A Better Plan

 

I like to watch game shows, and recently I was watching one called “Tattletales” where celebrity husbands and wives try to guess how the other will answer a question. I often play along, and this time the question was something like, “What was the biggest scam you ever fell victim to?”

My response related to purchasing property soon after Roland and I married. Actually, I’m not sure it was technically a scam, because I don’t believe that the contractor meant to steal from us. But the bottom line was that we lost our $7,600 down payment, which was a lot of money for us back then.

Our plan was for me to quit my job when we had children and practice law from an office in my home with a separate entrance. That part of the plan worked out, but another part didn’t. Since such homes were rare, we found a blueprint for a house with an in-law-suite and put a down-payment on a lot in a new subdivision, contacted one of the contractors who was building in a new subdivision, and found a lot we liked. Then we entered into a contract for sale with the builder.

As a lawyer, I suppose I should have checked it out better, but what it came down to was that the contractor didn’t own that lot. Apparently it wasn’t unusual to swap lots with other contractors, and he probably expected to do that. Unfortunately, he went bankrupt instead. So we had no lot and no money. We might have been able to purchase the lot from the contractor who did own it, but we would have been out the downpayment in any event, so we decided to look at existing homes instead.

We found one in an established neighborhood closer to stores, good schools, and our church. Even with the loss and the necessary renovations, it cost less money than building would have. The house we purchased had a one-car garage and a two-car garage, both attached, and it was easy to turn the one-car garage into an office. If you look carefully at the photo, you can see the entrance between the two-car-garage and the main house. We raised our children and spent many good years there, moving out only when our parents started using walkers and we realized that the steps would be too much for us at some point.

I don’t know why God let us lose money on the lot before we found the right property. Maybe that one wasn’t on the market yet and we were trying to get ahead of God’s timing. But whatever the reason, we ended up in a better place, figuratively and literally.

But one thing I do know.

When things go wrong, God has a better plan.

Hope for the Future

 

Last week I attended a scholarship luncheon at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. The purpose of the event was to give scholarship sponsors the opportunity to meet the recipients. During the luncheon, the college president spoke about the school as a source of hope for the world. The school symbol is an anchor, which is seen in the above photo in front of Graves Hall. I had always heard that the founder’s quote referred to Hope College being “the anchor of hope for the future,” but “the anchor of hope for the world” works, too.

My father believed in education, and I grew up assuming that I would go to college. Looking back, I know that my parents would have been disappointed if I didn’t go but would have supported whatever choice I made. At the time, however, doing anything else just never crossed my mind.

I believe in education, too, although my definition is broader than just college. Not everyone is cut out for college, and we need plumbers more than we need lawyers. Daddy’s definition may have been similar, and it definitely including broadening your horizons through travel.

That said, he believed in a college education for everyone who wanted and was capable of it. He showed his dedication to that principle by working his way through Hope College  and Westminster Theological Seminary in the 1940s.

From 1948 though the 1950s, Daddy sponsored three Arab students from the Middle East, making arrangements and providing some financial support for them to come to this country to go to college. One of them returned to Jordan and spent his career working for its government. The other two stayed in the U.S., and one, Michael Suleiman, became a professor in the political science department at Kansas State University.

When my father died, Michael suggested starting a scholarship fund at Hope College in Daddy’s name. We did so, with initial contributions from Michael, my older brother Donald (Hope Class of 1970), and myself (Hope Class of 1972). I’m the only one of the three still alive and am the official contact for the Oliver S. Page Memorial Scholarship Fund, although I hope my daughter Caroline (Hope Class of 2005) will take over that role when I’m no longer able to fill it.

Scholarships are one way to support education. We can’t all afford the financial contributions to provide one, but we can all support college students in other ways, even if it is as simple as encouraging their dreams.

Because education is the anchor of hope for the future

Little Things Matter

 

I recently read a historical novel by a writer I’ve always enjoyed, but I was only a few pages in before I discovered an error. The story takes place during World War II, and one of the characters was remembering the books she read as a child. “Her friends had been Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland, her adventures in Narnia and the Secret Garden.” The problem? C.S. Lewis didn’t publish his first Narnia book (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) until 1950, a decade after the historical novel took place.

When I first read the sentence, I was pretty sure it was wrong, but I didn’t check it out right away. Then I watched Jeopardy on April 1 and saw this Final Jeopardy answer. (If there is anybody out there who doesn’t know how Jeopardy works, the questions are really the answers, and vice versa.) In other words, this was the information the contestants were given to respond to:

A girl in a 1950 novel walks into this & “got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them.”

I knew the question (what the contestants have to guess) right away. The question was “What is a wardrobe?” and the girl was Lucy from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The category was “Novel Title Objects,” so it should have been easy for anyone who has read the Narnia books, but only one of the contestants got it right. The point here, though, is it confirmed my belief that the first Narnia book wasn’t published until after World War II (and I have since verified it from other sources).

I’m not going to call out the writer of the historical novel, however, because unfortunately it is easy to make an error about those very minor details in a historical novel. In one of my early middle-grade stories, I had a character using a ball-point pen before they were invented. I don’t remember what brought it to my attention, but I caught it in time. Since then I have tried to meticulously research even the most minor details. Even so, I can’t guarantee that no errors have slipped in.

Fortunately, fictional details don’t have to be perfect.

But I try.

From Criminal to Conqueror

 

This post is reprinted from April 2, 2018 and April 9, 2012.

__________

On Easter morning 1958, I attended the Easter service at the Garden Tomb. That’s when my father took this picture.

The service was in Arabic, so I didn’t understand any of it. Also, the tomb’s authenticity is questionable. Still, it was a great setting to celebrate a man who died as a criminal and rose as a conqueror.

To use Paul’s words from I Corinthians 15:54-57:

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his rising, Jesus conquered death and sin.

That’s something I could never have done. I’m responsible for the sin, but not for the victory.

A victory he obtained for me and for you at great cost to himself.

And I’m grateful.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Alleluia!

From Celebrity to Criminal

 

This post is reprinted from March 19, 2018 and April 2, 2012. The references to celebrities with criminal records are dated, but the point is timeless.

__________

No, this post isn’t about Lindsay Lohan or Mike Tyson or Paris Hilton. A hundred years from now, they will have faded from the public memory.

That’s something they don’t share with the man who rode into town to cheering crowds on a Sunday, only to be mocked and executed as a criminal before the week was up. Events we are still talking about 2000 years later.

Talking about and celebrating. My father took this picture while my family was attending the Palm Sunday festivities in Jerusalem in 1958.

Lindsay and Mike and Paris didn’t lose their celebrity status when they were convicted of their crimes, and neither did Jesus of Nazareth.

But here is the crucial difference: Jesus was sinless. He had no guilt to convict him.

Well, that isn’t quite true.

He was guilty of love. A love so great that he paid the penalty for the sins of all humankind.

His heart was heavy and he died in anguish. But he did it by choice.

For me. For you.

And that’s something to remember not just during Holy Week but every day of the year.

Travel Schedule Woes

 

Roland and I are planners. We plan our travels years in advance, so when something falls through, it leaves us scrambling for alternatives. This was a particular problem during COVID, when we had to reschedule trips to South Africa and to Australia/New Zealand, but we got through the travel withdrawal somehow without losing the addiction. Then in 2022 we had to postpone the Ireland half of a trip to Iceland and Ireland after Roland tested positive for COVID. We made that up with a trip to Ireland last year.

Now we have to change our plans again. Roland put a lot of time and effort into arranging a trip to Eastern Europe this summer. He found two tours from our preferred providers that we could take back-to-back, with a seven-hour train ride between the end of the first to the beginning of the second. One was a land tour of Croatia and Slovenia with EF Go Ahead Tours, and the other is a river cruise from Bucharest to Budapest on Viking, which is is the other leg of the first trip we took with Viking in 2015..

Then EF emailed to say that their tour was cancelled because not enough people had signed up. They offered some alternatives, but none of them worked with the Viking cruise, which we will take as scheduled. The three trips we have done with EF Go Ahead have all been good experiences, so although it didn’t work for this summer, we had no hesitation about booking with them again. Since we had already been talking about doing a land tour of Portugal, Spain, and Morocco, we used the credits from the cancelled tour to book that one for the end of next year.

When we find a provider we like, we stick with them. This summer will be our fifth cruise with Viking, and we are going to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand with them next year.

Now the question is: Where do we go after Spain?

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows the boat we were on during our first cruise with Viking in 2015. It was docked in Budapest at the time.

Wedding Feast or Famine

 

In Roland and my families, weddings seem to be feast or famine. Our daughter, Caroline, got married on July 1, 2006. One of Roland’s sisters was married the year before, but it had been over a decade since any other weddings.

After Caroline and Pete’s wedding, we had another long dry spell until one of Roland’s nephews got married in 2022. Last year was quiet, but it looks like there will be two weddings in 2024.

We had a strong hint at Christmas, when John brought a girl home for the first time, bringing her all the way from North Carolina. Although it is hard to get to know anyone in just a couple of days, we loved Christina at once. She is a strong Christian and a lovely person inside and out. John chose well.

My niece Rachel also brought her boyfriend over for a gathering of extended family just after Christmas, and we liked him, too.

On February 25 (a Sunday), we received a call from Rachel telling us she had gotten engaged the day before and was getting married at the end of August. Then, two hours later, John called to say that he had gotten engaged the day before, as well. That’s his and Christina’s engagement picture at the head of this post. No date yet because they’re still working on their plans, but I expect it to happen sometime this year.

John is 37, and some mothers might have tried to push their children into marriage by that age, but that was never my goal. Marriage is sacred, and without the right partner people are better off single.

I’m glad John waited for Christina.