What is Trust, What is Love, and Is Grandpa Ware in Heaven?

I’ve known for several months that I would be writing this chapter in my blog eventually. The title was there, but it kept being pushed back further in my outline. The idea was only a thought. But recently, it has become very important, has been discussed in other contexts with people, bounced off Eric, and even tonight as I begin to write this, was mentioned in passing by our pastor at the midweek Bible study. People want to know. Naturally, a funeral isn’t the place to necessarily answer the question outright. Can you imagine a funeral where the pastor starts out by telling the mourners that their loved one is burning in hell? 

But eventually, since it is appointed to man to die once, but after this the judgment (Hebrews 3:37), the topic of “The Afterlife” comes up in conversation. Because people around you will die, and then after a while, you will too.

Who is Grandpa Ware? Was he good or bad?

I’ve written quite a bit about my Grandpa Ware. Last week, it was about what he was like just before he died, the funeral, and what we did with the inheritance he left us. But let’s now briefly review the life he led here on earth. If he were to approach the throne of God and the question were asked of him, “Why do you think you deserve to come in?” what would he say? What would other witnesses say?

Or to put it another way, the various kings of Israel and Judah had a summary at the end of the blurb, or even several chapters, that contained highlights of their reign. Usually it was declaring that they were a good king or a bad king, and the good usually had to do with things such as removing objects of idolatry and re-establishing the worship of Yahweh. The bad had to do with going back to the culture of idolatry, often worse than it was before. The summary usually ended with “And King So-and-So slept with his fathers. And his son, Such-and-Such reigned in his stead.”

Could I or should I evaluate my grandfather that way?

Those who were impressed with Grandpa could speak of his accomplishments. They could point to Lee Ware Park, where children had government-sponsored after-school programs, a pool and swimming lessons, and playground equipment. They could talk of the way, a long time ago, Grandpa thwarted the annexation of the area by an adjoining city, to be used as a dump, by incorporating Hawaiian Gardens as its own city, and serving as its first mayor.

They could find lists of charities he sponsored or the large amounts he gave, or talk about all the children who loved him and whom he babysat so their parents could work. They could find all the boards, committees, and councils on which he served, and all the times he was their leader. 

They could add up the money he invested in house payments for his poorer relatives. And they could reference the step-great-grandchildren he raised as his own, even going to court to prove their mother unfit so he would have legal custody and provide them a good home and a Christian school education.

But detractors could also build a case against Grandpa. They could point to two people whom he approached sexually – my sister and myself – as children. And then that begs the question of how the children he babysat fared, or the children he raised as his own, from several generations back. My cousin told me how badly he treated his own wife, and then also my cousin’s big sister and brother. My mother told me he had paid for an abortion for an underage teen at least once.

Let’s face it, looking back at the weight of evidence, for all intents and purposes, Grandpa was a corrupt Democrat politician. I’ve seen some of those in the news, and it’s not a pretty sight. Yes, he had wealth. Did he gain it honestly? 

I really don’t know.

How does the scale look to you? Does the good outweigh the bad? 

There are some people who, upon hearing about my past, have become very angry at Grandpa on my behalf, wishing they could punch or maim him. After all, they reason, Jesus Himself invoked woe upon the individual who would cause one of the little ones who believe in Him to stumble. He said it would be better if said individual wore a 3,300-lb. necklace (a millstone) and were tossed into the ocean (or maybe dropped by a crane). In that case, Grandpa is surely not in Heaven, right?

It is for this reason that I am writing about the subject.  It’s time to put the emotional opinions aside and get a good handle on what the Scripture says. Because maybe we don’t even have all the facts necessary to be able to judge the case.

So then, whose opinions count?

What is Trust?

There was a time when I, being young and naïve and raised on a steady diet of heroic tales of Grandpa à la How the West Was Won, would have trusted Grandpa with anything. And I did. And I was snookered. But once I understood that I had been lied to and taken advantage of by such an esteemed personage, I never trusted him again. The trust of a fellow human being, when lost or damaged, is very, very difficult to regain.

Eric put it this way: you can forgive the thief who broke into your house, raped your wife, and pillaged all your belongings, but you wouldn’t want him back in your house again. You might even install security cameras to prevent that.

No, even after the trip to California where Grandpa asked me to forgive him, there was never any thought of sending our children out there to visit him as I had done, And when he came to Indiana to visit us, I always had my eye on him. The trust was gone. He reinforced the need to not trust him, when he chased me around the room asking for romantic kisses.

What is Love?

But does that mean I didn’t love Grandpa? No, it doesn’t.

The Bible names certain groups of persons whom we as Christians are commanded to love. 

First and foremost, there’s God – with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Second, there’s our neighbor – as ourselves. In his epistle, James calls this “the royal law.” 

Third, Jesus added “one another,” as in fellow Christians – as He loved us: sacrificially.

Fourth, there are our enemies, which includes those who are persecuting us. Those, we are to pray for.

So, who’s left? Isn’t there anybody we can hate? Nope. And this is really hard when it involves someone who has wronged you personally, and even more so when it involves someone who has wronged a loved one. It’s no longer just theoretical.

How do we know if we love someone, then, who has wronged us, or who has wronged others we love? The Bible demands that we love, and that we forgive, and that includes people we no longer trust. That means, I can love Mark Zuckerberg even if I put tape on my laptop camera to prevent Facebook from surveilling me. And … I don’t want this to be true … but it also includes my mother’s husband, and it includes the people who have divorced and rejected my beloved children.

How can I do that? It is by praying for them.

Here’s the test: read Revelation. If you can read about the just and terrible judgments of God upon the sinful world at the time of the Day of the Lord, and then you can hope in your heart that any particular person you know will have to endure that, you need to re-examine your heart. By the grace that Jesus gives us, you can love the most hardened murderer or the most vile politician or … that person who personally wronged you, molested you, or misrepresented the truth and caused you to stumble – if you can pray for their salvation.

Is Grandpa Ware in Heaven?

It has been almost exactly 50 years ago now, since I was molested by my grandpa, in the early summer of 1971. Last year, I began to sift through those memories and sort things out for myself. Talking with my cousin helped a lot because she had additional information. We were able to put together the puzzle of Grandpa’s life and we found that he came up short in a lot of areas. 

It made me sad to think that I had received money for our house payments over the years, that could have been viewed by others as “hush money.” It made me angry to think of how many others had been hurt by Grandpa besides me, and how many others could also have been. And it made me sad to think that I had inherited money from him that could have been tainted. I was sad to be related to him. I took his pictures off my wall, so they would stop looking at me.

But I know my Grandpa was tortured by those memories as well, especially when he had Alzheimer’s towards the end. He was obsessed with the thought that we are not saved by our good works, nor are we condemned by our bad works. He was a little fearful of his “rap sheet,” so he kept repeating key verses to others to reassure himself that all would be well when he passed away. And I know how he felt. The devil is consistent about shoving those memories of our bad deeds in our face to evoke a feeling of hopelessness. It had to have been much worse when Grandpa’s brain was deteriorating.

A page in Romans from Grandpa’s Bible, with his notes

The Unpardonable Sin – Does That Apply?

Part of the confusion and anxiety over Heaven and Hell lies in the fact that many of us have heard of something called “the unpardonable sin.” We’re not sure what it is, but we may be pretty sure we’ve committed it. Or, that somebody else has committed it (i.e., someone we don’t like). It’s a little confusing:

"Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men.

“Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” 

  ~Matthew 12:31-32

This has been interpreted many different ways, including the idea that if you disapprove of Pentecostal experiences, you have committed the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and you will never be forgiven.

But this is not correct.

The Holy Spirit is sent from God to speak directly to your heart as a witness to who Jesus is. He is the Spirit of God, and He is the one who causes your heart to beat faster when you hear a preacher telling you that Jesus loves you as an individual, explaining how He died on a cross to pay for your sins, and speaking about the need to find forgiveness in Him. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is refusing His message, over and over again, until you die. When that time comes, sadly, you will have no other options, because there is only one way into Heaven.

That’s why this is the one sin that cannot be forgiven. That’s why the Bible says:

“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, and saw My works forty years.

“Therefore I was angry with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’”

~Hebrews 3:7-11

The Holy Spirit is saying, “Today’s the day. Tomorrow could well be too late!” See why it’s unpardonable to ignore Him?

So … Is Grandpa Ware in Heaven?

I have gone astray like a lost sheep; Seek Your servant, For I do not forget Your commandment. ~Psalm 119:127

David, one of those kings I was talking about earlier, is admitting here that he had gone astray, like a lost sheep.  And he surely did, too!  He committed murder to cover up his adultery.  That’s pretty “astray.”  He is begging God to come and find him, like the shepherd did in Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep and the 99 that weren’t.  How often we feel like one of the 99% who are content to hang out with the shepherd and never get lost, but the truth is actually this:

All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. ~Isaiah 53:6

That puts us all in the same category.  Every single one of us. We need Jesus to save us from our sins.

So now, let’s go back to what I asked at the top: 

If he were to approach the throne of God and the question were asked of him, “Why do you think you deserve to come in?” what would Grandpa say? 

Here are three things I do not know:

I will never know the extent of Grandpa’s sins. I do know the extent of mine, but I tend to downplay mine …

I will never know the good He did in Jesus’ name. I know some of the things I might possibly be rewarded for, but only God knows my heart. I wonder how many of them will be burned up in the examination by fire at the Judgment Seat of Christ? (Romans 14:10, 2 Corinthians 5:10, 1 Corinthians 3:9-15)

I do not know when he received Jesus as His personal savior, but I’m presuming he was a young man. I know when I did. I was a child. And I know I sinned after that.

When I put Grandpa in that perspective, I know exactly what he would say, or actually, what he already would have said, when he approached the throne of God and the question was asked. It’s the same thing I will say:

“I have nothing to plead but the blood of Jesus. I confessed my sins, and as the Word of God said, He was faithful and just to forgive my sins and cleanse me from all my unrighteousness.” (See 1 John 1:9)

Note in the back of Grandpa’s Bible.

Who is The Judge? It is neither you nor I. We cannot answer the question for another. Only Jesus, the Righteous Judge, truly knows our heart.

But Heaven is real. It is more beautiful than anything we could ever dream up, and someday it will be fully populated by people, for eternity. It is something for which we yearn, but something we can never earn. Only Jesus can make us worthy to enter.

So what can we say at a funeral? It is the same for the saint as for the sinner. Eric first heard this message preached at the funeral for his Grandpa Bryant, well knowing that he had had no interest in Christ for the duration of his life.

“If Rady could speak to you from where he is today, I just know he would say, “Do not miss out on Jesus!”

Here’s another video about the reality of Heaven. See what I mean? The topic just keeps coming up! Take a look at these! And then, if Heaven is where you would like to go when you die, same as me, you need to trust in Jesus! Today is the day!

Death of a Grandparent

“A good name is better than precious ointment, And the day of death than the day of one's birth ...” ~Ecclesiastes 7:1

After it was all over, Dan sent me a one-line email. I could pretty much quote it in its entirety:

“One question: Did gramps kick?”

It was ten years ago, in March of 2011, when I got the word. Aunt Jackie called because Grandma Ware had herself passed away only a few months earlier. Grandma’s side of the family had dealt with that funeral, and now Jackie sent for me.

Immediately after Mom died in 2007, I had a phone conversation with Grandpa Ware. He wanted me to know that he was changing his will. He was disinheriting most of the people in his life. Only Aunt Jackie and I would receive anything after the bills were paid – not his step-great-grandson Willie, whom he had raised, not my brother Dan nor my sister Rennie, and certainly not my mom’s husband John, whom he had never liked. Aunt Jackie would get half of everything and I would get the other half. Jackie would be the executor. Originally, it was supposed to be Jackie (Grandma’s daughter) and my mother (Grandpa’s daughter), but now that my mother had preceded Grandpa in death, he was passing that along to me instead.

Grandpa’s wealth was legendary in our family. He had been a real estate mogul who made his fortune by leaving Missouri and going “Out West” with his small family – his first wife Audentia and my mother Margaret – to California, where he “never had to miss a day’s work.” It was hard work and ingenuity that had him buying up houses that had to be removed when a new highway was being built, paying to have them transported to a nice neighborhood, and making the necessary improvements, so that the house would sell at a decent profit. Grandpa was one of the original California “house flippers.” He was also the first mayor of Hawaiian Gardens.

I found this picture of Grandpa, with his mother Jenny June, for some city ceremony. It looks like he had the means by that time to fly her out to California, and probably bought her the fur as well, since she and Grandma Pearl both had one.

Grandpa is third from the right, with his wife and his mother seated.

Our family often spoke of Grandpa being a millionaire and everybody wondered if someday we’d inherit something. But half of his wealth really didn’t cross my mind. I only knew that he loved it when I would call him and give him news about our big family and I rarely asked him for money. And when he told me the news about his will, I felt honored, but I told him I wasn’t after his money, I just loved him for who he was – not Mayor of Hawaiian Gardens, but the man who was my ancestor.

So our talks on the phone continued unchanged. He had to use a phone that amplified my voice, since he was getting pretty deaf. Towards the end of his life, he told me he wasn’t sure why he was still here, because he wasn’t good for anything – that he couldn’t see or hear, couldn’t drive a car, and the family wouldn’t even trust him to walk to the store and buy something anymore. They told him he was a crazy old man now. What was he good for?

I felt so sorry for him! Of course, it’s better to feel needed, and rather humiliating to fall from being a wealthy and powerful, influential City Father to being an old man with Alzheimer’s. So I appealed to his status as my Brother in Christ. The man had supposedly been saved longer than I had been alive. He spent most of his time now watching televangelists on TV because he couldn’t get to a church service. And he was profoundly longing for the end of his life so he could spend eternity in Heaven. 

“Why am I still here?” he would pitifully ask me.

“Because you are still needed here. Perhaps it is so you can pray for our family. You can always do that.”

“Oh I do that every day,” he assured me. “But then what?”

“Pray again!”

Then he began to fall – too often. Grandma couldn’t pick him up – she was too weak for that. Between the two of them, they just couldn’t live alone anymore. So Jackie made arrangements for a nice nursing home for them. They were on different floors because Grandpa was an Alzheimer’s patient, but now and then, they could see each other. Jackie made sure to drive out where they were fairly often, and when she did, she would read to Grandpa, from his favorite Bible.

Jackie got pretty exhausted, as she was still working as a landlord, but making time to see her mother and Grandpa, whom she loved like her own father. Considering she didn’t even know her real father, he was all she had ever known, and she had been there for him, when my mom was in Alaska and couldn’t be with him, and none of the rest of our family were close.

After Grandma died, and Jackie and her family had dealt with her burial, Grandpa seemed to just be more tired than ever. She told him, “Now don’t you go and die on me too – I need you.” To Grandpa, those were magic words. He lived because Jackie needed him. But he was so tired!

Then, there came a day when she just knew that she was only saying that out of selfishness. She looked at him and his haggard countenance, and knowing he had been refusing food, finally said, “You just want to go home, don’t you?” When he nodded, she said, “Then you go ahead. It’s all right – you don’t have to stay here for my sake.”

That evening, after Jackie left, Grandpa Ware passed on to the next life. It was only a few months after his wife had passed. He was 95.

I hadn’t been able to talk with him on the phone at the nursing home. So I was deeply grateful to Jackie for what she had done. Because she was there and knew what she was doing, she made all the funeral arrangements, as well as the arrangements for me to fly out to California with Eric. I had to try to find a short-sleeved black outfit at the local Wal-Mart, which wasn’t quite ready for spring yet, and even so, black was not your typical spring color. 

Nobody told my brother and sister. We figured they probably wouldn’t have come anyway. But Cousin Rod and Cousin Terri came, along with their spouses and children. Cousin Willie drove out for the funeral because he was really sure he would get some money for his trouble, but Jackie had to show him in the will that he was specifically excluded. He did get some tools. But he was … well, “disappointed” is putting it mildly, that he didn’t get more.

There was the question of the obituary. Jackie wanted my input on that one. It would have been cool to have listed all his descendants, but for one thing, our own family had already gotten rather large, and to be fair, we would have had to list Rennie and Dan’s families’ names too, and then Grandpa’s step-children and step-grandchildren, et al. Rennie and Dan didn’t want to be in contact with me and had hidden their address information, so we couldn’t even find out exactly how many descendants Grandpa had, or all their names. Some of it, we just guessed. And we kept the descendant list pretty generic, especially after we found out how much the paper wanted per word! Here’s what we came up with.

While there in Southern Cal, Eric and I visited Lee Ware Park, just to see what it looked like. It was pretty old and decrepit, and from there, you could see the highly graffitied walking bridge over the river, which had been padlocked due to gang violence. Eric played tether ball with a local kid and I examined everything, the monuments to my famous ancestor.

And he was famous, in his corner of the world. He had been Grand Marshall at a parade, as an honored City Father, and my mother had pictures in her scrapbook. This might have been a Bicentennial parade, but it was probably for an anniversary of the City of Hawaiian Gardens.

Aunt Jackie with Grandpa Ware, as Parade Grand Marshall

The funeral itself, outdoors at Forest Lawn, was fairly simple, even if John Denver made the place famous for their ability to go overboard. Though Grandpa had bemoaned the fact that all his friends had already died of old age, there were still a good number of people who came. It felt strange and I wondered how many people were pointing and talking about me, this stranger from Indiana. Eric remembers that we sang “Amazing Grace” at the funeral “because your family sings.” I remember that I spoke. Jackie wanted me to say a few words, so I scribbled an outline on a piece of paper and winged it.

Here’s what I said, in essence:

1. Grandpa Ware was generous. He always gave money whenever anyone asked it of him, because he felt God had called him to do that. (Which actually was a bit of problem, considering how much money the televangelists snookered out of him.)

2. Grandpa Ware loved to help people. He was always available to fix something, like when he came to Indiana to visit and ended up replacing our toilet.

3. Grandpa Ware was a Christian. He had been a Sunday School teacher for much of his adult life, and he knew he was going to Heaven when he died.

So, if you would honor his memory, be like him. Be generous with the gifts with which God has entrusted you. Help others. And above all, receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. That’s how you can see him again someday.

I spoke passionately about these things because they were things I believed in, and when I was finished, the pastor said he thought I’d said everything he wanted to say already. Other people spoke up, including the current mayor of Hawaiian Gardens, and there was a certificate bestowed upon us, honoring my grandpa and how much he meant to the City Council and the people.

Jackie had some things she thought I should have, that she had saved back for me. She gave me his favorite Bible, one my mother had gifted him with many, many years ago. The cover was in shreds, and he had “mended” it with scotch tape that had turned brown over the years. He had large thick round plastic tabs adhered to the fore-edge of the page, for indexing. Those were also acidic, like the tape. When I got back from the trip, I handed it to our bookbinders and said, “Fix it.” And because Grandpa had underlined favorite verses and written on the pages, I bonded with the Bible with its new goatskin cover and added my own notes alongside his.

Jackie also gave me some of his favorite pictures, including one of his mother, one of himself as a young man, and an oil painting he’d made, of a mountain in Austria or Germany. 

As for his house, Grandma and Grandpa had laughed one year, when I had done some mail-order Christmas shopping, and not knowing what to get them, I had sent a young grapefruit tree. They didn’t know why anyone would send a grapefruit tree to a place teeming with grapefruits already. But it was planted in their backyard, and by now, it was huge and had given them hundreds of the tasty fruits.

Grandpa had made improvements to his house that were substandard and wouldn’t pass inspection. Jackie had to rebuild walls, treat for termites, have re-wiring done and more, before she could put the house on the market, and even then, she apologized for the low price she had to accept for its sale. The neighborhood just wasn’t a great one. Grandma and Grandpa had gotten used to the fact that they had to have iron bars on all the windows, and that drive-by shootings made their front yard unacceptable for kids to play in or people to be seen. But Jackie was somewhat distressed when we passed the property and I pointed out the large spray-painted graffiti on the wall around the front yard.

I did understand that very little would ever bring me back to Southern California, so I took what felt like a final tour of the place, where I used to walk when I was a child, and where I rode my bike when I was in high school. Eric and I walked to Artesia High School, where we had our “Jesus for Lunch bunch” that met under a tree. Some fellow-students left the campus in those days, to frequent local fast food places during their lunch hour. Now, we found a closed campus with a high security fence. That probably cut down on the amount of drug dealing, but it was every bit as disturbing as the fences in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. I was not used to seeing that. 

But the worst scene from my walking tour occurred when we went to find the site of Grandpa’s apartments, where I lived when I was eight, and where I popped pomegranate blossoms and had chicken pox and mumps. Both Grandpa’s old house and all his apartments were missing, and in their place was a large casino.

How fast deterioration takes place! How fast the rot sets in and spreads! Every kind of sin and shame radiates from a den of iniquity like this. Organized crime is always rampant wherever these “businesses” show up. And I must admit that in the beginning, when President Trump ran for office in 2016, the image of the casino in my head made me disdainful of this man, who capitalized off of gambling and related vices. I did talk to Jackie about the casino, though, and she told me that Grandpa had wanted to sell off his property. He approved – he wasn’t forced out. There was no “eminent domain” connection. I was still not content, but it is what it is.

So then there was the question of the inheritance. We found that in Grandma and Grandpa’s latter years, they used very little of their money on themselves. The interest rates were very low and they could no longer live on that income. They were loath to dip into the principal. So, if their dishwasher broke, they just went without. But they gave away money whenever they could, and there always seemed to be a need. They really really did not want to use up their life savings on a nursing home.

So now what to do with this, now that it was in my hands? We discovered that even a large amount of money in the bank might only have net earnings of a few dollars a month by then. And it wasn’t much better putting it in a Certificate of Deposit. Stock market? Well, maybe some of it. But by and large, we discovered that for investment purposes, the best way to use the sum of money entrusted to us was to invest in the currency of the Kingdom of Our God rather than the Kingdom of This World.

Well, first there was the tithe. We found many good Christian charities that needed funds, and we were able to spread out the tithe amongst them, with a good chunk going to our church. We were able to send Eric on a trip to Israel as an investment in his ministry.

Ayelet’s sister Naomi, the group’s tour guide

And we also invested some funds in the building we used as a church in Delphi.

We paid off all debts on our home and business and bought another house that came up for sale a couple blocks away from ours, because real estate is another way to invest money. For a while, we rented it out, until we needed it for our business. We may end up moving into it, if we ever get to the point where one of us is unable to climb stairs, but that would be sad.

You see, we also made improvements on our own house that made it into what we’d been wanting it to be for a long time, which included building an addition on the back for an office for Eric and a shipping and receiving area, an expanded and remodeled kitchen, moving the bathroom and adding a second one, replacing our roof with metal, and re-wiring so we could get rid of the old fuse box in the basement, which had been dangerously close to being covered by flood waters a time or two. We dreamed of other things, like connecting the garage to the house with a skywalk, and building a new shop in the back, but those never came to pass. 

These and other improvements both improved our lives and blessed others with needed work. Every little job was an investment in the lives of people, from those who laid the foundation for Eric’s office to those who used a sledgehammer to take out the old, broken sidewalk. Eric met one of those people from the past at Chris’s wedding last Saturday. As our own Pastor Joe is so fond of reminding us, the only two things that will last for eternity are The Word of God and people.

And, we invested in Leonard’s. We needed new typeset and a new imprinter, so we took the opportunity to do just that. The stock market is all about investing in another business that you think or hope will be successful. Even with much study of the company, it is very similar to gambling on a race horse. But when you have a business of your own that’s on a roll, and it’s supplying a living for precious people, investing in that business is priceless.

Grandpa would have been very pleased with all these things. He knew about Dan’s choice to invest in the meth lab that almost killed himself and his wife. And he knew that my siblings hated him. But Eric and I became the way for him to fund projects for the Kingdom of God in absentia. 

The Book of Revelation describes the destruction of the coming global economic system. It is described as Babylon the Great, and is pictured as a woman riding a beast. It is totally destroyed in a single hour, and while the kingdoms of the earth weep over its destruction, the multitude in Heaven celebrates. And they sing the victory song very familiar to the Haley Family, the song of The Hallelujah Chorus:

And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, 

as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, 

saying, "Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!”

~Revelation 19:6

And it will not be long before this verse, also in The Hallelujah Chorus, comes to pass.

"The kingdoms of this world 

have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, 

and He shall reign forever and ever!"

~Revelation 11:15

My grandfather’s death is controversial, disputed. And if you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know there’s the “other side” of Grandpa, that I didn’t write about in this post. I’ll be revisiting that next week. But one thing is as certain as the autumn that follows summer: 

It is high time to get on the economy of the Kingdom of God. That currency will last and doesn’t suffer from inflation, theft, or a stock market crash.

Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come!

Weddings and Empty Nest

Mothers of the Bride and Groom collaborate on getting those candles lit.

This Saturday, Chris is getting married again. This marriage looks more promising than the first one. But now Eric and I have “The Shoe” all to ourselves. We haven’t been in this situation since 1978.

Just after Chris and Kim signed the papers and became homeowners, Chris began moving his stuff to the new house in Bunker Hill. It was not possible to get everything all in one load, but he did take most of the items in his bedroom. And then, Chris texted me that he was going to be spending the night in Bunker Hill. So, we locked the doors.

As I reached the top of the stairs, I found that his bedroom door was wide open. It usually never is, but now, there was nothing to look at, nothing hidden, and after all, he had just taken out the lamp so now there’s no permanent light in the room.

I turned on the hallway light, walked into the room, and looked around. And I experienced some classic “empty nest syndrome.” I thought I would be okay with him moving out, but found out then that I would definitely miss him – he and his daughter Rori do mean a lot to us after the four years here. So I was a little teary-eyed, but dear family and friends reassured me that we are not alone. I went to bed singing “Counting Every Blessing,” by Rend Collective. And when I woke up, it was still in my head.

We have an air popper, which is the very best way to do popcorn. Watching it rotate for awhile, while the kernels are heating up, you have a brief feeling that they’re never going to pop, that it’s taking too long. Then, one at a time, they begin to explode, revealing their fluffy insides, but still none of them leave the popper. Slowly, the cylinder begins to fill up and one or two leak over the edge and into the waiting bowl. Finally, the speed picks up and the bowl catches them as they make their exodus. And then, there are the final rounds, where all of the remaining little popcorn clouds spin out together, leaving the popper empty – except for a couple of “old maids” who never do leave home.

Eric and I pondered that popper over the years, and remarked to ourselves how that would likely be similar to the end of our at-home kids – the last ones would all just spin out, and leave our home empty like the popper.

The first kernel to leave home was Lisa. She had taken the G.E.D. test at age 17 to prove she had a “real” education, and was promptly offered a scholarship at Ivy Tech (Indiana Vocational Technical College) based on her scores. I didn’t know how she could do so well in math when she piped White Cross into her ears, but she was able to tune out conversations from all the younger siblings and concentrate better. However, Lisa didn’t want a scholarship. And she didn’t want a fancy schmancy graduation ceremony. She just wanted to get married, to a homeschooler we knew from our play of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Erick had become engaged to Lisa the summer before, when she was sixteen, and he was the one who made frequent long-distance calls and tipped us off that my mom’s husband had been trying to sexually accost her while she was in Alaska alone. He also insulated her private bedroom in the attic while she was gone, and seemed like a hard worker in love with our daughter. He had a job at the farm co-op – hard work to be sure, but honest work.

So, we signed the papers as parents, allowing her to marry before her 18th birthday, and she had a really frugal wedding to Erick Luper out in our yard in May of ‘96. We cut down the large mulberry tree in the front so birds growing fat on the berries would not fly overhead and decorate the wedding guests. And we planted flowers all around the yellow barn and the outhouse to make Lisa’s wedding beautiful. Erick’s mom and I were both pregnant at the time, so it was interesting to see the mother-of-the-bride and the mother-of-the-groom waddling around in maternity dresses. Some of our neighbors sat on their porches to watch the proceedings with interest.

That year, after she was gone, I began prematurely to think about empty nests. Yes, I say prematurely because after Lisa was married, I had two more babies, so it was another two dozen years before my youngest baby was married. But I didn’t think of that – I just started becoming obsessed with the Christmas tree. I reasoned that if Lisa took away all her Christmas ornaments that she’d made or been given over the years, and others did the same, then by the time our youngest baby was married, we’d have a naked tree! An unreasonable fear, to be sure. But family and friends saw my need and came to my rescue. I said I had a need for Christmas ornaments that were just mine – something I could keep for myself when my kids all left home. And, I wanted angels.

The angels poured in – beautiful angels of various makes and models, but also some that meant a lot but weren’t angels. One friend and I had had conversations comparing ourselves to pansies, which look fragile at first glance but are actually pretty hardy. Her gift was a picture of pansies, backed with cardboard. 

But there they were – the collection of ornaments that all belonged to Mom. Other “Baby’s First Christmas” ones could go missing as our children grew up, but my collection would still be there. And, mostly because of the love with which they were given, I was comforted.

Emily, at fifteen, was terrified that she would have to marry Erick Luper’s younger brother, as we had remarked that there seemed to be enough Luper's to marry off all the Haley's. But after she understood that that actually wasn’t required, she breathed easier. As the years went by, Emily graduated from high school. Soon there was a young man at church who had a crush on her, but he was rather wild, so we were concerned. We asked Pastor Joe about it and he advised us that certainly we should be praying for the one we thought would be best for Emily. You see, there was another, who actually didn’t go to our church, but he went to the church whose building our church was sharing. He seemed to be a polite, humble man, and when he came to visit her, he offered to do her dishes and fold her clothes. 

When Matt finally got up the nerve to ask Eric for permission to marry Emily, he revealed that his plan for her upkeep included a thriving Cutco business that he would build from the ground up. It wasn’t the most stable plan in the world, but Eric gave him credit for trying, and for being amusing. After Matt graduated from Wabash College, they were married at a new church facility in Lafayette because they had a bigger sanctuary than our church, and their church also allowed dancing. Matt’s family didn’t think a wedding could be possible without the Chicken Dance, and Matt and his college buddies had a tradition of singing “Bye Bye Miss American Pie” together at weddings, arms locked in a circle and swaying back and forth – don’t ask me why.

A second kernel pops! Both of these first two young men promptly stopped going to our church as soon as they married our daughters, so not only didn’t we see them around the house anymore, but we didn’t see them on Sunday mornings either.

Our third kernel was that boy who surprised us at his birth all those years ago, for not being another girl like his sisters. There were several girls, we knew, who went to our church in Delphi because Chris was the worship leader. Some of them were absolutely not good for our son. But Chris really needed a life companion, and one girl stood out as seeming to be a faithful “groupie” of his music and Neon Dove, his band. She somehow always managed to make it to all his concerts. And she was also beautiful and seemed to be truly interested in Jesus.

Chris went to her parents’ house a lot to make friends with her father – who unfortunately really thought she needed a big guy and wasn’t at all impressed with Chris’s size, but was okay with him if Kayla was okay with him. So after mowing their yard pretty often and winning their approval, he bought a ring and worked out a fantastic way to propose on Valentine’s Day at our house, after a really big snow. All his younger siblings were the cooks and waiters at a romantic dinner-for-two in our living room, which they served up in courses, the final course being dessert and the ring.

It took some time for her to say yes, and perhaps we should have been concerned about that, but in the end, when I was the mother-of-the-groom for the first time, I was more concerned that the bride did all the planning for the event and I wasn’t really in on it at all. So I felt rather left out and sad at Chris’s wedding, which took place on a Monday night at the Wabash and Erie Canal Park, at the conference center where we had our church services on Sunday mornings. Eric did get to be the pastor who married them, but I wasn’t really needed for much of anything, and Kayla was already giving me hints that I annoyed her and that she intended to change Chris. 

There was a rocky marriage ahead, but for the time being, another kernel leaked out over the edge of the popper. When he was gone, I missed Chris playing our piano and composing songs on his guitar, but I gave Kayla a cherished picture of mine – a painting of Chris worshipping God with raised arms. It was the coolest belonging I had, that I thought would mean something to her. They continued at our church for a while, until Kayla got mad at me and they started going somewhere else.

Susie was our first student at Calvary Chapel Bible College in Indianapolis (CCBCi). We didn’t really want her driving in a big city so we picked her up and brought her home to Burrows quite a bit. But she did admittedly spend a lot of time wondering if she could get her “M.R.S.” degree there, and in the end, there was another Bible college student who took special interest in her, who would make dinner for her on a weekend when he anticipated her return. 

So we progressed from “nice homeschooler” to “better than the other suitor” to “a member of our church” to now, “a Calvary Chapel Bible College grad”! This was exciting! We were very open to Joe Silva. He was kind, industrious, and capable. We offered him a job as a bookbinder because he seemed to be a creative type, having made duct tape purses as a side business. Joe spent some time living in our barn loft and working for us. And then, they were married at Calvary Chapel Lafayette in June of 2016 by another CCBCi grad, surrounded by roses, since Susie’s middle name is Rose. 

Joe wept when he saw his beautiful bride coming down the aisle. I thought it was kind of neat, but his mom was stage-whispering to him from the front row, to get ahold of himself. 

Eric presenting Joe Silva with the Key to Susie's Heart

Susie and Joe became an integral part of our church in Delphi till it closed down, and have been in Carroll County ever since the wedding, but that wedding was the permanent exit from the popcorn popper.

Robyn had a marvelous idea for the man she wanted to marry. She said it would be a Calvary Chapel pastor’s son. But the first two she met who fit the criteria didn’t work out. The first one seemed to be a little crazy, starting with getting dreadlocks in his blond hair, and then getting totally shorn to get rid of them when he was tired of them. Then, after telling her a story about a guy who was caught under a crashed airplane, who cut off his arm to escape certain death, he told her he had to break off the relationship.

The second pastor’s son told her how beautiful she was and that he loved her. So she invited him to her 4-H fashion revue, whereupon he rather pointedly backed out of the fashion show and the relationship. He was really only interested in hunting and fishing, which really wasn’t Robyn’s forte. 

That’s when Robyn started looking beyond CC pastors’ sons and found Sam Carr, a homeschooler who also loved drama like she did. We were not in favor for a while, because Sam wasn’t convincing in the role of a suitor for an evangelical pastor’s daughter, being himself a devout Calvinist. 

Robyn went to Israel as a volunteer, and I hoped she would find one of Ayelet’s cousins to be the perfect mate, but while she was gone, Sam wrote her long letters and was waiting for her when she returned. This is a really long story, with a lot of twists and turns, but eventually we felt like affliction had improved Sam enough, and he was given permission to ask Robyn to marry him. He immediately hurried over to her and asked her, she said yes, and they planned their wedding for three months later. 

The couple paid for most of the expenses themselves because the wedding would be so soon, and they were married at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Lafayette. They couldn’t help a little theatrics, though. At the end of the ceremony, Sam picked up Robyn and rushed down the aisle and out the back of the church with her, surprising even the pastor, who had opined at the rehearsal that they would need longer recessional music.

It was much quieter in the Haley Household when Robyn was married, and that was actually a good thing.

The next kernel was David, who left suddenly for Bible college after he graduated from high school. That hasty decision resulted in David meeting and falling in love with someone at the grocery store near the Bible college. It took awhile to convince her dad, but it wasn’t because her dad didn’t like David. He just thought Brooke needed some more maturity before she ran off and got married. He actually liked David a lot, but the clincher was when David joined the Air Force, so that his daughter would be well cared for. Brooke’s dad is a retired Army officer. But David had to get through Basic Training before he could ask her to marry him. He did that right after the ceremony because Brooke and her friend had driven through the night all the way from Indiana to San Antonio to be there and support him.

For the next year, they only spoke through FaceTime, even getting their pre-marital counseling virtually. Then in June, David and Brooke were married in a blue and yellow ceremony outdoors at the amphitheater of the Bible college by Bill Goodrich, the pastor of the Indianapolis church. David wore his Air Force blues, and his nephew Jay, as best man, also wore his.

When David and Brooke were planning their wedding, Brooke was very sensitive to my feelings, making sure I was in on the planning all the way. But then when I had a dance with my military son, this veteran’s heart swelled with pride. I heard countless cameras clicking and flashing when I danced with him, but my eyes were closed tightly, and I held him close. It was the last time I could do that.

Dancing with David

By the time of David’s wedding Chris and Kayla’s marriage was a thing of the past, so their daughter Rori was able to come freely and participate. And my dad came up from Southern Indiana with Angela. Dad was really interested in the zip lines at the Bible college. David’s wedding didn’t make me sad because by then we had Chris back home, and David had been gone already for a while.

But the next two weddings came fast and furious – two kernels trying to be done at the same moment. Both Valerie and Vivian got engaged the same weekend, and then, they had to figure out who would get married when, so that we didn’t overtax ourselves having weddings too close together. Eric and I thought they should just have a double wedding, but they were different enough that their weddings had to be unique. Still, some people at Calvary Chapel Lafayette, where both weddings were held, were challenged by our daughters’ “V” names and kept mixing them up.

With enough careful planning, we were able to budget enough for a January wedding (between semesters at Valerie’s college (St. Mary of the Woods), where she was studying music therapy, and a June wedding for Vivi, after her first year of Bible college at CCBCi. 

Valerie’s fiance’, Joe Stewart V, was a homeschooler and had been a medic in the US Army. We found that his family was warm and fun, played cards a lot, … and went to another Calvinist church. We were beginning to realize that not only were our kernels being shot from the “home popper,” they were being shot clear out of our “church popper” as well. Even Joe and Susie, the CCBCi grads who remained close to home, were now attending Harvest Chapel in Lafayette (pastored by Jeremy Camp’s dad). And now we were expecting another wedding to a Calvinist. The best we could hope was that we might get to see them from time to time at our church, and that Valerie would be true to what she’d been taught as a child. But our church family was sad that Valerie, who had so much musical talent that she got a prestigious scholarship at her college, would be leaving us for another church.

As for the wedding itself, Valerie’s planning sessions resulted in a winter themed wedding, where strangely, it was actually warm enough in Indiana that I wore sandals. Her wedding invitations were of the “Winter Wonderland” type, which were fairly popular because of Frozen, and they offered mostly cake and hot chocolate to their guests, with some nuts and mints, reminiscent of my own wedding in California. Valerie and Joe seriously wanted to get to their next destination as soon as humanly possible, so they didn’t have a lot of formalities to keep that from happening. 

The most memorable circumstances about this January wedding: Joe’s mom had just had foot surgery and arrived in a wheelchair, but she was determined that she would dance with her son, as mother of the groom, and she did. David was deployed to Iraq so he couldn’t come, but Brooke bravely tried to make the three-day trip from New Mexico with a friend, getting stopped by an ice storm and car breakdowns. Emily and Matt did not even try to make it from Iowa! And our friend Perry the police officer was awake for almost 24 hours straight, making the wedding cake.

Rori was always especially excited to see Vivi home for the weekend to do wedding planning with her mom, and she grew close to her youngest aunt, but as the popcorn kernels spun away, Rori found herself alone in the big room, grieving the loss. At turns, she would love or hate Joe Stewart and Andrew Streeter because they were either fun or stealing away her aunts. I had armed myself with Nerf pistols and had fun with the grandkids by shooting them. (And I’m a good shot!) And I loved having shootouts with Andrew because their family were all hunters and we were pretty evenly matched.

So in June, with several of Andrew’s brothers in the wedding party, I made it my mission to arm all of the groomsmen. Officer Perry joined in the fun with a weapon with “LPD” on the side, and besides the normal flower petals, Andrew and Vivian were pelted with Nerf darts (mostly Andrew). Lest you think that cruel, you should know that they gifted each other with Nerf guns for at-home use as well, as they settled down in married student accommodations for Vivian’s second year of Bible college.

But oh yeah, the wedding itself! It was well-attended and might have been a super-spreader event, had it happened a few years later. Vivi had to wait longer for her wedding, but it was when everybody could actually make it, including all their Bible college friends, church friends, and all of our family. Even David was back from Iraq. They had a DJ at the reception, and all their friends and nieces and nephews danced all the modern wedding hits, and our family choir sang “The Hallelujah Chorus” together.

The Haley Family Choir, singing The Hallelujah Chorus

Andrew had a lot of input in this one because he wanted things to be a certain way, including the food and the invitations. Certain items were from Chick-Fil-A, that Sam delivered since he was a manager there by that time, and other items on Andrew’s list were gathered up from various places. We had some beautiful fruit trays from Meijer’s produce department, made to Andrew’s specs – no watermelon or cantaloupe!

Andrew’s least favorite part of the wedding was the bells at the reception. I didn’t know anybody could be so strongly against those little “Kiss her! Kiss her!” bells, especially after Robyn and Sam’s wedding! But their wedding was a truly marvelous affair.

Valerie made the wedding cake this time, with live flowers as decor, and Vivian and her bridesmaids made their own bouquets the night before. She showed them how. Afterwards, we found that someone had hung all the bouquets upside-down, to dry them. They ended up somehow coming home with us. We found them on top of a cabinet in Rori’s room yesterday, and finally decided to throw them all away. We still have to clean up all the crumbled organic matter on the floor before Brooke and David get here on Thursday, and move in Chris’s bed for them.

But all this talk of kernels of popcorn accomplished two things: One, I got hungry writing this and had to make popcorn. And two, it reminded me of our Five Kernels of Corn ceremony on Thanksgiving, where each of the participants thinks of one blessing for each kernel and tells it to the rest of the family. In this case, we had eight kids, and each one of their kernels stands for a huge blessing from God.

When we started doing rearranging jobs, the “empty nest” I had felt was a lot better. We were doing something positive and reclaiming the space. We found we had a lifetime supply of crayons for at least five children, for one thing. There may be more that I haven't found yet.

There are many more jobs yet to be done, but doing them a little at a time will be pleasant. And then, we'll have a comfortable "Haley Hotel," where visitors from afar like David and Brooke can spend the night. We’re looking forward to having Kimberly as a new daughter! And in case you’re wondering, yes, there is an applicable Scripture passage for this time in our lives:

“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth.

Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak

with their enemies in the gate.”  

     ~Psalm 127:3-5

 What do you do with arrows? Why, you shoot them, of course!