Flight Talk

It was an early morning flight from Atlanta to Cleveland today for my cousin's funeral. Being last minute, our seats weren't together. As we approached our place in the plane, Rick asked the man in the seat next to mine if he wouldn't mind switching with him and moving back one row so we could sit together. The man quickly and nicely obliged.

Friendly chit chat went on for awhile between our two rows. We established that between the four of us we had one Steeler, one Eagles and two Browns fans. We joked about football and then the plane settled in for our take off. 

After a few minutes of quiet, the obliging man and his new seat mate struck up their own conversation. 

I tried not to eaves drop, but my seat was directly in front of them and I couldn't help but overhear a good portion. 

Two men sitting together. Different football teams. Different skin colors. But they began talking. They might have started with football, but quickly moved on to the topic of politics and, yes, even race. They shared their opinions and seemed to agree on most everything. 

From there they waded pretty fast into the waters of religion. No, that's not right. Not religion, but their faith. They talked about Jesus. They talked about what it looks like to follow Him. They talked about their fathers and their upbringings and their families. They shared details of their lives and what led them each to a relationship with Him. They discussed God's word and they encouraged one another as brothers in Christ. 

I really wasn't trying to listen, but at some point, I just resigned myself to the fact that I didn't have much a choice.

I listened. 

Because, sometimes, we should.

These two men talked for the entire two hour flight.  They talked and they laughed. They might have shed a few tears. And it blessed me. It blessed me immensely. It was the very best of what can happen when two people begin talking. When two people begin sharing what's similar and listening to what might potentially be different. One question I heard asked by both of them several times was, "what do you think about this?" 

I loved that. What if we all sat closer to strangers and asked that kind of question. And then listened. Really listened and let that other person talk. What might this world look like if we had more positive airplane conversations?

Because we know flight talk can sometimes be pretty weird. You have this time where you are kind of stuck with someone you typically don't know. A forced proximity for a set amount of time. The question always is: Do you engage and invite an opportunity to connect with another human being or do you put on the headphones and hide in your own stuff.

I realize sometimes we all need to put on the headphones and hide out a little. I get that. But not maybe as much as we think we do. 

I'm just saying that today two men on a plane from Atlanta to Cleveland connected in a powerful and meaningful way. 

And it was beautiful. 

We are heading to the funeral of my cousin, Marc, today. A diehard Steelers fan, yes, but more importantly, he was a man who loved to converse and connect and debate and discuss. He loved people and he loved to engage with them. 

He would have really loved listening to these two men today on the airplane.

Every Reason

This afternoon I have my next PET/CT scan. It's been 6 months since the last one. I had been doing them every 3 months, but my doctor--in the hope to give me a break--pushed this scan a little further since things looked stable.  In the interim, we've monitored in other ways. I have every reason to believe this scan will again show my cancer as stable.

Every reason to believe it, but of course anxiety still knocks at the door.

Every reason to believe my doctor knows what she's doing, but I still wrestle with the what ifs. 

Every reason to trust Jesus holds my future, but still fear rises and takes my breath away. 

Every reason ... and, yet, that doesn't mean I don't feel the weight of this disease and it's daily burden of never ending treatment and consuming thought.

So, as is often the case, this morning's devotional passage met me right in this very place of struggle --desiring to hope + trust God, but still feeling anxious and unsure. 

Psalm 42

"My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?'

"Why are you downcast, o my soul? 

Who 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 ...

Deep calls to deep 

In the roar of your waterfalls;

All your waves and breakers have swept over me."

"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 'where is your God?'"

"Put your hope in God for I will YET praise Him."

Can you just hear and see the wrestling of David as he writes this Psalm? Tears. Downcast and disturbed, even feeling forgotten ... but I will YET praise you. I will remember you, God. I will remember your character and who you are and what you've promised. 

Following Jesus doesn't mean all the human emotions just easily fall away and all is okay. No, it means we have a place to be held when we fall and things aren't okay. A place to go to when we are anxious, unsure, afraid, and yes, even angry. 

Jesus can give us a peace which passes all understanding, but He can also allow us to wrestle and wrangle with some very hard things in this life. Nowhere in His word does he promise an easy existence on this earth. In fact, He is pretty clear, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

And so today I'll scan at 2pm and then we will wait for the results in these next couple of days. 

As always, I would sure love your prayers. 

How can you specifically pray?

For clear and stable scans.

For my eyes to be on Jesus.

For my family. This is about all of us. 

For some tough side effects from current meds.

For a supernatural strengthening of heart + spirit as I am on this road for the rest of my life. 

And to "Take heart!" Because Jesus has surely "overcome the world!"

Grateful, Jody 🩷

The Eleventh

November 11th. Remembrance Day. Armistice Day. Veterans Day. Whatever we call it, it was on this day at 5:45 in the morning the Allied Forces and Germany signed an armistice agreement bringing World War I to an end. Fighting officially ceased later that morning at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. 

Something in my wiring really loves that tidy “11th” kind of agreement. How precise and clean and controlled. The stuff of storybooks. Strange that it should be the way war came to a close. Feels almost a complete paradox.  As if we can ever gloss over something so grueling, so gruesome, and then quickly give it a nice name and a pretty package. 

But that’s exactly what we do. All the time.

When we make up. When we fix up. When we tidy up. In our relationships and in our real life.

I wonder about those people living through the first world war years only to be hit so soon with the second world war. Just a couple of decades later. Did they not want to stand up and shout out and shake a fist — “Wait just a minute here! We all agreed to get along.” Didn’t they remember that eleventh hour on that eleventh day in that eleventh month? That agreement?

How quickly we forget. 

We are war forgetters.

We, even more so, are peace forgetters. 

There is little remembrance in fighting or in trying not to fight. Not when the lines have been crossed and the crosses lined up. We forget.

We move on after our troubles and our trials and our tiffs. We claim willingness to work hard and harder and harder still.  We sign armistice agreements all the day long with our children and our spouses and our colleagues and our neighbors … and then back to war we go. We are warring people. In our countries and in our cul-de-sacs. In our nation and in our nature. 

Like we cannot help ourselves.

We claim to be progressive and improved, more enlightened and less entitled, and yet war on we do. Conflict and chaos bedmates to our broken world. We’d like to think we have a measure of control with our policies and positions, but like that tidy 11th-ish package on that November day in 1918, we can call it anything we want, it won’t change the challenges of our humanity.

We are like dogs who return to their vomit. Even more instinctual than our tidying up, is our throwing up. Throwing it down. Down. Down. Down.

And there is little remembrance at that moment of rage and rift. 

When Jesus gathered his disciples in the upper room for the last supper and the first communion, he offered bread and wine saying “do this in remembrance of me.” 

And when he had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner he also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 1 Corinthians 11:24-25

His body broken. His blood shed. For us. For you. For me. 

Knowing the brutal hours ahead of Him. Knowing the spiritual and physical war surrounding Him. Surrounding us. And yet he offered a most perfect agreement. A New Covenant. A chance for all those who believe to truly have peace. True peace. Lasting peace. Eternal peace. 

He took our place on the cross. 

He died the death we deserve. 

He surrendered His body for the sins we commit. 

Because He knew there’d be no way for us to keep an armistice agreement or any agreement on our own. No matter how tidy. No matter how hard we try. 

We are way past the eleventh hour of everything and if nothing else shows us our need for a Savior this day of remembrance surely does.  

So today we give abundant thanks for those who served and sacrificed. But let this day lead us to remembering the ultimate sacrifice of the One "who did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Mark 10:45

A Biker Brawl & My Birth Story

When my dad was in town a couple of weeks ago he told me a story about the day I was born. It was only vaguely familiar. But such an outlandish tale I was surprised I hadn’t heard more about it in the course of my life.

On November 8,1968—the night I was to be born at St. Alexis Hospital in Cleveland Ohio—there was a massive biker-gang fight nearby between the Hells Angels and a group called The Breed (what a name!). Apparently these two cycle gangs had been at war all year and it came to a head that evening at a Motorcycle Trade Show in the Hall of the Association of Polish Women. 

The NY Times said it was “a long-smoldering grudge.” The melee began just after 10pm when the hall was filled with over 800 people. Someone yelled, “Now!” And the brutality began. Knives, chains and clubs were the weapons of choice. The police were quick to the scene with tear gas and rifles, but not before hundreds were injured and many killed. 

A few miles away, while my mom’s OB was getting ready to deliver me in the maternity ward upstairs at St. Alexis, hundreds of badly sliced bikers were being carted in the doors below. My dad said it was a brutal scene. All these big, burly men with massive wounds filling the space. Every room occupied. Hallways filled and overflowing. Many died that night. The headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer described it as the  “worst gang battle in US, say police.” 

I can’t help but think about my dad in that situation. Can you imagine? Your baby girl is about to be born any minute upstairs and that kind of craziness is taking place down below? 

Did he keep that information from my mom as she was in the throes of childbirth? I suppose that wasn't difficult as men in the 1960s didn't step foot in a delivery room. But I think of how today we set the stage for childbirth and make elaborate plans focusing on calm lighting and soft music and meditative breathing and support people. And it makes me almost chuckle thinking about that night in the late 60's when I was to be born. No one decides to give birth in the middle of a biker bloodbath.

The scene was so bad it demanded all hands on deck. Needless to say, the obstetrician had to leave my birth and go stitch up the sliced and slaughtered bikers in the hallways below. I guess some lowly assistant was left to deliver me. I wonder how my deliverer felt. Perhaps thankful they were called only to welcome into the world a newborn baby instead of being forced to tend to the war wounds of highly aggravated gang members. Or maybe not. Maybe they were disappointed to be tasked with something so mundane as a baby born. Maybe they would have preferred the action downstairs. Who really can say? 

Reading through the articles, I found many choice pieces of writing. One of my favorites was a comment made by a character named "Sex." That's what the motorcycle world knew him as, his real name being Arthur Zaccone. Sex, well--perhaps we should call him by his given name, Arthur--told the reporter covering the story, "I knew something was going to happen when we saw some Breed from New York and New Jersey and none of them had their old ladies with them." The newspaperman went on to explain that "Motorcycle outlaws always call their wives or girlfriends "old ladies." 

Another paragraph offered this description of a couple of neighborhood bystanders, "Two old men came out of their houses, and stood in shirtsleeves in the falling snow, staring at the Cleveland Pneumatic Tool & Co parking lot at E. 77th Street and Marble Avenue." Can't you just imagine those men standing out on their driveways (in shirtsleeves) with snow falling gently around them and a gang fight heating up violently before them. "Old Men Shake Heads Sadly," was the article's poignant title. 

After hearing my dad tell this unbelievable story, I continued to think a lot about it. Coincidentally, the following week I was scheduled to share my life’s story in my Bible study group. In the desire to know each other better, we have been taking time to do so this month. My dad's telling of this crazy birth tale seemed perfect timing. It would be a tremendous opening to what I was planning share with my group. So jotting down a few notes, I decided to research it a bit further. It took no time to pull up the article from a digital copy of The Cleveland Plain Dealer. There it was in black and white and plain as day … the gang war did happen just as my dad said. All the gory details were included in these digital pages and, mesmerized, I poured over them in disbelief. 

But the most amazing thing I learned in my research was that it wasn’t actually my story. 

As much as I wanted it to be, it wasn’t my start to life. When I finally looked closer at the article, the date jumped off the page ... March 8, 1971. That was the day after my younger sister, Jess, was born. Oh my gosh, it was HER story!  

That dramatic entrance to the world didn’t belong to me, it belonged to my younger sister. Of course it did! I was at first disappointed and then couldn't stop laughing. As parents are so apt to do, my dad had gotten our stories confused. The event had happened. And it had happened to my parents, but it was my sister being born on that chaos-filled night, not me. 

And though I do love a good story, I must, unfortunately, relinquish this one to her. 

But doesn’t that fact make this good story even a little bit better? I feel like the mistake of it makes it in someways even more interesting. Maybe it's because that is so often how life works. Our stories blend and combine and, sometimes, get confused.  

Has that ever happened to you? It happens to me all the time. I’ll be trying to remember something and I can’t quite get all the details correct. I can’t quite picture who was there or where we were or what exactly happened. I have to be careful of embellishment. I have to be careful to correctly report. I have to be careful of the narrative I am allowing myself to believe. In full disclosure here, I sometimes can be prone to making bad things worse and good things even better. 

It could have something to do with growing up in a good size family. We all blended together. We knew to answer to any sibling name when our parents called for us. “You know who I mean!” We knew we had to speak up to be heard. We knew we had to forge our own way and make our own plans and take charge of our own stories. There can be a lot of good in that kind of growing up. 

I'm pretty sure my kids kind of feel the same way. I’ve heard them too many times say, “No, mom. It didn’t happen quite like that.”  And then they have to remind me of the correct details. I don’t always have a digital newspaper article to pull up, but I do have kids who help keep me on track. 

Kind of like that Progressive Insurance "replay” commercial that’s been airing on television so often. So funny, by the way.

This "old lady" can tell you that the 55 years of my life have been filled with stories. Stories which I do own and can confidently claim. I might not have a dramatic birth story which includes a biker-gang brawl, but I have a story which God is clearly writing. And as I sit here this morning after my birthday, I am overwhelmed with the many, many sweet pages God has written all over my life. Yes, there have been some painful ones as well, and I don’t know exactly what the next chapter brings, but I know my God is the Perfect Author and He uses my story (and your stories too) to tell the much greater story of His. 

And for that I am thankful.