The Christmas Welder-- our annual christmas story

The Christmas Welder

A Christmas story by Mark Shaw

Wellington closed his Ngong Road welding shop at dark. There were only two weeks to go before one more Nairobi Christmas came and went.  Unfortunately business was slow. He was not an artist with the welder. His daily task consisted of making endless bed frames and iron shelves just like all the other Jua Kali furniture makers along the road.

As he closed the padlock on his metal door he heard rapid footsteps behind him. He heard the voice of Julius, his landlord.

"Wellington, Wellington. You are a hard man to catch.”  Wellington said nothing.  “You know why I am here," Julius continued, his heavy face puffing from his exertions.

"I know," Wellington answered, head down, voice a whisper.

"Your rent must be paid. You are over three months in arrears. I have been patient with you. Too patient. Only because of my cousin, your late mother, may she rest in peace. I am a Christian man but even Christian men reach their limit. Unless I get full payment by Christmas day, and I mean every shilling, I will not only close your shop but seize all of your property for repayment. Try welding your monotonous beds and book cases without a welding machine."  Julius smiled as though he had made some marvelous joke. Then his face turned sour. “I will be here on Christmas day to collect. Don’t disappoint me.” Julius turned on his heels and left.

Wellington’s head pounded as he finished closing up the shop and headed towards home. Where would he get that kind of money?  He was not making enough now to make ends meet, let alone make up for back rent. 

And what would he tell Winnie?  She was a good wife but she worried a lot.  She worried about where the next meal would come from. About how they would pay the rent.  And above all, about Shiku.  Shiku was five and sickly.  The doctor who came to their local clinic had told Winnie a month ago that Shiku might be able to walk someday but she would need an operation.  He had already borrowed so heavily from family and friends to keep his welding business afloat that he had nowhere else to turn.

 

As Wellington made his way through the muddy streets he heard another voice from behind him.  "Wellington," the voice thundered above the din.  Wellington knew the voice. It was Njoroge, his rival.

"Hey, I heard that Julius is going to close down your workshop.  Tough break, Wellington.  I would love to try to squeeze you in somewhere. Unfortunately I don't have any openings just now.  And, man, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when you tell Winnie. She will hit the roof.  Can't blame her though.  Her life has been one disappointment after another since she got married. Gotta go.  And Merry Christmas." 

Wellington watched Njoroge get swallowed by the deepening shadows. Njoroge had been a rival for Winnie’s affections six years ago.  Wellington had won that contest.  Njoroge had been trying to get even ever since.  When a fire broke out at Wellington's workshop a few years back, he had little doubt who was behind it.

It was dark now as he hurried through the garbage strewn alleyways just minutes from home. What would he say to Winnie? How could he hold little Shiku in his arms tonight and tell her that everything would be alright when he knew that was just not true? 

As Wellington rounded the final corner, his eye caught the new sign on the "Cross of Iron Apostolic Church," recently founded by one of Kenya's many self-appointed prophets. Spotlights shot up into the darkness directing all eyes to the cross that gave the church its name.  The illuminated cross was made of out of black nails, thousands of them. The nails were welded together to create the massive form of a cross.  It was a cross of iron, a cross of nails, thought Wellington.  Just like my life.

His childhood been hammered together by the spikes of poverty and death. The deaths of his brothers and sisters was a nail in his heart, as was the death of his mother. His attempt to find work and a career was one hard nail after another.  His marriage to Winnie felt more like blood and iron most of the time than milk and honey. Her sharp words, her steely looks, her dark moods, so many nails.

But hadn’t it always been so, thought Wellington? As he stared at the cross of nails a shooting star broke across the sky rimming the iron cross in starlight.  Wellington thought of the star of Bethlehem and the hard birth of Christ.  No room at the inn. A poor family travelling to a strange city far from home.  A mad politician trying to hunt them down. And the sharpest nail of all-- a world around him that didn't care.  Wellington knew that there were a few angels and shepherds that cared about the baby king who would one day die on his iron throne but most of the world stared on in cold indifference.

Christmas was never intended to be soft and syrupy, he thought. The one who came from heaven knew the sweat Wellington known, had felt the spikes of rejection, deprivation and indifference that he had felt.  What made this day a day of beauty was not the prettiness of it but the message that it gave to the world.  God entered our iron world, absorbed the nails of our existence, sat upon our iron throne of pain and in so doing traded places.  After the iron, a green shoot would grow. After the nails, the shooting star of a new creation.

As the comet faded from sight, Wellington had a vision.  He continued to stare upward at the church sign.  But he no longer saw a cross.  Instead he saw a Christmas tree.  One made out of iron.  Out of nails.  Out of blackness. The cross and the Christmas tree were but one tree. He knew what had to he do.

After he returned home he told Winnie about the eviction notice. She cried.  “What will we do?” she asked.  “What about Shiku?” He hugged her for a long time before she pulled away.

Then he set to work. He pulled out a broken pencil and a piece of paper.  Carefully he sketched out the vision.  He told Winnie what he planned to do.  He would make this iron Christmas tree and he would sell it.  He would sell it for a lot of money and people would come and many would buy. At first, Winnie laughed that mocking laugh that he hated so much.  But then she stopped.  She looked at the sketch.  She looked at her husband’s determined look. The tears came back but this time she was crying in his arms, sobbing gently even as hope mingled with tears. 

Wellington had a meager supper and retired early.  He slept little, dreaming of his iron christmas tree made from nails.  When dawn broke over the slum Wellington was already at work.  He had thousands of nails. His welder burned hot hour after hour.   Sweat poured from his face.  Cuts, burns and black stains covered his arms. When he was finally done he took it to the road side and waited.

An hour went by, then two.  But during that third hour a car pulled up.  It had United Nations plates on it.  A Korean man came out of the car and asked Wellington about the tree.  Wellington explained the meaning of the tree. The man stared at the tree for what seemed like twenty minutes and then asked him how much he wanted.  How much? Wellington had no idea.  In all his adrenaline rush he had failed to think about price.  Without thinking he spoke. "Ten Thousand shillings" he said.  "That's too much, that’s almost $120. I will give you eight thousand instead.”  Wellington agreed.  The man loaded the tree into his Land Cruiser and left.

Wellington went back to work and had ten iron Christmas trees by dark. The next morning he sold them all in an hour.  The next day he sold twenty. He recruited more help.  Even Njoroge started working for him.  Cars from everywhere pulled up in front of his workshop.  They left with black iron Christmas trees sticking out of their trunks.  A reporter for the newspaper took a picture of Wellington and his trees. It appeared the next day in the Daily  Nation, with a small story  Wellington and the meaning of his “sculpture” as the article called it.

With a week to go before Christmas, Wellington had enough money to cover six months rent.  By Christmas Eve he had enough money to cover a year’s rent and pay for Shiku's operation. He walked home late on Christmas Eve with bags of food purchased at Nakumatt and some small surpise gifts for both Winnie and Shiku. 

As he turned that last corner into the gathering darkness, the spotlights came on illuminating the iron cross.  Ugly, really.  Not much beauty in it as an object.  But what was beautiful, truly beautiful about that first Christmas tree upon which Christ had been nailed, was that it had less to do with appearances and more about productivity.  Beauty, at least the nail-hard kind that lasts forever, was strong like iron.

Help, Thanks, Wow

I’ve been scrummaging around for days now, trying to figure out how to write a retrospective on this most exceptional of years.  I am way overdue, but felt at a loss.  Then, just when I was about to give up the whole ordeal, I saw that one of my spiritual gurus, Anne Lamott, had come out with her latest book Help, Thanks, WOW, The Three Essential Prayers, and it says everything.  Everything.

Anne is in love with Jesus, but not reverent, and certainly not theological.   She helps me see things refreshingly.  This book, which I devoured the day it arrived on my Kindle, was a “Yes! Exactly”  kind of read. 

Anne says, “Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.”   She divides prayer into three categories, Help, Thanks and WOW.  And that has been our year.  It has been a help, thanks and wow kind of year. 

Help

On Valentines Day we discovered there was a problem; a lump.  The doctor in Kenya  confirmed a serious and aggressive tumor moving to the margins of my right breast.  CANCER.   The rapid-fire series of choices and decisions  that followed resulted in a mastectomy at the University of Michigan Cancer Center and  months of healing and reconstruction.  Mark was uprooted from his leadership at AIU’s Center for World Christianity, and I literally left a tour group of 18 women eating breakfast omelets at the university guest house.   Anne says, “There’s a freedom in hitting bottom, . . . in admitting you’ve reached the place of great unknowing.  This is where restoration can begin. . . “

Help included things like, no place to live, we will need a car, who will assume our responsibilities, how do you pay when you have cancer treatment?   Where do you go?  How does it all work?

Thanks

On November 5, I was declared cancer-free and surgery complete.  Thank you!   A course at Harvard teaches that thanks and gratitude actually make you feel better.  The secret to a happy and healthy life is saying “thanks” and being grateful.   We are grateful for our kids and spouses who welcomed us into their homes for months on end, and somehow managed to convince us it was their privilege.  We are thankful for a car to use all year, and for friends and family who traveled from far and wide to see us.   We are thankful for colleagues who picked up our responsibilities at AIU and did them so well.    Anne says, “Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior.  It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides.”

Strangely, this “help” year, has had more thanks in it than we ever expected.

WOW

“Wow is offered with a gasp, a sharp intake of breath, when we can’t  think of another way to capture a sudden unbidden insight or an unexpected flash of grace.” WOW means we are not dulled to wonder.   When new wonder cannot get into our lives and cause light, then, well that is the beginning of death.    So, WOW is life-giving, it truly is.     WOW is William Shaw White, who was born in June, and we were there to see his birth.  Having cancer made that possible.  WOW is Christmas with four grandsons under four years old, and feeling the awareness of being alive in the middle of the gifts and child-wonder. 

WOW, is that little choke that holds back tears when you are smiling, and think, “It could have all been so very different this year.”

So, this has been our Help,Thanks and WOW year, and on January 4^th we head back to Kenya.  We hope we will live a help,thanks, WOW lifestyle this year.  My prayer is that I will remember to journal more days than not – and that each day will have some help, thanks and WOW.  Should be a great year.

Love,

Lois for the both of us

The Angels of Norumbega (a short story by Mark Shaw)

There is a legend in the quiet coastal town of Norumbega, Maine, that every Christmas two angels stand on the mountain overlooking the village and continue a debate that has raged through the centuries. One angel recounts the losses of the year that have hit each family.  The other angel counts the blessings.  Some tell the story favoring the Dark Angel and the fact that life is a tragedy.  Others, the eternal optimists, favor the Other Angel, insisting that life is comedy and that somehow things will work out.  Most people in the town were somewhere in between.

   On this one particular Christmas Eve, the Dark Angel pointed its long, skeletal finger at a small cottage on the edge of town and uttered the words that it repeated each year:  "All that begins, must end." The Other Angel said nothing but looked down upon the cottage framed by the falling snow.

Margaret Makepeace swore as she burned her finger on the tea kettle screaming on the stove. She ran the finger under the cold water and thought about the Christmas Day that faced her the next morning

It would be her first Christmas without Harold. They had been married 45 years. It had not been an easy marriage but it had been a good one. Grief had brought them together at the halfway point of their union. Their only child, Richard, had been a troubled young man, with substance abuse problems. He had enlisted for Desert Storm and was killed days before he was due to return. People talk about what the death of a child does to a marriage. Lots of couples, she had read, split up after a tragedy like that. Harold and Margaret had grown closer. When Harold had passed away in March from a brain aneurism, her world had come to an end. She was going through the motions of the holidays but felt like an empty ornament.

There really was no one else to fill the void, no family at least. She had church friends.  They were great. Her only surviving relative, her older sister, was in a home in California.  She no longer remembered who Margaret was. For all extents and purposes, as far as family was concerned, Margaret Makepeace was alone in the world. She poured her tea and sat in her living room, next to her undecorated tree, looking out   at the drifting snow.

     Back on the mountain, the Dark Angel lowered his arm and then turned to the Other Angel , his shadowed face solemn with the conviciton of a case closed.  The Other Angel turned back towards the Makepeace cottage, lifted his arm and said: "And all that is lost shall be found again."

    A brown UPS truck drove up to Margaret's front door. The driver tucked a large thin envelope under his arm, walked up the walkway and rang the bell.

   Margaret opened the door. She  smiled at the driver and took the envelope from him. She put it on the table beside her tea. What was this about? Could it be something related to Harold's estate? She looked at the return address. It simply said L. Andrews, Worcester, MA. She opened the envelope and pulled out the contents.

Dear Mrs. Makepeace,

My name is Lisa Andrews. I was born in 1991 to Vicky Marcello and Richard Makepeace. My mother Vicky knew my father only briefly before he left for the gulf war in 1991 and had me after my father died in that war. She put me up for adoption just before she herself died of an overdose. I was raised by a wonderful family who loved me and helped me get a good education. I graduated from university this past May with a degree in social work. I now work with young moms in the Worcester area who are coping with the challenges of being single parents. I have met a wonderful man and we are engaged to be married in the spring.

Over the last few years I have been curious about my birth mother and father. With my adopted family's blessing and help I decided to find out about my past. I was able to discover my parents’ names but could not find any trace of my mother’s family. I did find out about you and your husband, however, and wondered if we could talk on the phone. I realize you might think this is some kind of scam. I assure you, however, it is not. I was so overjoyed to find out that I have family, particularly grandparents,  that I just had to try and make contact. Please call my number below if you would like to talk and I can help allay any fears you may have about whether this is genuine or not.  If you decide not to follow up on this, I will respect your decision and not bother you again.

 Your loving Granddaughter,

 Lisa

    Margaret looked at the attached picture.  Lisa was a beautiful girl.  She looked exactly like Richard.  What if it was true? Is it possible that something of him had survived? That she had Family? She sat in silence for what seemed like a glacial age, glanced at the letter once again and picked up the phone.

     Back on the mountain, the Other Angel lowered his hand and looked at the Dark Angel. Point and Counterpoint.  They stared at each other in silence. They would go through this exercise for another several hours.  They would point at each house in Norumbega and follow the script that had just played out. For it was Christmas, a time when the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy had inaugurated a new age.  A time when the great argument about whether life was a tragedy or a comedy had entered its final round. A time when the  world of loss and death was itself dying and a world of  new surprises and never ending stories was being born.

Bed, Bath and Beyond Cancer

“Take all your clothes off."

" Put this on; opening in the front.   You’ll also need these socks.   Put all your personal belongings in this bag and put it under the table.    The doctor will be right in.”   

With a dramatic flourish of closing the privacy curtain, Nurse Efficiency left the room.

I sat obediently in my leather look chair and waited.  The Big Bird yellow socks were making my feet sweat, but the rest of me was shivering.   Why are hospitals always twenty degrees colder than the rest of the world?  

A few minutes later Dr. Wilkins whooshed in with his magic marker and what appeared to be a classroom full of students/residents/nurses/techies/anesthesiologists, etc.  

Somewhere at the last intersection my modesty took a right and I turned left.   I did come to a teaching hospital  after all.

Dr. Wilkins had me hold a blanket about belly-dancer height around my hips and there I  stood as he measured drew lines with his marker, measured again and drew more dots and lines.  In the end my top half looked like a page out of mapquest. 

As Dr. Wilkins explained the procedure to the class, and they took notes on their clip boards; I listened, they nodded.

Here it is as I understood:

They were going to take a large fist full of my stomach and stuff  it up through my torso under the skin,  and shove it out in the appropriate spot on my chest.   I could almost hear Julia Childs explaining it all:  “Then baste, and  bake  for 4 hours at 325 degrees. “

 The flesh would never be separated completely from my body, which would make the rejection factor a non-problem.  It’s called a tram flap and is cutting edge medicine (did I say  that?).    The students took notes and I stood there feeling pretty vulnerable. 

One of my girl friends said to me, “Lois, every woman would like to have a nip and tuck, completely covered by insurance.”   OK, I get that.

A six hour operation, and two hours in the post-op later,  I came to, feeling like Humpty Dumpty.

_____

It has been almost a week in bed, a few sponge baths, and extreme sports like walking down the hallway, walking to the living room, and getting into pajamas, later and   I am beginning to believe that there is life beyond this year. 

I’m still riding the wave of learning more about the dark side of beauty and the beautiful side of our dark times.  I’m so glad for a creative God who always mixes it up a little just when I think I’ve got him all figured out.    He’s had more whine and cheese from me than necessary, but, He’s in this with me for the long haul.  This I believe.

Thanks for listening,

Lois

Cancer Story –  Why I want radiation every morning for the rest of my life.  

Excuse me if I get a little existential, but I’ve been thinking . . .

 Somewhere between Sartre and Kierkegaard is where I find myself drifting when I am laying on the radiation table, waiting to be zapped yet another time.    What is the meaning of my life anyway?   How does all of this fit into Gods dreams for my life mission and my personal goals?  Cancer puts a big  “C” in the middle of your life journey and whether you want to or not, you’ve got to pull over and wait for the traffic to resume. 

The theologian Paul steps into the conversation swirling around in my mind (I hope  I’m not talking out loud)  when he talks about Jesus being the exact radiation of his Father  (Colossians).  Hmmmm. 

Radiation is a word I’ve probably said every day for the last two months.  And funny enough, I  always thought of radiation as starting from one central point and  fanning out – like ripples from a stone in a calm pond, or the rays of the sun coming from the solar center to the farthest points in the milky way.  However, as I lay there in the radiation room,  the radiologists,  Jamie and Mike,  focus huge  round panels (maybe 3 feet in diameter, like mega shower heads)  down to a tiny pen point on my body and harness all that power into a single spot,  reversing what I always visualized radiating to be. 

So, I’ve been thinking . . .

Maybe,  I need to be more like the radiation in the oncology rooms, VERY intentionally focused.   I need to use the remaining  months or years of my life to focus as thoughtfully as possible? 

 God has used a few other reminders along the way this year, to let me know that every day is a treasure.   In the past few months, one colleague and two brothers-in-law have died.   Not even a week ago, my brother-in-law, Robert Clement died suddenly of a brain aneurism.  He had served in his church on Sunday morning and collapsed on Sunday afternoon while he was out for a walk.  At the same time, a niece is getting married, two nieces have just had babies, and Anne is expecting a baby next month.  Life. Birth. Death.  Disease.  All in God’s great  mega story.

So I’ve been thinking . . . .

I  do want my cancer to count.

I want God to be my center, my true north.

I want Christ to radiate me – and to let me radiate!

And I want to continue radiation treatment for the rest of my life – with God zapping me every morning  in the most focused way, so I will keep radiating His glory every day I have left.

So, what about you?  What have you been thinking?  I’d love to know.

Lois

Waiting to inhale

Easter Expectations:  Waiting to inhale.

(An email started the afternoon of Easter).

I saw Valenta this morning after church.  She came over to the car to say how happy she was to hear that I did not have to go through chemo.   Her smile was warm and radiant, and I knew she was truly filled with joy for me.

Valenta lives a couple of houses down from us, and is a good friend of Kate and Jonathan.  Her husband, Felix is a Ph.D student at the University of Michigan with Jonathan.   Valenta and I have become friends as we faced breast cancer surgery and then the follow-up challenges of “treatment.”   She is about one month ahead of me in the process, and she has begun chemo.  Her prognosis is filled with difficult challenges and projections.  Mine is radiation.

As we pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home, I felt sadly guilty and inward. 

I wanted to keep inhaling the great gulps of resurrection infusion that we had just been singing about, yet  I couldn’t seem to get a good breath.  As the cherry blossoms and dogwood flew by the windows I felt blurry and unfocused.   Why did I get off so easy?  Why did Valenta have to face the “whole enchilada?”  And Valenta has a little one to raise.   I got away with just six weeks of radiation. 

I was not engaged in the conversation in the car.  I kept my gaze outside; distant.     I reflected on an article I had recently read (by John Piper).  He said things I didn’t necessarily want to hear – but made me think deeply about amazing grace.  The article was called, “Don’t Waste your Cancer.”   Slowly I began to inhale.  Here are my own thoughts on not wasting my cancer:

1)      I will waste my cancer if I spend more time thinking and reading about my cancer, than I spend reading and thinking about God.

2)      I will waste my cancer if I let “cancer patient” define me, instead of my true identity as a much-loved child and creation of God

3)      I will waste my cancer if I do not use this gift of being sidelined as a time for reflection, meditation, and re-evaluation.  What busy adult has not longed for time to read books they’ve had to set aside, journal, write or do whatever hobby they enjoy.  This is my time.  This is my time to sort through old pictures and catch up with good friends. My time to think.

4)      I will waste my cancer if I do not see splashes of grace and streams of life-giving light in each day

5)      I will waste my cancer if I do not intentionally love the people around me as if my life depended on it.  Because it does.

Still breathing.  Still inhaling each day’s new light.  For as Thoreau said, “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”   Radiation began yesterday:  6 weeks, 5 days a week, 1 hour a day . . . 

Much love,

Lois

To Chemo or not to Chemo?

Waiting has never been one of my talents.  I’ll admit, I even tell secrets I’m not supposed to tell because I just can’t stand the excitement of waiting.  (But only good secrets). 

Yesterday, when we were told that it will be another two weeks for a definitive decision on my treatment plan, I was, well , ready to put a staple gun to my head – almost.   But I got over that, since more than waiting, I hate pain.

We were at the cancer center from 2:30 pm until almost 6:00 and had lots and lots of information downloaded on us, so this morning, I had Kate, my dear daughter-in-law who is a nurse, exegete what exactly happened.  It was still a lot of stuff.

I have come away with four salient points, so I don’t bore you to tears:

1)      There is a 50/50 chance I may NOT need chemo!!  But we won’t know for two more weeks.

2)      My particular cancer tumor showed that it was 100% estrogen receptor positive (dependent). This  is actually a good thing because it means that any microscopic cells that could have been missed can be actively controlled by taking an anti estrogen pill for the next 5 years.    At this point, that is the only part of my regimen that is certain.  This  treatment basically starves the estrogen cells to death.  So as the medical oncologist said,

 “Chemo smashes the cancer cells to death; the anti-estrogen procedure starves them.”

3)  The tumors (actually I had two) are being sent to a special lab for “oncotype testing” (genetic testing of the cancer cells to determine the recurrence possibilities) and determine whether chemo is the best way forward in addition to the anti-estrogen pill.

4)      After this first decision is made, there will be a radiation consult.  That discussion is based on the fact that the tumor margins were so close to the chest wall.

Waiting for two more weeks, so that I may not need chemo is well worth the wait.  And you know, David in the Psalms, reminded me that, “People who wait on the Lord’s timing, soar with wings like eagles, run and don’t get winded, and walk and don’t pass out.”  I’ll go with the wait.

One little downside:  I had picked out this adorable little white wig with teeny tiny 2 inch dreadlocks, all over my head, for my new look. . .  (remember those bathing caps?)

Thanks for listening and loving me.  Love has healing in it.

Lopsided Lois