, nieces and nephews. Looking at them, and looking inside of myself, I am consoled because I see him.

To everyone who knew him, I encourage you to please look carefully at us:

• If you see a kind heart, know that you are seeing my Dad. 
• If you see a joy for being outside on the farm, know that you are seeing my Dad.  
• If you see a servant’s heart, not afraid to work hard for the benefit of others, know that you are seeing my Dad. 
• If you see people holding their heads high, doing what is right just because it is right, you are seeing my Dad. 
• If you see a bright mind, learning and teaching, you are seeing my Dad. 
• If you see confidence taking on doing something that you have never done before and just doing it because it needs to be done, you are seeing my Dad. 
• If you hear a corny joke, or a snide funny little comment, you are seeing my Dad.

The little acorn fell to the ground and grew and grew and one day it looked and said, “Gee, I’m a tree.” 

Dad’s little acorns have grown and grown by the power of his person and example. I am so thankful that each of us who knew him can look with wonder and say, “Gee, I’m a tree!” and because of my Dad, they are really good trees.