It's a Wedding! and a Marriage!

So this weekend is the one our last child, our "baby Jacob", gets married. He has selected a wonderful girl. JL and Jess have already brought us much joy. The wedding will be SO much fun--the weddings of Zachary and Amanda 5 years ago and Rachel and Aron 18 months ago will forever highlight my memories. As good friends, great people, wonderful family gather for the big send-off into married life, we will truly and deeply rejoice.

We had our own little private send-off last week. As the wedding of each child approached, the 5 original Youngs (Charlie, me, the 3 kids) got together for a last lunch at Skyline Chili, one of our favorites haunts when they were little. This time was not much different than the other two--loads of laughter, favorite stories retold. Only this time there was a twist. Zack and Rachel gave their little brother advice on marriage, the REAL DEAL that follows the big hype of the wedding day. That was very interesting for a mother to hear. :-) We all know that the marriage, the living out of the vows on ordinary days, is the really significant thing. It is life's biggest decision and most significant challenge, after the decision to follow Jesus.

As I listened and watched, I realized again that our house is going to be empty now of all the kids calling it home. There won't be anymore tribes of young people hanging out and making amazing noise. We've had the last sleepover. I'll be able to decorate every single room of the house the way I want. And there will be plenty of room in the garage and closets. Those thoughts didn't make me celebrate. I have absolutely LOVED having children and I have loved everything (well, almost everything) that comes with them. The knowledge that this era of my life ends on Saturday morning when JL wakes up for the last time in "his very own bed in his very own room" is bittersweet.

It makes me very happy that 36 years ago on June 15 I married a man to love forever. The kids are gone, but he is still with me, still faithful, still kind, still loving, still my best friend, still "the one." Fortunately over these years, the MARRIAGE has been the big deal, Our wedding was so much fun and a day I still enjoy reliving, but nothing compared to the joy we have right now. The house will be much less crowded with people now, but still overflowing with love.

Charlie and I are children of the 70's. The music of the Beatles blared out from the 8 track tapes and radio in his 1970 Camaro over many miles. Though we loved the music, we never picked up the lifestyle of the day, and came to our wedding with each other being "the one and only." But John Lennon captured the way I felt about Charlie then, and still do today. Jacob and Jessica--may it ever be true for you. Zachary and Amanda, Rachel and Aron--may the years make this your song.


There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I'll love you more


Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I'll love you more

WELL. DONE.

You may know that we do clean water wells for desperately needy locations. (Check out the website listed here on the blog) You may NOT know what a difference a single well can make. Here's a letter from Eric Wright, a wonderful Ohio businessman who was in Haiti this April with a construction team. They really benefitted from a well just drilled by Clear Blue a few weeks earlier. If you have ever prayed, given, or gone for Clear Blue, what a difference you are making! Well done.

I just got back from Haiti a couple of weeks ago... The well was an overwhelming blessing in so many ways. Let me try to count them for you:

1) The people of Greffin no longer have to walk a mile or two for UNCLEAN drinking water (from a stream along the road where clothes, cars and motorcycles were washed as well). From my recollection of the drive to Greffin, CLEAN drinking water would be 3 to 5 miles away and only available certain times of the day with very long lines.

2) The feeling of hope (perhaps the most important) and gratitude outpoured from the people more than water did from the well. The well LITERALLY was pumped from sun up until sun down. The ladies and children of the town operated it nonstop by filling large buckets and carrying it to concrete mixing sites, the water filtering station and to their homes (tents).

3) The value of the well to the people was obvious as I saw not one bucket spilled or dumped in a playful manner…, even as they walked barefoot over rough terrain. Each bucket was carefully used.

4) Hired workers as well as their families were able to get buckets of water to shower and clean after a long, hard and dirty day's work.

5) This well not only provides drinking water, but it provides tools for hygiene, washing clothes and building structures. This well has and will play a VITAL role in expanding the church, building the new school, the new latrine and housing for the homeless. Drinking water is the tip of the iceberg.

6) As stated in the above comment, effective jobs were created because of the well. This was and is a priceless gift to Greffin owed in large part to the well since the unemployment rate is 80 to 90 percent in Haiti and much worse in Greffin itself where the well was drilled.

The well transformed our teams abilities in many ways:

1) Cement CAN NOT be made without water. We would have been blessed to accomplish a portion of the foundation of the building without the well. Having water 100 yards from the area we built the structure was invaluable. I could not have imagined the work without the well. A fraction of our actual work done there would have been accomplished without the well.

2) I don’t know (honestly) how our team would have effectively stayed hydrated without the well. The average temperature stayed right around 100 degrees the whole time we were there. We worked from 8 to 5. We worked in the sun all day and it was a struggle even with the well. Water from the well was constantly filtered for our hydration needs as well as the 20 to 25 Haitian workers we hired every day.

For the record, the well was VERY productive. If I can use my experience in any way to help you with your cause, let me know. I would be willing to speak about the well if it would be of benefit.

You are not drilling wells, you are changing lives and generating hope in hopeless areas. Keep up the great work. Again, please let me know if I can help in any other ways. Your well impacted my life.

Eric Wright
Director of Operations
Gasearch, LLC.

I Do, I DO!!

This is the wedding season. Dear young friends were married April 10 in a beautiful ceremony, another couple will wed this next weekend, my own son Jacob and his beautiful bride-to-be Jessica will take the plunge May 22, and then more this summer. As I prepare for all these promises, I have thought how in a world where commitments are increasingly short-term, the words "for better or worse, as long as we both shall live" sound beautiful, but realistically unlikely to most people. We push those thoughts to the back of our minds in the midst of the celebration. But as we look at broken promises on all levels, not just marriage, we wonder, "Does anyone keep promises anymore?"

Yes, some people still make and keep promises. They choose not to quit when the going gets rough because they promised to see it through. They stick to causes that seem lost. They hold on to a love that seems sadly cold. They stay with people who have become royal pains in the neck. They are brave enough to make a promise, and have enough integrity to keep the promise they have made. Lewis Smede challenges me when he says, "If you have a ship you will not desert, if you have people you will not forsake, if you have causes you cannot abandon, then you are like God."

See, when a person makes a promise, that person reaches out into the unpredictable and unertain future and makes one thing certain: I WILL BE THERE.  I will be there even when it costs me more than I want to pay. In a world where most things seem out of my control, when I make a promise like this, I control at least one thing: I will be there no matter what the circumstances turn out to be. Smedes says, "When you make a promise, you take a hand in creating your own future."

This spring and summer is a great time to reflect on the promises we have made to God, to people, to the church--and to focus our energy on keeping them. There is nothing more fulfilling than working with God to keep your commitments, and receiving the reward that comes from being a keeper of covenants, a person like God.

I promise. Better than that, it is HIS promise.

The Limits of Love

I was part of  a state leadership meeting with my brother Dwight a week or so ago. He shook his head about a situation that concerned the group and said, "I always remember what Brenda told me when I was getting my heartbroken as a young guy involved with the wrong girl. She said, 'Dwight--your problem is you think that if you love people enough, you can change them'."

He's right. I said that. But I forgot it. I have forgotten it many times in practical life. Love has its limits. Even God can't change us, no matter how much he loves us, if we choose to remain unteachable, stuck in our ruts.
I have loved people deeply, tried to help them avoid disaster, and make their lives better. But, one person can never make that choice for another. Jesus showed that. When he talked to the rich young ruler, he left the ball in the young man's court. He could follow Jesus to life and blessing, or he could stick with life the way he had always known it. The Bible says Jesus looked at him and LOVED him, and He directly presented the options. But the young man chose to walk away. He chose to reject love--to retain his pride, and hold onto the life that had already disappointed him.

And Jesus let him go. Tough. Didn't feel like love, I am sure. More like watching the makings of a train wreck in slow motion. But Jesus loved him enough to let him retain his right to make foolish, unwise choices.
Love is limited. It doesn't conquer all. Sometimes love lets people walk.

Earning Trust

Stories of outrageous and indulgent demands surround celebrities,  and many are actually true. Some of the most amazing (e.g. bottles of the priciest spring water to wash dogs) swirl around musical artists and their contracts with concert promoters. A notorious story came from the wildly popular band Van Halen. Each concert promoter had to sign a contract,  specifying  a bowl of M&M's be provided backstage for the band, with every single brown M and M removed. If the band arrived for a concert and there was even one brown candy there, they were alowed by contract to cancel the gig and receive full payment. Diva behavior, right?

In the words of the commercial ads, BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE.

There actually was a method in the madness. To the band, the absence or presence of the brown M&M's was a matter of life or death. Atul Gawande in his book, The Checklist Manifesto,quotes lead singer David Lee Roth's memoir:

"...Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We'd pull up with nine 18 wheelers, full of gear, where the standrad was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors---whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to drive the gear through. The contract read like a... Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings needed to make it function." So, just as a little test, buried somewhere in the rider, would be Article 126, the no-brown-M&M clause. "When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, we'd line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem." The mistakes could be fatal. In one Colorado concert, the band discovered the promoters had failed to read even the weight requirements, and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor.

Hmmm. There may be more to what you and I consider a ridiculous demand more often than one might think. In this case, it sounds as if Van Halen was actually on page with Jesus: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much." Luke 16:10