This past week was one of those weeks when life seemed to most resemble a certain distinctive black and white checkerboard I remember from my childhood (with gold and purple rather than black and red checkers.) Those black and white squares (rather than the black and red squares of a more traditional board) strike me as an apt metaphor for a stark contrast between life’s joys and sorrows with which most of us can easily and deeply identify – and I think most of us often characterize life with its contrasts in these kind of terms, as two sides of a coin or two very different kinds of days – sunny or rainy. The good and the bad. And if we’re normal, we hope that our own personal checkerboard will have more white (happy) squares than black – or we hope that our path will take across more white squares than black. In fact, to switch from checkers to chess for a moment, some of us fancy ourselves as being the diagonallly-moving Bishop who traverses only the lighter squares of the board, as opposed to his fellow Bishop who is condemned to travel only the black squares, no matter what transpires in the game or how long it goes on. How blessed is the first Bishop- how cursed is the second! But of course, most of us are other chess pieces who taste a bit of both – enjoying life’s joys and victories, lamenting life’s sorrows and defeats. And the metaphor slices both ways, doesn’t it? Most of us luxuriate in the sunshine with this tiny voice of dread whispering in the background that this particular pleasure could be taken away or isn’t likely to last forever. And most of us weather life’s heartaches at least in part with the hope that “this too shall pass” and better days await us, someday.
This week I experienced some splendid joys coupled with painful sorrows – and it was one of those instances in which I became acutely aware of how life is not a checkerboard with cleanly delineated black and white squares. Or to shift to an ice cream metaphor, life is not a half gallon of Neapolitan Ice Cream with clean and equal bricks of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry laid neatly beside each other. Instead, you need to look at the wildly blended swirls of rainbow sherbet for a sense of the “blendedness” of life. The “good things” in life like “money” and “prestige” and “power” and “popularity” and “success” all cost us something – and we often don’t count their cost. And perhaps more amazingly, those things in life that are undeniably “bad things” – like cancer and car accidents and chronic pain – can yield rich and abundant blessings that we are unlikely to experience any other way.
One Black Square was the recent death of an amazing woman in our congregation named Jacque Nielsen, after a valiant four year battle with cancer. Jacque, as anyone who knew her would tell you, was one of the most joyous and vibrant and compassionate people you could ever hope to meet …. and this despite the fact that life even before her cancer diagnosis had not been easy or fair. But Jacque had this seemingly limitless reserve of love and grace and joy that just made you want to be with her because she had this way of making life seem richer and sweeter. And this was what she was like even with her initial cancer diagnosis and the escalating bad news that seemed to accompany her every step of the way. One of the most telling things about Jacque that a close friend of hers told me at the funeral luncheon is that when Jacque was undergoing chemotherapy, other patients would request that they be seated next to her because just being with her would help them feel better. What higher calling can we have as human beings than to be that person who, through word and deed, brings a bit more joy to places that would otherwise be filled with fear and despair?
Cancer is a terrible disease- and especially when it strikes down people who still have so much more living to do. The cancer that struck Jacque was terrible in the way that it ruthlessly attacked her energy and her very breath. But it’s nothing short of miraculous how such amazing good could come out of something so terrible. Jacque’s courage and good cheer in the face of her suffering was an incredible source of inspiration. Her friends and family rallied around her in a fashion that was nothing short of spectacular – and I know that all of them would tell you that, for as heartbreaking as it was to see Jacque suffer, they cherish the memory of these last several years and especially these final weeks. And her funeral was an extraordinarily moving celebration of her life and faith that those of us who were there will never forget. Pastor Mark Doidge offered up a wonderful sermon, and a couple of other pastors with whom Jacque had worked gave lovely tributes of their own. But I think most of us were most profoundly moved by the remembrance given by Jacque’s oldest son Daniel , who spoke not only of his mother’s courage in the final chapter of her life- but also of her incredible courage and love when she suddenly found herself as a single parent of young children. Daniel (without notes in front of him) did a beautiful job of recounting what those years were like and of the amazing job his mother did of making them feel like theirs was still a happy home, even though money was very tight and their lives had been so rudely turned upside down. Jacque was still able to fill their lives with all kinds of good things and somehow found the time and energy to bring culture into their lives while also cheering them on in their athletic endeavors. You could tell that he looks back on those years, however difficult they were at the time, with tremendous fondness and with newfound appreciation for the kind of parent his mother was to him and to his sisters under incredibly trying circumstances – and there is probably part of him that would not trade those years away for anything, even if he could.
So much for “Black Squares.”
This week I also felt the impact of the sudden and tragic death of a young man who I didn’t really know except for having met maybe once or twice – but whose extended family is among the closest friends that my family has ever had. When we lived in Atlantic, Iowa our closest family friends were the Nichols: Fletcher and Avonelle, and their seven children- Jane, Dick, Jill, Shirley, Sherry, Amy, Allison and Bill. They were dairy farmers, – and for a bunch of city slickers like my siblings and me, their life had a strangely exciting and exotic quality. But this family was about much more than dairy farming; their lives were filled with all kinds of fun and excitement, and it was all grounded in a solid bedrock of faith, the belief that God gifted each of us for the sake of making a difference wherever we happened to be planted. Each of the Nichols kids grew into fine, creative, vibrant adults, each with their own wonderful families – and the whole family tree is truly extraordinary. I had the pleasure of reconnecting with them a year and a half ago when I went back to Atlantic to sing for Fletcher’s 90th birthday. All seven children were there and the vast majority of grandchildren as well – and by the time it was all done, it was hard not to believe that the world would be a much brighter, happier, prosperous place if there were a whole lot more people in it like the Nichols.
Late last week, I heard the shocking news that one of the Nichols cousins, 27-year-old William, son of Dick and his wife Cindy, had been killed in a car accident. It was a loss that sent a shudder of pain through that whole family, and to the community beyond. But in the wake of the death of this beloved young man, this family that was already one of the most closely-knit and loving families I’ve ever known, drew even closer to one another- suddenly even more aware of life’s fragility and of how precious they were to one another. And in blog after blog which I read, I was thunderstruck at how eloquently and sensitively several of his young cousins wrote about their sorrow and bewilderment about death, this unwelcome intruder in their lives, as well as their unshaken faith that death does not have the final word. And I was especially taken with something written to me by Allison, my closest friend in the entire Nichols clan and a classmate both in high school and at Luther. Allison told me that for as much as she has always dearly loved her family and everyone in it, she finds herself seeing them with a new and vivid clarity, almost like she is seeing her family in full-blown technicolor for the first time. I remember feeling the same thing in the wake of my mom’s quite unexpected death back in 1988; in the midst of that stunning loss, I saw my dad and my siblings in a very different light and have never taken them for granted in the way I probably had up until then. You will sometimes hear people talk about the Haze they experience in the midst of loss- but for me, it’s more about seeing with crystal clarity, and with feeling a different kind of gratitude, far deeper than you’v ever felt before.
So much for “black squares.”
In fact, life tends to confirm what science tells us about the color black ….. that it’s actually all of the colors combined, and sometimes it is in life’s blackest moments that we actually experience some of life’s most vibrant colors. It does not change the fact that Cancer is a terrible thing ….. a fatal car accident is a terrible thing ….. losing someone you love, whether suddenly or after a long struggle, is a terrible thing. But how amazing it is that even what is most terrible in our lives can yield untold blessings which we might not fully experience any other way.