Brunch And A Train Wreck

After she drove her daughter to chemotherapy Tuesday, my friend Barbara White treated me to a steak omelet brunch at Dave’s Diner, then we returned to my house, sat outside by the garden fountain, and talked for four hours about God’s control over circumstances and our personal responsibility in life.

Guess which one of us contributed the following tidbit to the conversation:

I do not get to run the train,
The whistle I can’t blow.
I have no say in which a-way,
Or how fast the train will go.

I can not stoke the boiler.
I can not ring the bell.
But let the damn thing jump the track,
And guess who catches Hell!

You’re right!

It was me.

That’s a poem I once saw on a reporter’s cubicle in the newsroom way back in the days when I worked for the local newspaper and I’ve remembered it all these years. How come I can remember that sort of thing but have such a hard time remembering Bible verses?

Although a grown woman, Barbara’s daughter now weighs well under a hundred pounds. This morning, her physician said that the regime of chemotherapy has stopped being effective and he started her on a new regime.

“We are not out of options,” he said.

Barbara attends her church regularly but she told me that she draws little comfort from the politics, programs and procedures of the church.

“I find I care less and less about more and more,” she said.

Barbara herself is a cancer survivor having undergone surgery and treatment several years ago. She knows from experience what is involved and what her daughter endures.

The element which comforts her most as she and her daughter go through this troubled time is music as she remembers hymns and praise songs. At one point over pancakes in the diner she softly sang a few phrases from one of the songs about walking close to the Lord.

Such songs remind her that she and her daughter are not in this alone, that Christ is present here and now, even when we are not aware of His presence.

“God makes all things work together for good,” Barbara said, “But He lets us make our own mistakes”.

One particularly good thing comes out of this cosmic train wreck:

Relations were once strained between Barbara and her daughter, but in driving her several times a week to chemo, Barbara and her have bonded to the point of enjoying one another’s company and laughing together. “We’ve never been closer than now,” Barbara said.

As we talked about God's control and human responsibility, butterflies fluttered amid my flower beds; squirrels drank from the fountain, bluejays attacked the birdfeeders, and lizards soaked in patches of sun. The garden radiates peace.

Yet because of all the construction debris around my house and all the work that remains to be done, I feel my yard and garden looks like a train wreck scene; I’m so sick of all the mess and clutter.

I told Barbara about my home repair projects, about painting and rain gutters and tearing down sheds. And about the anguish I go through in deciding which books to keep and which to dispose of.

In the past few years Barbara moved from a house to a condo, from her condo to a one bedroom apartment, then to an efficiency apartment. At each step she had to whittle down her possessions.

Paintings. Books. Heirlooms. Furniture. Dishes. Houseplants — all left behind.

“How do you cope with this reduction of possessions?” I asked her.

“My memory helps,” she said. “I find that I forget that I ever had such stuff, so it’s no longer so important. Sometimes losing your memory can be helpful”.

Did we arrive at a definitive answer to the question of God’s control over circumstances and human responsibility?

No.

Of course not.

Better minds than ours have struggled with this question for ages.

Yet every person can live in the love of God without knowing the answer.

As Barbara said yesterday, “Jesus does not give us answers; He gives us Himself”.