Concerning the Incident en Route to the Scottish Highlands

It's axiomatic: often the journey we get is not the one we planned. As many friends and family know, Dan, Claire, and I experienced a recent detour of our own,  on a highway in the Scottish Highlands.  Some of you have asked, "When are you going to write the story?" I've been reluctant.  By now,  I could have dashed off a tidy, inspirational post about blessings and mercies we experienced at each juncture of our odyssey, and there were certainly many.  But I am still unsettled. As the American spinal surgeon who saw me at the first possible opportunity after I arrived back in the states said, "I don't know you, Mrs. Summers, but you have a trauma face." I was taken aback, but it was almost a relief for him to say it, and for me to acknowledge that I did feel damaged, in a way. My "trauma face" gets better each day, but I've felt the need for events to marinate before fully laying claim to those final lessons. That's for another time.  This post is for those who wanted to know what actually happened.

We departed Friday from Little Rock, excited to be in the cheap seats, headed for a two-week excursion to the UK and Normandy. We landed in Dublin, made a short hop to Edinburgh, and arrived at breakfast to check into our hotel and begin touring.  As a history teacher, two particular areas of interest to me are The Great War and the Protestant Reformation.  I had promised to live tweet the best photos for my sweet students.  We were thrilled.

Our first day was spent on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, one of the historically great intellectual centers of Europe. We toured Edinburgh Castle with its deep history, then walked across the courtyard for a reverential visit to the Great War Memorial— heavy with the memory of Scots from all regiments lost between 1914-1918—painstakingly recorded on plaques, in handwritten, leather bound rosters, in stained glass, on carved inscriptions on stone walls.  I marveled at the attention the architect had employed to design the complicated space with balance and dignity.

As we enjoyed the views from the castle battlements, I imagined the Bronze Age warriors who had originally fortified that majestic high ground so very long ago, realizing that they were profoundly different than the more recent 16th century House of Stuart faces more familiar to Americans from portraits in history books and from movies. Around us, guards wore kilts, and dignitaries — women in suits and hats and men in kilts — participated in an event on the castle grounds.  The view was stunning, but Edinburgh Castle had been sited for defense rather than for its vista. It was more stronghold than palace.

We ate obligatory fish and chips at Deacon Brodie's Tavern, toured a museum of Scottish authors, where Claire and I agreed Robert Burns was a fine specimen of Scottish manhood, and toured the High Kirk of St. Giles, the heart of the Scottish Reformation, from which John Knox waged his passionate campaign for Reformed doctrine for Scotland, resulting in the establishment of Presbyterianism as her state church.  We viewed the Chapel of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Scotland's most exalted order of chivalry.  I could have spent the day sitting in St. Giles, reading every word and studying every symbol, but indulging my narrow interest in the Reformation would have been tedious for Dan and Claire when there was so much more to see, so we moved on.

Back at the hotel, exhausted from an all-night flight and anticipating an early morning call to pick up our rental car at the train station the next morning, we fell into bed and awoke the following morning, refreshed and anticipating for a day trip to Glencoe and Ft. William in the Highlands.

After a short taxi ride to the train station, we picked up an immaculate, never-before-rented black Mercedes, a last-minute upgrade. Dan decided an automatic was a good idea since he was driving in the UK for the first time, and the Mercedes was available. Claire was extremely concerned that she not spill her coffee in it. Dan's opposite-side driving skills were admirable, and since we come from Conway, the roundabout capital of Arkansas, the Scottish roundabouts were easy. As we left the urban highway for the narrow, winding road to the Highlands, the Scottish countryside opened before us.

The landscape was primeval.  The mist hung in the lush valleys, and stately evergreens towered beside the roadway.  Stunning.  We passed charming villages with stone walls and thatched cottages with blooming flowers.  The day was filled with promise — until we rounded a blind curve where a cyclist climbed slowly uphill toward us in the narrow right-hand lane.  A silver Volvo rounded the curve behind him, slowing to avoid the cyclist, and the red car who followed closely behind the Volvo rounded the corner but could not stop, rear-ending and propelling him across the center line and into our car, striking us head-on on the driver's side.  Airbags deployed all around, smoke filled the cabin, and Dan could not see to steer.  We left the roadway and ran headlong off-road into a tree on the passenger side of the car, where I was seated. A Jeep coming down the hill behind us crashed into the other wreckage.  The cyclist vanished like a vapor into the peacefulness of the countryside.

We sat in silence, thankful to be alive, yet trying to comprehend our situation. Cars stopped, doors slammed, people milled about, talking to one another, talking on phones. Thanks to the solid construction of the Mercedes, none of us lost consciousness; we were thankful to be able to ask, "Are you OK?" Claire, who had been almost asleep, knew she had hurt her ankle, but seemed otherwise all right.  Dan seemed to be intact. I had a deep, dull pain low in my spine, and I knew something was very wrong. I wiggled everything, and all my parts responded, but I knew I could not get out of the car. Another traveler appeared at my door.  "I'm a doctor. Are you injured?"  I told him it was my back.  "Can you move?" He assessed me for a minute and said they would probably send a helicopter for me.  He continued his triage.

In a few minutes two police officers in yellow slickers appeared, then an ambulance.  They cut the airbags away with a knife.  An EMT with dark, close-cropped hair offered me morphine and was surprised when I declined, a noble gesture I later regretted when I was given only ibuprofen instead. Removing me from the car was awkward, but they carefully stabilized me on a backboard with a collar and some kind of giant bubble wrap snugged firmly around me for what was to be a 90 minute drive to a hospital in the town of Larbert.  As they loaded us in the ambulance, the EMT said, "I'm going to give you a mask with some gas, and you can breathe deeply if you want it. The gas is what they use when you have your babies." I said, "We don't have gas for babies in the states; we have it at the dentist."  He shook his head, incredulous.  I dragged deeply on the nitrous and drifted into blissful suspended animation, vaguely aware of the sympathetic EMT narrating the drive for Dan and Claire.

When we arrived an hour and a half later at Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, I was frustrated and annoyed when they disconnected the gas and I came back to reality.  They did my intake at the "A & E"  (Accident and Emergency.)  I endured the first of many "log rolls," the preferred method for making transfers from surface to surface for patients with spinal injuries, when they moved me to do a CT scan.  It required six people, three on either side of me.  I came to appreciate the expertise of those with a steady hand and a firm grasp; nevertheless, it terrified me every time I was painfully heaved like a giant passive stick of wood.  I was moved to a ward with a number of other patients, where Scottish nurses spoke softly to me and explained what was happening. I took the first of countless pills lying flat of my back, drinking tepid water from a bendy straw. I prayed not to choke. That first night in the ward, a patient with dementia cried out a thousand times in the night, "I've got to go to the toilet.  Help me! I need to go to the toilet."  I was on morphine by now, and even in my pharmacological stupor, I realized that she was probably not in her right mind.  Or was she?  Why was no one helping her?  It was an endless night.

When you have a spinal injury, the ceiling is the only thing you can see, at least at first.  Funny what one remembers.  I've always felt stained drop-in ceiling panels reflect something fundamental about the attention to detail of a business establishment.  No doubt that sounds up-tight, elitist, and very American.  In the midst of our calamity, however,  I noted that the ceilings at the Forth Valley Hospital in Larbert were pristine — they seemed the cleanest, whitest I had ever seen, and this was a bizarre comfort to me.

Internet access was uneven, and the family decided that Facebook was our best method of communicating.  The next afternoon, Harding professor Mike Wood saw a post about our accident. A blessing:  Dr. Wood was ten minutes from the Forth Valley Hospital, staying at a guesthouse with a group of Harding College of Education students who were student teaching in Scotland. Mike came to the hospital and picked Claire up, arranged her lodging for a night, and took care of her.  Such a comfort to me to hear a voice from home and to know we could trust him with Claire, who was sore and had a sprained ankle.

The next day, they told us I had an unstable L2 injury that would require surgery.  They announced with pride and confidence that they were waiting for an ambulance to transport me to Glasgow, where I would be admitted to the Queen Elizabeth National Spinal Injuries Unit of Southern General Hospital, NHS Scotland's spinal injuries treatment center. Dan took the train back to Edinburgh to get our things from the hotel and move to Glasgow to be with me, and Dr. Wood put Claire on a train for Glasgow. I stared at the perfect ceiling and waited to be log-rolled onto a backboard and into yet another ambulance.  I finally arrived at Edenhall Ward in Glasgow about eleven o'clock that night.

A ginger-haired nurse with an intoxicating voice and an air of complete and serene competence gently explained that they had been waiting for me, that I was in good hands, and they were a team of specialists who knew how to help me. I was with Scotland's best unit to treat my kind of injury. They log-rolled me from the gurney onto a bed designed for patients with spinal injuries, infinitely more comfortable than my previous one, and took care of preparing me for surgery.  I had felt I was free falling, and somehow, when I arrived at Edenhall Ward, I felt someone had caught me at last.

On the day when I found myself flat of my back — literally — thousands of miles from home, alive but broken on the side of a highway at the mercy of the kindness, expertise, and professionalism of strangers, I was challenged to follow some advice I had dispensed all year with my students at our Christian school. As we had prayed for the needs of CCS families, I had frequently reminded them that in our hardest time, whatever it is, we should also remember to ask God to teach us the lessons He would have us to learn from that circumstance. And I did ask for the lessons.

Yet if fear is evidence of doubt, then I doubted, because I was afraid. I recalled the man's "I believe; help my unbelief!" encounter with Christ as I prayed for strength, for relief, for healing from the One by whose authority I was created, for the skill and professionalism of the surgeons, for Dan and Claire, for my daughter Emma, who was traveling so far away in Greece, for my parents and Dan's parents, whom I knew were undone with worry about us.  The nurse gave me pain meds, I stared at the ceiling above my bed in Edenhall Ward, noticing it was not stained, and drifted off to sleep.

"Saving Mr. Banks" and the Invisible Backpack

Watching the bittersweet "Saving Mr. Banks" today,  I once again considered Faulkner's great truth: The past is never dead. It's not even past.

The film contrasts writer P. L. Travers' memories of life with her alcoholic father, whom she idolized, with scenes revealing her controlling inflexibility when dealing with Walt Disney. Her father's relentless self-destruction brought her mother to suicidal despair — until an aunt arrived, with umbrella and carpetbag, to help set things right for her impoverished family. The aunt, however, could not perform a miracle.  Travers' father died in his bed from a combination of alcoholism and illness, his memory an enduring scar on her psyche.

Back in Beverly Hills, a frustrated Disney, baffled at her insulting irrationality while negotiating the rights to Mary Poppins, gradually comes to understand that, in Mary Poppins, Travers preserves the wounded story of her childhood, re-envisioned with a happier ending. The prospect of her pain on display as a technicolor Disney parade set to music is intolerable.  Outwardly she is a grouchy, controlling, misanthrope. Inside, Travers is the powerless child of an alcoholic.          

At a funeral earlier this week, I observed as revelations from another long-past childhood suddenly illuminated an individual's difficult behavior. The new perspective demanded grace where before there had been judgment. Sometimes when logic fails, history makes all clear.

My written philosophy of education addresses the "invisible backpack" each child carries to school, and how, for some, it is filled with love and support — while for others it is packed at home with a dark and heavy load. We each carry our backpack with us as long as we live. It's a truth I have learned with my head, but I have to remind my heart again and again.

In the end, "Saving Mr. Banks" accomplishes what the very best storytelling does: it reminds us of something essential about being human. The past is never dead. It's not even past. Every interaction contains more of mystery than certainty; a fact that merits a gracious spirit of humility from each of us.

Welcome, Holy Child

On a recent Sunday afternoon, from my vantage on Sue's sofa in her joyously festooned den, I reveled in the comforting rise and fall of familiar women's voices. I admired golfing Santas frozen in mid-swing on her mantel. I squinted as I nursed my punch, recalling how I shed my glasses as a nearsighted girl to enhance the holiday haze of our tree as the console stereo in our rarely-used living room played "Many Moods of Christmas," some 40 years ago.

Sue's living room does not fall into the "rarely used" category. Today, it was filled with grandmothers, mothers and daughters, some balancing babies in their laps, assembled ritually in Sunday clothes to give Mandy a proper sendoff on the grand adventure of motherhood. The centerpiece was graced with poinsettias, snowmen and baby shoes. Guests arrived with all manner of lovingly-wrapped offerings to celebrate the new child and adorn his surroundings. Christmas and babies: my favorite things in one afternoon. Lovely. What a welcome for this boy!

I considered the things Mandy will soon know. I was happy for her to join the throng of women since Eve who understand what it is like to joyfully participate in the act of creation and to love someone so completely -- then to carry inside the bittersweet understanding that she cannot protect her child perfectly. I thought how this child will teach Mandy selflessness, joy, longsuffering, humility, sacrifice, and love. I considered how her world will revolve around him, and I acknowledged, just for a moment, that he will have the power to break her heart in ways she could never foresee.

Driving home, I pushed a CD player button and listened to a selection from my current holiday collection. No "Many Moods of Christmas" this time, but the random choice suited my mood and the day. It was Amy Grant, singing a welcome for another boy:

Welcome to Our World   by Chris Rice

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking

How we need to hear from God.

You've been promised; we've been waiting --

Welcome, holy child.

Hope that you don't mind our manger;

How I wish we would have known!

But, long-awaited holy stranger,

Make yourself at home.

Bring your peace into our violence;

Bid our hungry souls be filled.

Word, now breaking Heaven's silence

Welcome to our world.

Fragile fingers sent to heal us,

Tender brow prepared for thorns,

Tiny heart whose blood will save us

Unto us is born.

So, wrap our injured flesh around you;

Breathe our air, and walk our sod.

Rob our sin, and make us holy

Perfect son of God.

Welcome to our world.

My husband Dan is fond of saying that parents will always love their children more than children can possibly love them back, because a child can't comprehend the secret ingredient in love -- sacrifice: the all-encompassing anticipation, the planning, the prayers said before there is a hint of swelling in Mom's belly, the anxiety, the constant preoccupation with ordering the world to best accommodate the comfort, safety, and best interests of the child. Undoubtedly, God refers to Himself as our Father rather than merely our Creator because it’s the closest way for our earthbound brains to wrap around His sacrifice and grief. He loved us even before creation, and He watched, brokenhearted, as we chose paths that took us away from Him.

As Creator, Jesus loved each of us completely. As Father, His heart was broken to watch us lose ourselves in Satan's lies. As Redeemer, He was willing to be human and hurting -- the eternal squeezed into the finite, God with a dirty diaper or an empty tummy, the omnipotent one submissive even with the cross before Him -- to draw us near to Him again.

So tonight, with my own family asleep and our holiday lights silently glowing, I rejoice with Mandy at the coming of her precious son Jacob, and I quietly celebrate that other child whose birth the world remembers during this season: the One who taught us selflessness, joy, longsuffering, humility, sacrifice, and love. I recall how my sin breaks His heart, and I resolve to keep the lessons of His life and sacrifice ever present with me. Welcome, Holy Child.

By way of disclosure, this essay was originally published in Christian Woman magazine several years back, the year the intrepid Jake Tatom was born.  

A Tale of Two Emmas, and of Hurricane Sandy

The hardest things in life reveal who we are and what is really important.  No great revelation there.  In Sandy's aftermath, we are besieged with heart rending stories of people doing what some people do under stress -- trading our daily pettiness for some truly meaningful selflessness.  No doubt some of these people look at themselves every day with some level of disgust, thinking they should be better, or more noble, or more patient, as we all do. Caught in a sticky web of circumstance, however, some people find a reservoir of strength unapparent in their daily lives.  Sometimes a reporter happens by and catches it and millions of people get to participate in that moment.

One such story is this week's tale of the evacuation of NYU Langone Medical Center.  The hospital basement generators failed during the storm, and administrators made the difficult decision to evacuate the entire hospital population, including those most vulnerable -- premature babies, swaddled and wearing little striped caps, with all the trappings of the NICU--ventilators and monitors and feeding tubes. The image of one fragile preemie, Emma Sophia, being carried down 15 fights of stairs in the arms of a nurse who ventilated her with a bag as she descended, caught in my throat.

Seventeen years ago that very night at another hospital far away, our family had a storm of our own.  We delivered our own preemie -- another Emma, in fact, who came into the world unexpectedly two and a half months early with a crowd of anxious people standing in the wings cheering her on. At 2 pounds, 13 ounces, she surely needed some cheering. And praying. And some complicated medical support and expertise, offered by kind and intent professionals wearing scrubs who ministered both to her and to us.

Premature birth is traumatic, and it has a long recovery period both for the infant and the parents.  We have expectations of how things will be, and when they turn out much differently, it changes us.  Emma Sophia's mother was already emotionally impaired by the premature birth; to hear that her tiny child was being moved during the storm of the century without her there to oversee the process -- well, I could not imagine her despair.  My mother's heart broke as she related her story on CNN.

Natural disasters reveal what a thin veneer civilization really is. The material trappings of safety and security are so easily damaged and torn, and the choices and actions of a single person become proportionately more significant. So what is the takeaway from my retelling of the story of Sandy and the two Emmas? Not much wisdom here, except to say that perhaps it's good for humankind to be reminded not to build our lives around expectations of comfort and convenience.

Garrison Keillor tells a story about how students at Lake Wobegon Elementary were assigned a "storm home," in the event a blizzard occurred and students were unable to get back to their parents.  A safe harbor, as it were. He related how as a child he had taken great comfort in imagining his "storm family" and how kind they would be to him. It's good to be reminded that on any given day, our actions could mean everything to someone else, when our stuff can be wiped out by fire and rain.

Heroism as a word is virtually meaningless from overuse in modern society. Give me kindness over heroism any day. I recall so very clearly moments in which our own emotional tempest of our Emma's premature birth was placed in stark contrast to the kindness of those who just wanted to make something easier for us. I will never forget those people.  Let's remember that when it comes down to it, looking not just to our own interests -- but to the interests of others -- transforms the broken world we live in at its most broken moments.

Every Day is a New Revelation

I'm thinking about change.  A year ago, I was learning and teaching history at Conway Christian School, watching my daughter Emma prepare for those last two years of high school that would see her off to college, leaving Dan and me home alone in our big empty house.  Our lives were set, for the most part.

Then, in the spring, Dan had an opportunity to move an hour away to Searcy,  to become a full-time faculty member in the College of Business at Harding.  To reenvision your life is brave; it acknowledges that you understand that we are all unfinished. Teaching is certainly not something one masters overnight, and teachers are forever refining their methods. But I know he will be good at it. Sometimes the process of newness is uncomfortable, but that's how it is for each of us when we are becoming something altogether different.  These days, every day is a new revelation for him, and for us all.

We pulled 16-year-old Emma's roots up and transplanted her to Harding Academy, a place where she will be well-served, but every day is a brand new to her as well. She is adjusting to the changes from being an Eagle to a Wildcat,  and we pray that God teaches her the lessons that will serve her best, and will glorify Him, through the transformation of her life, and of all of our lives.

As for me, I left my classroom and my familiar set of high school students behind for a few revelations myself.  In these Harding classrooms, I'm not the teacher; I'm the full-time graduate student, schlepping my computer bag around campus vaguely shocked when students defer to me and call me "ma'am" in line at the printer in the library, for I am one of them -- at least on the inside.  On the outside, I am somewhat shopworn with highlighted hair -- a sign of a woman uncertain as to exactly how much gray she actually has, and vaguely afraid to confront the reality.

This is a good place to be, although in a way exhausting every day with its newness.  Some people are more resilient by nature than others.  I think I am the most naturally "bendy" of anyone in my family, and still, the transition is a little wearing.  Every task I have to do for the first time, no matter how mundane,  requires a decision to be made:  the eye doctor, the oil change, the dry cleaner, the best place to get coffee.

Which brings me to Midnight Oil.  This morning I'm sitting in the corner of a coffee shop on the edge of campus, where I was greeted by a young, open-faced blonde barista beaming with welcome as she took my order.  She sized me up, intuitively understanding I might not know how they did business here, and carefully not making me feel foolish for not understanding that I had to sign my credit card slip with my fingertip on the iPad register setup. I like it here.  The beveled glass in the windows rattles as the doors open and close. The floors creak as customers pass with their mochas and their laptops; the millwork is beaten and worn. Avett Brothers tunes flow from the speakers and the windows are open to the first cool promise of fall as the sun streams in.  A gentleman across the room spontaneously falls in next to a young female nursing student and asks whether she has any questions to prepare for her test.  She asks something about edema, slightly mispronouncing it, and he kindly explains it to her.  She seems very grateful for the consult.

The walls are covered with the photography of Philip Holsinger, whom I do not know, but I think I might like to.  They are exhibition-sized, glossy, mostly black and white, high-contrast photos of everyday life in Haiti.  The one called "Madonna and Child" haunts me.  In it, a Haitian woman sits on an expanse of dark, desolate, unappealing ground with the ocean in the distance, a child in her lap. The child's face is hidden, turned toward his mother. Her arms encircle him; her body twists upward and to the right, and her graceful neck extends like a Degas sculpture.  Her face reflects a kind of resignation. She stares into the distance at -- her past? His future? I make a note to attend Holsinger's gallery exhibition to see more this afternoon.

Some days I look around and cannot believe that we live here now. After 25 years of Dan's commuting to Little Rock from Conway and being out of contact during much of the day while I was in a classroom, Dan and I now discuss his new life of teaching and we eat lunch together frequently.  We often have a house full of college students -- fourteen for lunch on Sunday. We anticipated such, and bought a house with a room for them to hang out, as much out of self-defense as hospitality.  The students seem not to care that I am not exactly Martha Stewart; they're just thankful to have a place to go.  It is low-pressure entertaining and we enjoy having them in our home.

These young people are full of infectious energy. Some are self-consciously clueless; some feel they have it all under control; some are awkward; most are reveling in these days when they are surrounded by friendship and the promise of travel abroad and the world opening up to them and them to it in turn. They are smart and funny and fresh. Each has a story; some have been coddled by helicopter parents and some have been on their own to a great extent.  But they are beginning to become what they will be, apart from Mom and Dad.

I guess we all have this in common: we don't know what we don't know.  I pray that the teachers and staff who minister to my daughter -- and it is ministry -- while she studies here will be gracious to her. I pray they will hold her to a high standard of performance, that they will call her out of the unexamined life, and will remind her that she serves a loving God who requires that she be pliable as he transforms her.

I pray that they will make her profoundly uncomfortable with the status quo from time to time, and will sensitize her to the relative luxury of her safe life.  I pray that part of her reinvention will include a mental screenshot of Holsinger's "Madonna and Child," who might someday benefit from her gifts and the gifts of other students here as they disperse into the world.  And I pray that each student who walks these sidewalks will learn more daily about the God who doesn't always tell us in advance where He's taking us, but who always walks beside us and transforms us on the journey.  Because if we are open to it, every day is a new revelation, no matter where it takes us.

To learn more about the mission of Midnight Oil, aside from being a purveyor of excellent caffeinated beverages, you may go here:  http://www.midnightoilcoffeehouse.com

The Camp Tahkodah Oasis

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord... He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.                                                                                 Jeremiah 17:7-8

Tonight I'm cleaning the dust of -- not Canaan's Land (see March 21 post "The American Taliban Prequel") -- but Camp Tahkodah -- off my feet.  This afternoon Dan and I made the mid-session  pilgrimage from our new home in Searcy north to visit the banks of Salado Creek near Floral, Arkansas.  Since our oldest daughter was in third grade, we have brought one or both of our girls to Floral each summer to spend a week or two at their happy place, owned by Harding University.


We've come a long way from that inaugural year, when I took a month to pack Claire and paid too much for cute custom camp labels from a "Going to Camp?" website, which preyed on the separation anxiety of mothers.  Now they pack themselves in about an hour, and I just throw a Sharpie in their bedroom door and remind them they have a better chance of returning with possessions people can identify;  we have to decide each year whether we actually want all those items back anyway.  Camp Tahkodah dirt is a tenacious combination of sand and construction adhesive.  Whether it is embedded in the sole of a pair of Chacos or in the seat of basketball shorts, attempting to remove it gives pause.  We do a cost-benefit analysis, and sometimes the camp dirt wins and we pitch the item, a sacrifice to the Spirit of Tahkodah.


This year, the oldest has graduated to assistant counselor, which is a fancy title for someone who is allowed to wash lots of dishes and do other menial chores for the privilege of spending a little more time there.  She is also a lifeguard, a credential she sought expressly because she wanted a little edge on getting hired.  Our youngest, age 16,  is now in the senior girls cabin, and the idea that she might not return next summer is exquisitely disconcerting when she allows herself to think about it -- so she doesn't.


When we packed up our things to move to Searcy recently, we realized the girls had accumulated a handful of Bibles engraved with "Camp Tahkodah" and signed by former director Ross Cochran, souvenirs of the Bible Bee.  Although we are not especially athletic, our family tends to do well in competitive question-answering, and our children have won a handful of times over the years.  Occasionally we've lamented that we would have traded a ready recollection of the names of the twelve tribes of Israel for a decent jump shot, but it is what it is.  God gives us each our gifts and thank heaven there's a place in the Kingdom, and at camp,  for the less coordinated.


I realized today as I stood under the pines amid a circle of log cabins, with laundry neatly hung on a clothesline beside each, that there are people from Harding who have been ministering to my grimy children in this place for nine years now.  They prayed for them before they ever arrived, cooked for them, administered first aid to them, taught them, regaled them with ridiculous songs, hiked with them, rode horses with them, canoed with them, looked out for their safety, exhorted them to good hygiene and entreated them to more effective cabin cleanup, encouraged them in competitive activities, led praise and worship for them all, and called them toward stronger relationships and to a more authentic faith. When Claire arrived at college, a Tahkodah staffer welcomed her into her home for a weekly small group study, for which Dan and I have been most thankful.  Relationships forged here as the staff invests in the lives of campers from many states will have ripples into the future of each of these sweaty young humans.

We were pleased to note as we arrived at camp last weekend that Salado Creek was still running, although many ponds and creeks in Arkansas are dry.  I was especially thankful today that, in the midst of a miserable and devastating drought, Camp Tahkodah has seen some rain, cloud cover, and merciful relief from the heat, every day this session.  But I also know that regardless of the weather, at least for my girls, Tahkodah has always been an oasis.

Here's a link to a video about her Tahkodah experience posted online by a camper last year  It gives you some idea of her feelings about camp.  Copy and past to play:  http://vimeo.com/26932911

Finally: A Blog About Moving, and About Moving On

As many of you know, I moved last week, and I have not blogged about it yet. Although a great opportunity for our entire family, the move required considerable mental adjustment for me. I normally blog about current events or those far removed in time, and these events are still unfolding.

The move meant leaving our idyllic retreat on Round Mountain, where the change of seasons and the change of weather were a delight of God's creation played out like cinema through the rear windows of our ridgetop home. It meant leaving the house we had built so carefully, with outlets in bizarre locations for our convenience -- and my roomy kitchen island that was, as Dan put it, actually more like a subcontinent -- perfect for feeding hordes of kids. We built it with everything the color of nature; the "color of dirt" philosophy suited us;  it was a casual, comfortable house.


It meant leaving our safe room, into which we had retreated last year after the tornado struck neighboring Vilonia, along with friends who became our housemates when the storm damaged their home. We all watched another storm approach from the dinner table that night. As the sky darkened and the wind picked up, their fearful eyes darted again and again to that view, until finally the sirens sounded and we all headed for shelter.  I was thankful to be able to share our "safe place" with them that night.

The move meant leaving the upstairs bonus room that been the "storm home" not only for that family, but for two others at various times, who were refugees from the kind of disaster that rips not houses, but lives apart.  We had more house than we could use, and they were lovely friends and guests.  I still recall, being less than a great cook, the night we received one such guest.  I felt like the shepherd boy from the poem about the manger in Bethlehem. "What can I give Him, poor as I am?"  No home baked comfort food at my house.  We broke out a can of chocolate icing and some spoons, sat at the kitchen table, and commiserated on the sorry state of things.  It is a nice memory.  The day he left our home, he left a can of icing on the subcontinent.

The move meant leaving the world's longest back porch, where, once or twice a year, my husband would convene until the wee hours with a few kindred males, to ceremonially strike a blow for Freedom From Being Told What To Do by Women while they discussed topics men talk about when women are not present. I would lie in bed and listen to the deep droning of their conversation, not really wanting to know its substance, but rather glad that my back porch could provide moonlight sanctuary for some very sweet men who needed to console one another without counsel from those of us with no y-chromosome.


Our change took me away from Conway Christian School. When we enrolled Emma at CCS in third grade, I did an unexpected but enjoyable "permanent substitute" teaching stint for the school. Administration and faculty encouraged me to complete my non-traditional licensure, and supported me from those early first days -- when no doubt I was more a poser than a professional -- through the seasoning of my methods and talents over seven years, transitioning me into a career I came to love at a place that consistently called students to critically seek a Godly perspective in every classroom endeavor. For the insight, encouragement, and call to excellence for me and my children, I will always be thankful.

The move meant leaving our church home since 1989.  They welcomed us as young people, mourned with us when we could not conceive a child, and wept twice when we miscarried. They rejoiced with us at the birth of Claire, and two years later, they celebrated again, as we were shocked to discover God was blessing us with twins. They fed our family when I was on bed rest, visited me and kept me company and regaled me with laughter in my confinement. When our pregnancy became extremely complicated, our church family kept vigil at St. Vincent when, after some days, we finally delivered Emma and Sarah at 30 weeks. Emma was to come home with us after ten weeks in the NICU. Sarah, however, would be buried at our family cemetery at the foot of Magazine Mountain, and our church family would surround us with loving arms and support us all the way to recovery. Over the years, the old ladies pinched our babies' cheeks and beat on their fat thighs.  Many taught our girls, encouraged them, supported them in their activities and their relationship with the Lord.  Our siblings and both sets of parents worship there still; although we are gone, we leave pieces of ourselves behind.

I make all these observations to say that, sitting here in my new house in Searcy, wondering what the Lord has in store for us, it occurs that the best memories I have of that house, and of my school, and of my church, all have to do with the idea of shelter.  Shelter from weather, from the storms of broken hearts, from the solitary devastation of loss, shelter for talents and children to grow.  And of one thing I'm certain:  shelter for God's people is not about a safe room built with hands.  It's something people build with their hearts.  And the Summers family can do that anywhere.