How fruitless to be ever thinking
yet never embrace a thought...
to have the power to believe
and believe it's all for naught.
I, too, have reckoned time and truth
(content to wonder if not think)
in metaphors and meaning
and endless patterns of ink.
Perhaps a few may find their way
to the world where others live,
sharing not just thoughts I've gathered
but those I wish to give.
Tom Kapanka
Location: Lake Michigan Shoreline, Midwest, United States
By Grace, I'm a follower of Christ. By day, I'm a recently retired school administrator; by night (and always), I'm a husband and father (and now a grandfather); and by week's end, I sometimes find myself writing or reading in this space. Feel free to join in the dialogue.
Since he was old enough to notice it, my grandson has pointed to the “zipper” on his chest with pride. That’s what he calls the scar that runs the length of his sternum. He remembers nothing, of course, about his first open-heart surgery as a newborn; but he knows that beneath the zipper is where the doctors fixed his special heart. Like the scar, his understanding is only skin deep. He is too young to fully comprehend the intricacies of the special heart that beats behind the scar. In fact I’m not sure that I do.
Every time I read about Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), I'm amazed by how the heart is designed to work in concert with the rest of the body, and I'm reminded of Psalm 139:14: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works." So the fact that HLHS surgeries basically reconfigure half-a-heart to function as if it were whole is, in some ways, equally marvelous.
Like the psalmist, most of us tend to take the wonders of God’s creation for granted until, for reasons we may never understand, there is a deviation in its beauty. It may be an earthquake, a tornado, a tsunami, a flood, or a "funky heart" (as the HLHS community calls such conditions). It's then that the shared root of the words awful and awesome reflect both the fear and wonder of creation when something it is out of rhythm. I wrote of this years ago in the poem below:
When it comes to the human body, it is deviations from the norm that explain how we are both “fearfully” and “wonderfully” made. Thanks to our autonomic nervous system, the vital systems of our bodies maintain pressures and temperatures and rhythms without our effort or care. It is only when a deviation occurs (and the fear it may bring) that we are reminded of the wonder set in motion before we were even born.
In my grandson’s case the deviation is an incomplete heart. He has no left ventricle. This was discovered during an ultrasound months before he was born. That was the first time my daughter and son-in-law heard the term: Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). It is common enough to have a name yet rare enough that most people know nothing about it.
That is why I’m writing this post as I pass the hours in a waiting room of a renown Children’s hospital in West Michigan. Writing is cathartic for me--even if no one reads my thoughts.
I'm not alone here in the waiting room. In the chairs beside me are the three other grandparents of the bravest little boy I know. The four of us were also here together when he was born and a few days later when the first incision made “the zipper.”
We are also not alone in a different sense. Each year, more than 1,000 babies are born with HLHS in the United States (roughly 1 out of 4.000 births). This statistic does not include numerous other types of congenital heart defects. Until a few decades ago, the series of operations that increase the odds of bringing HLHS babies home from the hospital did not exist.
Someday my grandson will know all of this, but for now he knows basically two things:
First of all, he knows he tires more quickly than his sister, cousins, and playmates at church and preschool. (This is because he has no left ventricle. The surgery makes it possible for his right ventricle to do double duty—pushing blood to his lungs for oxygenation AND THEN pushing that oxygenated blood from his right aorta to the rest of his body. Normally, the right ventricle pushes the blood to the lungs, and the larger, stronger left ventricle performs the big push to the extremities.
For five-and-a-half years, this brave little heart has worked twice as hard to bring the color to his cheeks and oxygen to his organs and muscles. Even so, "twice as hard" is not quite enough to sustain normal oxygen levels as the blood courses the long paths to his hands and feet where his nails are sometimes slightly blue. This is why—even on warm days—his little hand in mine is sometimes cold.
It’s why when walking from a sandy beach back to the car, he smiles up and asks, “Papa, can you carry me?”
True, my whole-hearted grandkids sometimes ask for such a lift, but with HLHS kids the earnest plea is because their half-a-heart is working twice as hard. . . every minute of every day.
This is his “normal,” and for the most part, he lives each day like a normal little boy. Most people who meet him when his zipper is covered by a shirt, know only that he is a funny, imaginative, adorable kid who gets along especially well with his doting older sister.
The other thing this brave little boy knows is that there is a reason his scar a "zipper": The opening and closing of this sternum incision is a recurring reality all HLHS face from birth to age four or five, and today it will be opened again.
The surgery performed at birth is called the NORWOOD PROCEDURE.
Norwood Procedure: Details, Recovery & Outlook
The second “open heart” surgery takes place at four months. This is called the GLEN procedure. The Glenn Procedure | Nemours Kids Health
And at age four or five the GLEN modification is outgrown and other blood vessels must be rerouted in what is called the FONTAN procedure.
Fontan procedure. These names are known by all HLHS parents because instead of having mixed emotions about the first day of kindergarten, they know they will walk again through the Valley of the Shadow made hopeful only through faith and small miracles performed by surgeons who understand more than most of us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
I've never actually asked my daughter this, but I think the biggest non-medical challenge for parents awaiting their child’s of FONTAN compared to the first two surgeries is the fact that their baby has grown up; four “Happy Birthdays” have been sung; four Christmases have come and gone; four Halloween costumes have walked down the driveway into the neighborhood beyond. The Fontan patient is now a thinking, talking child being asked to demonstrate a level of bravery that most adults have never faced.
This shared challenge forms a bond of Biblical proportion between parent and child because it is drenched in the anguish of walking an unfamiliar path between faith and fear: the faith part is anchored in HOPE (without an “s”) which fills their night-time prayers, but the fear part wakes the parent in the night because earthly HOPES (with an "s") have no guarantees. This, of course, has been true for all parents since the beginning of time, but those who live with a child who lives with physical deviations from the norm know well the path between "fearfully and wonderfully" made each day.
Parents who step each day onto the HLHS stage learn not to squint in the harsh lights; they know how to block out the background and not to overthink the unscripted lines of people new to the play. They learn to enjoy the rehearsals as they learn from each review. Through the process, they become empathetic observers of the stories around them. Their eyes may water when commercials for St. Jude's or Shriners Hospital flash unexpectedly on TV. HLHS parents have a deeper understanding of sermons about Mount Moriah, or King David’s lament, or the healing of Jarius’s daughter… and indeed, of Calvary itself.
Today my grandson’s sternum zipper will open again.
A network of friends and family have anticipated it for years. It's been scheduled for months. Multiple pre-operative visits have let my grandson know it’s coming, and he has been remarkably brave each time. . . as have been his parents (who in some ways carry a heavier burden). On my phone, I have a picture taken one week ago today when the bravest little boy I know met the surgeon who would do first-hand all that I've discussed above. Even then, there was a peace in his demeanor that passes all of my understanding. Both the foctor and child look calm and thoughtful. Perhaps someday, with the parent’s permission, I'll add the photo to this post.
For now… imagine with me a similar scene from moments ago: Imagine thst same surgeon stepping into pre-op for one final conversation with the parents and patient. He speaks with the same calm voice he had the week before. He uses the same sterile terms and cadence that only parents understand…and all the while they nod and try to mystically transmit courage into their child’s widening eyes. Then the surgeon inhales optimistically and asks if there are any questions. Both parents shake their heads no.
Then he turns to the little boy and says, “How ‘bout you, young man. Do you have any questions?”
I’m not sure the surgeon was expecting a reply, but he got one. All the other conversations were about someday in the future, but it is now apparent to this four-year-old that there is no longer a buffer of time. My daughter told me he just looked up with those big blue eyes and pleaded sincerely, “Do we have to do this surgery now?”
When my daughter told me this account a few hours ago, my eyes welled up and my thoughts turned to Gethsemane where Jesus knew what was coming, He knew why it was coming. He had many “pre-operative" conversations with his loved ones—repeatedly telling them that it was coming, and yet when the buffer of time had vanished…alone there in the garden… he pleaded with His father: “Lord, is there any other way? Can we let this cup pass from me?”
I’ve heard my grandson’s voice when he bravely asks hard questions, and to me it was as if he was asking the doctor a Gethsemane-like question: “Do we have to do this surgery now?” While his parents tried to think of what to say, the doctor said something sincere, but the little boy could read the body language. The calm of his parents’ faces was upstaged by the their tearful eyes.
The bed began to roll…
“So, it’s time?” Their little boy asked. My daughter did her best to fill the silence with reassurance as his bed rolled down the corridor and the large doors closed between them.
I wrote the above account in August but did not post it until today, November 24. My grandson’s surgery was a huge success. He is enjoying kindergarten—learning to read and write—but his conversational skills are downright funny as the following will confirm:
This past week, I underwent a “nuclear stress test” that has prompted a heart-cath scheduled for Tuesday morning… with the possibility of coming home before before Thanksgiving Day. Indications, however, point to a longer stay involving multiple bypass open-heart surgery.
When my daughter told my grandson about the possibility of me having surgery similar to what he faced in August, he looked concerned for a moment then smiled and said, "Hooray! Papa and I will be ‘zipper buddies.'"
I’ll know weather or not I get some stents or a “zipper” after tomorrow’s heart cath, but I took great comfort in having a new level of camaraderie with the bravest little boy I know.
Update as of Tuesday night: we praise the Lord for clarification and peace. I’m scheduled for open-heart in 48 hours (the morning after Thanksgiving). Looks like Julie and I will be celebrating Thanksgiving in Mercy (that was the name of this hospital before it became “Trinity Health Nerwork). I FaceTimed my grandson with the “zipper” news.
All things break... .....but nothing like the heart, .....the stained glass window of the soul.
Most things mend... .....but never quite the same .....though all the parts make up the whole.
In the fall of 1968, my parents purchased a fourteen-acre parcel of timbered land near New Baltimore, Michigan. It happened to be the same year that Jim, the youngest of their five children, was born. I’m the second youngest (Tom). I was just entering seventh grade at the time. Dave was entering ninth grade; Paul was entering tenth; and Kathy was a junior. The story of how the property, as we called it, was transformed from mere land into a home can be read in chapters beginning July 2008 at Patterns of Ink.
My family moved into the brick house in the front half of that woods in the fall of 1975.Toward the end of those chapters about the property is a post entitled “Kathy’s Christmas Surprise” (Posted in April, 2010). Those pages tell of Kathy and Jack coming home from South Carolina for Christmas. They had been married on June 28, 1975, just six months before… so you can imagine what the surprises was. [Her name is Aimee. Ben came six years later.] The news of becoming grandparents was very exciting, and my parents were equally pleased later that spring when Kathy called with another announcement:
“Jack and Kathy were moving home. Neither of them wanted to start the parenthood chapters of their life so far away. Home is where they wanted to be. That is: they wanted to begin a home of their own near the home where we had been together for Christmas. They didn’t want to impose, of course, but …[t]hey wondered...just wondered...if it would be alright if they lived there in the basement until they found a place of their own. . .
“Okay? Okay? Of course it’s Okay!” Mom was beside herself. “That’ll be no trouble at all!”
“No trouble at all,” Dad laughed, “Your bed is right where you left it.”
The bed my father referred to was not in a room but set up right in the middle of the south end of the basement beside the make-shift living room. At the time, the upstairs of the house was not yet finished, and that Christmas, when we were all home, the entire family lived in the basement. Jim and my parents still did. The cozy quarters were reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons, two TV shows that were popular at the time. In fact, Mom often took pleasure in reminding us that our life on the property was very much like the Earl Hammer Jr. story, “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story,” which aired in 1971 and upon which The Waltons was based.
Truth be told, Mom and Dad wished we all (and our families-to-be) had remained together there on our Walton’s Mountain, but within five years, Paul, Dave and I were married and living elsewhere. That house remained the place we gathered on countless Christmas Breaks and summer vacations. We never lost the close-knit bond that families are meant to enjoy, but those times together were punctuated by long good-byes and a backward glance in the rear-view mirror as Mom, Dad and Jim stood waving in the long driveway. In the end, even Jim would marry and move away. It was only Jack and Kathy who made Mom’s Walton’s Mountain wish come true by building their home right there on the property just a stone’s throw from the little brick house in the woods. Kathy and Jack lived in their “new” house for more than forty years and, at the time of this writing, still live on that site (though in a different house).
“Up from the Ashes”
Chapter One: Three Days After Christmas
It wasthree days after Christmas—those slow-motion days when “the most wonderful time of the year” fades into more mundane living. You know the feeling: The tree is still up, but gone is the sense of anticipation that rekindles childhood in us all. The company has left and the left-overs have lost their appeal. Those “cold turkey” days hold only the hope of the coming year. Three days after Christmas always means it’s three days before New Year's Eve. For my sister Kathy, in 2019, it meant a small gathering “For Auld Lang Syne” at her house. Those friends, however, knew not to come once they saw the evening news just three days after Christmas.
It was a Saturday night. Kathy and Jack had gone out for dinner with another couple. The house was empty, and we thank God for that. The two couples had just been seated, menus in hand, and all was well when they got a phone call from the police.
A stranger had driven past their house and thought he saw the glow of flames in the south-east corner. He pulled down the neighbor's long driveway and could see that the flames were inside the house. He called 911. Moments later, the neighbor (who now lived in our former family home) joined the stranger in the driveway. She called Kathy's cell phone to make sure they were out of the house.
“The police already called. We’re headed home now. How bad is it?” Kathy asked.
“It’s bad, Kathy. Some of the tree limbs above the house are already burning.”
Driving down 23-Mile Road, they saw the glow high in the night sky. Additional sirens could be heard in all directions. It was a five alarm fire.
Fire trucks and emergency vehicles blocked the circle driveway. Stepping from the car, Kathy and Jack were kept at a distance by police. Soon local TV news vans joined confusion. One held a mic in Kathy’s face, “How do you feel right now? She asked. Kathy said nothing as she and Jack and a growing number of friends and neighbors looked on in helpless disbelief as the home they built forty years ago fell floor by floor in flames.
As Kathy pondered the absurdity of being asked “How do you feel?” by that reporter… what swept over her was the sudden awareness of the misplaced security we humans have in the things and spaces that wrap around us like a comforter in our favorite chair.
When such things were going up in smoke before her eyes, the sense of letting go was so akin to how she knew believers ought to feel about eternity that she found solace in the sorrow behind each tearful sigh.
Jack, on the other hand, went to the garage, the only part of the building not in flames, grabbed a large bundle of bottled water, and began passing them out to the firemen. Thus, they passed the time until all that remained was a hulk of smoldering beams and rubble.
The double garage was somewhat buffered by the breezeway. It and its walk-up attic had survived sparing both of their cars inside. On a more sentimental note, the day after the fire, when Jack took this picture, Kathy informed us that boxes of our old family photos from our own mother's attic had been spared in the attic of the garage. This meant that our parent’s wedding book from 1951 was still with us. Sadly, however, Kathy's own wedding album from 1975 was in the house and lost in the fire. She was heartbroken about that. I suggested that her wedding photographer would still have the negatives, but years before she had tried to locate him and found that his business had been closed without a trace many years before.
Chapter Two: “For Auld Lang Syne”
When New Year’s came, Jack and Kathy found their way to our side of the state. They said ours was their “home away from home.” We were honored, and the change of setting did them good. This was different from the many other visits through the years. Most of this brief stay was spent shopping for essentials. Each morning they woke up remembering things homeless people need: underwear, shoes, coats, etc. The search for basic provisions gradually turned to home furnishings and “thrifting,” which was a bit more exciting. By the time they headed home, their car was loaded like two kids headed off to college. Those larger items went to their garage (which survived the fire), but they themselves were temporarily living with the same friends who had joined them for dinner the night of the fire. This temporary address was only five minutes away from the remains of the house.
During these weeks, Kathy and Jack never stopped calling the ruins beside their standing garage “home.” They had to return there often to meet with fireman, insurance agents, contractors, etc. For safety reasons, they were not allowed to step beyond the footprint of the house itself. Still, each time they went there, they referred to it as “home,” so strong was their intention of rebuilding and returning there as soon as possible.
All of my siblings had come the night of the fire or the morning after, but Julie and I had not yet been there. Strange to feel a need to go—much like the need to go to the viewing before a funeral. So when Jack told us of the scheduled demolition of the chimney and the razing of the charred portions that still stood, I knew we had to go for a farewell of sorts.
Julie and Kathy were not with us when Jack and I pulled into the driveway.
“I know it may seem strange that I am asking you to do this, but I really wanted to come here in person.” I said.
"Nope. Not strange at all," Jack said," I come by every day. I've gotten to where it feels normal."
We walked through the scorched hedges that line the walk to the front porch, stepped over the security fence, and just started roaming around at our own pace. My eyes kept squinting toward details, as if they had "facial recognition" software and the ability to zoom in on twisted skeletal steel frames and other unrecognizable forms in the blackened ruins. Like a grim version of the “I Spy” picture books my daughters and I used to search at bedtime. Each page had dozens of objects hidden in plain sight.
It was several minutes before either Jack or I spoke. I cleared my throat and said, "I'm glad you are past the shock of this, but I'm warning you, I could just bawl at any minute." I swallowed hard, but kept peering into the sad mess.
Then I began taking pictures of the things my eyes had sorted out, and in an odd, inexplicable way there was a strange sort of beauty in each discovery. Seeing a type of art in the ruins removed emotion from reality in the same way that archaeologist find beauty in the stones of Rome or Pompeii,
I walked the full circle around the ruins and sometimes poked my head into thresholds and openings in the walls. I never fully crossed to the "inside space." It felt unsafe but something more... it felt sanctified, set apart. It was no longer a place for living.
As I stood in the outside kitchen door, I tried to imagine that it had not been lost to fire but instead by passing time. As if I were some omniscient sage looking back from a future time when things from our present might seem an ancient past.:
"And this is how they lived," I thought. "This is how they built their homes, and 'feathered their nests,' and bought and stored and cooked our food, and sat to meals and went to bed and shared our lives together. This is how man set the stage upon which life was played."
I stepped around the corner to where my walk had started. Jack had gone to close the garage door which left me there on the front porch alone.
Stepping to but not through the threshold, I noticed to my left the burnt garland of evergreen boughs dangling from the porch light.
I touched the brittle string of melted Christmas lights. I'd forgotten the fire had happened just three days after Christmas. It felt like an eternity ago.
Just beyond the door frame to the left was another frame of what had been the coat-closet door. Nothing hung inside.
There between the closet and the stairs, for years and years, had been the scene of our family’s legendary long good-byes before we headed off in all directions. I could almost hear my grandmothers laugh. For many years, even after my own parents passed, she was our elder statesmen—though her charm would never have been described as stately. It was in this space where coats were handed out and a dozen stocking feet sorted through and stepped into shoes that had been slipped off in the corner of the floor upon entering the home. I could now see through the floor to the basement.
This was the entry that had inspired a Thanksgiving poem I’d written fifteen years before:
At Grace.
Sometimes it’s the little things
like putting in the extra leaf
and keeping window watch
and taking covered dishes at the door
and hugging through coats
that bring in winter’s air;
staring fondly at the face come furthest home;
laughing with the funny uncle in the kitchen;
holding hands once large and small—
but ever more alike—around the laden table;
and smiling at the changeless gaze
(framed on the far mantle)
of one not there to pray.
It’s the little things that make Thanksgiving.
The tastes and smells and long-awaited feast
at best are just the garnish of the day.
It’s the enormity of little things
that lumps our throats
and lifts our thoughts…
at grace.
Then to my right I saw our family homestead in the distance, and my eyes and nose began dripping. I hoped Jack couldn't see.
"Ready to go?" Jack asked, standing by the car.
"Yes." I said without showing my face. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes then turned toward him. Stepping from the porch, I smiled a smile I hoped worked from a distance.
It didn't. I plopped in the seat and closed the door with thud.
"It's okay, Tom. I get it,” Jack said, starting the car. “ Sometimes I just come here and stare... and think... and stare some more."
That evening, Jack told me that an architect friend had offered to draw up new house plans. More importantly, a rebuilding of a different kind was beginning where it mattered most. Jack and Kathy knew God had a plan and that He had chosen to try them by fire.
In all relationships there is chaff to be burned away—not always literally—but truth be told, God sometimes presses a “reset button” for those wise enough to see His plan. To what extent this may have been true for Kathy and Jack that December is not for me to say—I’m only confessing that it is true for all who choose to enter into marriage vows… “to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for long as we both shall live.”
The intended glue of those vows had been on my sister’s mind for months, and the fire had strengthened the glue. Just as the days were becoming harder to bear, God gave my sister one more small miracle—against all odds. Through the endless cycle of tears and denial and hurt and acceptance and prayers since the fire. she had one lingering hope so hopelessly impossible that she had only whispered it in secret prayer:: “Lord, please may it be there to help us start anew… Lord, please, if it be your will, may it be true.”
Chapter Three: “Love Among the Ruins”
It was the thirteenth day after the fire. Two weeks of heart-wrenching work in which Jack and Kathy were absorbed in the tasks of filling out forms and meeting with claims adjusters and remembering more and more things—just things—but things they would never see again to list in the claim. It the last day to ask two local firemen to attempt to find and remove anything from the ruins before final demolition. The stress and pace of it all made two weeks feel like one. Try as they might to be thankful for what matters most, the endless paperwork kept forcing their focus back to the material world. Making this formula for exhaustion even more draining, my sister Kathy tends to "process" well into the night only to resume early the next morning. Even so, there were rare times when she woke somewhat refreshed, and thought the whole ordeal had been a bad dream. If you've ever been in such a cycle, you know how it feels when your tired days and nights begin to blur like a water-color painting in the rain.
"They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." Psalm 126:5 (KJV)
That was Kathy’s frame of mind on the thirteenth day when she woke to her phone ringing.
"Oma, we prayed last night that somehow in the ashes you would find some treasures."
Just hearing of this child-like faith brought tears to Kathy's eyes, and her voice cracked on the phone as she thanked her ten-year-old granddaughter. None of the six grandchildren had been there as their grandparents' two-story home was in flames and collapsed into a pile of smoldering rubble. Nor had they been there to see it since. Had the young girl seen the blaze and what remained, perhaps she would have known that her prayer was asking for a miracle.
An hour later, Kathy stood at the doctor's office check-in window as the receptionist explained bluntly that she had no appointment and could not be seen.
"But I do have an appointment," Kathy explained, "I just got the reminder-call last night."
"No. That call was made two days ago. Your appointment was yesterday. We're totally booked today."
The receptionist did not mean to be curt. It was just a fact, and the full chairs behind Kathy and the bustling office in front of her confirmed it. Kathy had lost a day in the fog of the week and the realization blanked her face. She was too tired to be upset but too busy to reschedule.
"I'm willing to wait," Kathy sighed. "Maybe someone will cancel."
"It's your time. No promises...But as you can see, we're short on places to sit."
Too often it's on officious days with packed schedules or long lines or cramped quarters--those days when empathy is most needed--that mere efficiency prevails.
Kathy found a seat at the far end of the waiting room. She rested her eyes for some time, and was about to doze off when a kind but unfamiliar nurse stood over her.
"Come on, Kathy, I can take care of you right now," the nurse whispered with a smile.
As the two of them walked past the check-in window, the receptionist apologized. "I'm sorry, Kathy, I didn't know about the fire. No wonder you lost track... We've created an opening."
Kathy thanked her and followed the nurse down the narrow halls of closed doors to one that was open. Only when the door quietly closed behind them did this unexpected conversation begin.
"Kathy, Do you have a niece named Emily? Over in west Michigan?" The nurse asked. Kathy nodded. "Is her husband a pastor?" Kathy nodded again, too puzzled to ask why her niece more than 200 miles away had been mentioned.
"Well, my daughter goes to your Emily's church. They're good friends. She was over here for the holidays, of course, and on the night of your fire, your niece sent my daughter a text asking her to pray for you. That's how I knew about the fire before it was on the news. Kathy, I've been praying for you for two weeks, and we've never even met 'til now." The nurse introduced herself, skipped the handshake and went straight for a hug. "How are you doing?"
And that quickly, Kathy was too choked up to speak. It is so much easier to keep a brave face when others don't know what it's masking.
Note: It is likely that many reading here, like that nurse, have prayed for people they’ve never met in person. Many people do so without fully knowing that they are part of an unfathomable network.
Praying for others in times of need transcends the empathy of Romans 12:15 that encourages us to “Rejoice with those who do rejoice, and weep with those that weep.” It transcends the promise of Matthew 18:20: “Where two or three gather in my name, there are I am with them.” This network engages the ungathered. Its members know someone who knows someone who is suddenly in crisis. Their prayers may be unheard by human ears and offered up by countless unknown advocates. Even so, such a chorus of unknown voices supplicating in one accord (Acts 1:14, Philippians 2:2) becomes a symphony to God. “Symphony” literally means making one sound (phono) with (sym) many sounds—one plea with many voices in one unified purpose (i.e. in one accord). Such a chord, such harmony, such prayer is music to God’s ears because, unlike the prayer of gathered saints, it is heard only by Him—a symphony played by an unassembled orchestra. Forgive this hermeneutic pause in the story. It was prompted by what the nurse told Kathy in the doctor’s office. The nurse was part of a symphony she herself never heard…as was Kathy’s granddaughter when she said: "Oma, we prayed that somehow in the ashes you would find some treasures."
Chapter 4: “Up From the Ashes”
As Kathy drove from the doctor's office that day, Jack texted her. He had met with the insurance people and the two inspectors from the fire department, Luke and Roger. These two men were there the night of the fire, and they had been there like guardian angels every time Kathy and Jack had to go to the site. For both safety and insurance reasons, only Luke and Roger could breach the perimeter of the house.
One of the tasks this day was pulling down the unstable chimney. An ice storm was in the forecast followed by weeks of snow. It would be harder and harder to search the ruins for salvageable items. They had, in fact, declared this to be the last day his day of such searches. Jack's text informed Kathy that they had already found a few items and put them in the garage. The last part of the text read: "All done here. The Luke and Roger just left. I'll wait for you in the driveway.”
Unable to text while driving, Kathy made a hands-free call back to Jack. "Are they really gone already?" she asked. "I wanted to be there to see if they could check that little corner upstairs."
"Luke did check that area, Kate. They used a ladder to get up there, but it's not like he could walk around. He did the best he could. Hey... they found that big family Bible, Kate. I was going to tell you that in person. It's charred black. There's some other stuff, too. That praying hands sculpture is kind of ruined but not broken. That old tin of buttons was near your sewing machine. The machine was totally melted, but the tin cleaned up pretty good. Oh, and they found some old snapshots in a melted plastic file tha...." Jack's voice stopped mid-thought as her call lost signal. Kathy waited in silence at a red light.
Mom's button tin. I'd forgotten about that, Kathy thought to herself. It was a multi-generation hodge-podge of buttons in a candy tin from the 50's. Many were from our grandmother's button jar, dating back to the Great Depression. Coat and collar buttons from the war years. There were also newer buttons in the mix, but on the rare occasions when she needed a button, it was sorting through these bits and pieces of four generations that made it fun to find the one that might just do in a pinch. Sitting at the light, she remembered the sound and weight of the tin in her hands, and it made Kathy smile.
What thrilled her most, however, was the fact that they found that Bible. It has been in our family for over 150 years.
It was the kind of Bible too huge to carry--made to rest on a strong table or stand. The cover was made of ornate wood covered in leather worn thin through the decades. It took two hands to open, and in its front pages have handwritten dates of long-ago weddings and deaths from our family tree. (She would later learn that it would need to be sealed in an air-tight case to hold in the smell of smoke.) She was so happy to hear it survived. perhaps because it had been in an enclosed glass bookcase.... And if that Bible survived, she thought... maybe... just maybe.
She was afraid to say aloud what she was hoping.
The light turned green. Kathy hit redial, and after the re-connecting ring picked up, Jack said, "Wherejago? I kept talking. What did you hear last?"
"Something after the Bible part, but Jack..." she pleaded toward her phone, "Jack, can you have Luke and Roger come back? There's one more thing I need them to look for up there in that corner. It was under the chaise lounge."
"Honey, that chaise lounge is gone. The whole room is just a pile of burned roof and ceiling. The poor guy could barely get around up there."
"But did he look under that chase lounge?”
"Kate, I don't know. I wasn't up there. They were afraid the whole thing was going to cave in. Luke had to wear a harness and Roger held the rope. But if they knew you were on your way here now, I know they would have stayed, and I know they'd come back if you really want them to. That was the last thing they said when they drove off."
"Please, Jack, ask them if they could please come back. I'm halfway home." Strange that the word home still came so naturally for a house no longer there.
Let me explain what corner of the house Kathy was talking about. It is obvious why two weeks had passed before any thought was given to the little corner upstairs by the shingled roof of the breezeway. It had been a reading room / sewing room, located right over the small study (where the roll-top desk had been).
It was a clump of blackened timbers (walls, roof, and ceiling) that seem to be held up by a fragment of floor. That pile of rubble and ash had gone unexplored for lack of a stairway.
When Kathy pulled into their horseshoe driveway, Luke and Roger were already setting up their tall step ladder again, careful not to let it lean on the weakened wall. Jack met her and walked her toward the things beyond the open garage door. Kathy saw the old Bible, and her heart sank. It was black, and even from a short distance, she could smell the wretched smoke that made it so.
"Will the Bible air out do you think?" she asked Roger, who was holding the bottom of the ladder for Luke as he harnessed up.
"I'm afraid not," he said. "Any material that is not consumed by the fire just soaks in all the smoke like a sponge—and it's not just wood smoke--it's a toxic combination of all the other stuff that burned. If you touch any of those things, you'll have to wash your hands a long time to get rid of the horrid smell."
Kathy just nodded, remembering how Jack's gloves had to be washed twice after simply handling a few items the week before.
At the top of the ladder, Luke climbed through the broken window again, assuring Kathy that he was happy to do his best if she would just tell him where to start looking for whatever it was.
"It's a gold box--not real gold just gold cardboard. I think it was under the foot of a chaise lounge where I read in that room."
The fireman said nothing, but the words "cardboard" and "box" made him feel hopeless in advance.
Kathy continued her instructions from below: "The box was under the end of the chaise, and the foot of it faced the center of the room... so you might want to start near the center of the room."
Only two corner walls remained of this space that was now a gauntlet of sorts. Finding its "center" was a challenge. They could hear the dull, heavy sound of charred timbers being carefully hefted aside. Then some black fabric and stuffing fell from the window. It was upholstery. "Was this the chaise lounge?" Luke asked as another large clump of soggy material dropped to the ground.
"I can't tell, but if that is near the center, that must be it. The box was under it," Kathy explained again, but her voice faded as the absurdity of her request hung in the air. She remembered that the spot she was describing was only a few feet from where the charred Bible had been...and it had been behind glass. What chance did this box have?
Luke stepped to the window to take a breather. "I can't lift this couch-thing or see under it. There's too much other stuff on top, and it's falling apart... so I'm trying to dig through it. To be honest, I'm not sure it'll work, but I'll keep digging."
Luke stood framed in the window looking down. His face was blackened by soot and ash. His gloved hands were just as filthy. Kathy was about to concede to him that it's no use, but he smiled and stepped out of sight again before she could speak. More wet stuffing dropped down as if to assure her he was making progress.
The look of lost hope on Kathy's face prompted Jack to step closer. From his pocket he showed her a cute picture they'd found earlier in that melted file. It was of her at age three.
"Here, Kate. There are more over there on your mom's stove." It was an attempt to lighten the moment as the unseen activity in the upper room was drawing to a fruitless end.
Kathy looked at the snapshot from 1955 and smiled. It was an unexpected treasure. Looking past herself and the cake, she remembered the Formica table and matching chairs were once new, and the roaster stand which had been a wedding present in 1952 was sold at the estate sale in 2010. All those things had been in our childhood home for decades, but they were gone now, and life went on. "It's all just stuff," she sighed, a reminder she had thought to herself many times since the fire.
[Here another explanation may be in order: Have you ever dropped a paper cup in a campfire to see it burn up and leave behind the perfectly shaped ashes of the paper cup? Somehow the thing holds its shape even after its been consumed by fire? I've watched the ash-shadow of such a cup keep its shape until I touch it with a stick, and then poof its gone. Well, what I am about to tell you must have been something like that.]
"Okay, Kathy," Luke shouted without coming to the window, "I think I see it, but I'm afraid, it's burned to a crisp. It looked like a box... until I touched it. It’s just falling apart."
"That's okay," Kathy shouted up to the window. " You tried, Luke. Thank you for trying."
Roger prepared to switch from holding the rope to holding the ladder so Luke could come down, but no one came to the window.
What Kathy could not see was what Luke strained his eyes to see in the hole he had dug through the stuffing. He had tried to lift the box-shaped thing, but like the paper cup in the campfire, it had disintegrated. The lid had crumbled in his hands. The sides likewise crumbled. Only the bottom of the box remained somewhat intact. That is... the bottom and what had been above it. And that was the thing he was straining to see, and once he saw what it was, he slumped to the floor to gather his composure. He could not believe his eyes.
There in the that black corner of two walls full of melted shapes and charred timbers and drifts of ash where carpet had once been, Luke knelt down, took off his sooty gloves, and carefully picked up the only thing of it original color in the room. He blew away the ash and saw the thing was brown. It was leather. It was bound like a large important book. The page edges were gold-leaf, and each page was still perfect. He slowly walked to the window and held the object over his head as if it were the Stanley Cup.
"Is this what you were hoping to find?" He asked, as if he didn't know.
Kathy saw what he held and burst into tears and uncontrollable laughter. Between sobs and deep breaths she just kept saying "Thank you, God... Thank you, God."
Luke descended the ladder holding his prize safely in one hand and he then handed it to Roger, "Here, you give it to her. I'm a mess."
Roger was speechless. Jack was speechless. Kathy was crying, trembling, and blowing her runny nose. She shook her head in disbelief and finally took the object in her hands.
It was their wedding album from 1975. Her furrowed brow seemed to ask "how?" She held it to her nose. There was no smell of smoke at all. She opened each page. Not a smidge of smoke or scorch of heat. How could that be? she thoughtbut then remembered the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace. (Daniel 3:27) She did not say this aloud, but that was her very thought. It was nothing short of a miracle.
She was still unable to form a complete sentence or utter anything other than "Thank you, God" which gradually became a simple "Thank you" directed toward the two men standing before her.
Luke was a bit choked up himself. "I couldn't believe it," he said, "The box was destroyed, it crumbled away when I tried to pick it up, but this... well, it is literally the only thing in that room that wasn't black. At first I thought it must have been the wet stuffing that saved it--but the room was on fire and caved in by the time our hoses doused it. That's why the box burned. How the album survived I'll never know."
"Thank you for coming back," Kathy said between tears. "I just had to see if it was there. Until today, I thought every inch of the house was gone."
"It was, Kathy," Luke said. "All but that mess up there, and that floor is barely holding together."
Roger added, "We should knock it down before the next heavy snow."
"I can't believe it," Luke said again. "That's literally the only thing in the house untouched by the fire--not even singed."
"And no smell at all," Kathy repeated, holding it again near her face. "I thought it was gone. I've told everyone it was gone. I need to call my granddaughter. She prayed we would find a treasure, and today we found my mother's button tin, our family Bible, the praying hands, this snapshot of my third birthday, and now this: our wedding book!”
She handed the book to Jack, "Our wedding book, Honey. It's a miracle. You know it is. This is a miracle. God saved it..."
Jack put his arm around her, unable to say a word, and gave her a kiss. A tear slid down his cheek to his chin and dropped down on the open page of the picture of his bride. Jack wiped it gently away, and Kathy took the hand in her own and kissed the dampened fingers.
"Up from the ashes,"* she smiled. All else blurred in her brimming eyes.
In the video below is their wedding book exactly how it looked that day in the driveway. A little more than a year after the fire, Jack and Kathy moved into a beautiful new home built at the same address. Their marriage was stronger than ever. The second part of the video (beginning at the 6:20 mark) confirms that the miracle of the Wedding Book was second only to the work God did in their lives in the years to follow. The bond of marriage was stronger than ever, and the meaning of their wedding vows was demonstrated through a different “trial by fire” during the first six months of 2025, Kathy and Jack’s 50th Anniversary Year.
Never has the beauty of true love burned brighter.
View video below by pressing center arrow
*"Up from the ashes" is a literary allusion to the mythical Legend of the Phoenix. Since ancient times and in many cultures, the story of the phoenix (or “firebird") is one of renewal, new life, and multiple "second chances," for it is in the death of the phoenix in a fire that the bird is born again, and up from the ashes it takes flight to begin again. A similar metaphor is echoed in Isaiah 61:1-3, which says, [The Lord will] "...give them beauty for ashes and the oil of joy in place of mourning...."
Every time I read about Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), I'm amazed by how the heart is designed to work in concert with the rest of the body, and I'm reminded of Psalm 139:14: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works." So the fact that HLHS surgeries basically reconfigure half-a-heart to function as if it were whole is, in some ways, equally marvelous. 
Every time I read about Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), I'm amazed by how the heart is designed to work in concert with the rest of the body, and I'm reminded of Psalm 139:14: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works." So the fact that HLHS surgeries basically reconfigure half-a-heart to function as if it were whole is, in some ways, equally marvelous. 
