Chuck Stoner Visits El Salvador 2013

                                                      Healing Love 

She was standing there on the outside stairs, halfway up, crying out her heart with a hurt much too big for that small two year old heart. From out our front door 15 feet away, I was watching her for a moment; then as our eyes met. I raise my hand and pointed right at her to fix her attention, without any expression on my face. She gazed through her tears, no doubt wondering what would happen next. As I walked toward her, her crying began to subside. I took her little hand into mine and our eyes continued focused on each others’ as I held her hand. I kissed it with eyes meeting between several kisses. I visualized God’s love coming to her and strengthening her heart. I continued thus for a bit, as my eyes were filled with love and emotion, almost crying, conveying to her the love and compassion God has for her. She drank it all in, seeming to get a fill of love, confidence, and strength. A small dog came up to her on her right side and a larger dog on her left, with their noses coming close to me. On my level, I began to back off as she began to focus on the dogs and began to stroke one of them and breaking out with a smile at them. I withdrew and she in a moment scampered up the stairs, no doubt running to her mother, or at least to play in the house, having no doubt experienced the love of God that enabled her to face her little life with new strength and hope. 

                                                                    LOVE

                                                                 Reflections*

Love is accepting people in hope they will learn to understand God’s love and respond to him. 

Love is listening to the small boy who everyone looks down on because he is so small for his age.

Love is picking up the toddler whose mother just ignores him, and holding him close, smiling to him as he smiles back. Earlier love had broken bread with him, not being sure if he will get it all into his mouth or drop some on the floor.

Love is tolerating a lot of kids and putting up with their noise because that is who they are.

Love is listening to loud music, not because anyone is deaf, but because some think it sounds so much better that way, though not to the one who tolerates it out of love.

Love is popping corn, and popping some more, until hungry boys are content.

Love is learning a new boy’s name, laughing with them when his friend misnames him in sport.

Love is telling a singer that our boys love his singing, and one had requested it be played.

Love is listening to a friend and feeling a special tie that had been tested by anxiety hours before and found most durable.

Love is walking to the store in the dark with a small family, and buying pampers for the toddler and then giving them enough money that they can eat a snack before they go to bed.

Love is echoing feelings of a new Belizean who is frustrated with the disrespect of boys barging into their house to use the bathroom without asking, and then make a lot of noise banging on his truck.

Love is requesting the translation of a favorite Garifuna song as the singer’s son feels complimented that you want him to do a favor, learning what the song is about.

Love is hearing the grief of a spouse who can’t find something, suspecting theft and just accepting her frustration, even though suspecting it was just mislaid.

Love is giving your last change to a young man who is slow of academics, but full of feeling.

Love is gratefully eating your ethnic soup after others have been served, and you relish the peace within.

Love is imitating our Heavenly Father who cared for us from birth, or before, and has always given us a sense of his loving reach to us, desiring our fellowship; ever patiently hoping we will learn to love others as he has loved us regardless, endlessly, continuously

Love is signing off for the day with a grateful heart that God has given so much love to people this evening through his servant.

*Reflections after a busy evening, January 12, 2006 when we had a home center in Belize for kids, youth and adults dropping by, one evening when things were busier than usual and God was present to give extra strength to persevere with his gift of love.

                          SEVENTY THINGS FOR WHICH LIFE IS TOO SHORT

                               From Icons of My Life- A Celebration of 70 Years

Life is too short…

1. To complain about your spouse’s housekeeping when you can just as well do it yourself.

2. To wash the dishes 3 times a day, unless you have visitors, free labor, like children or grandchildren, if it is only you and your spouse.

3. To try being a millionaire by working or striving.

4. To worry about what you don’t get done in a day.

5. To keep up with changing fashions when classics are always in style and dignity.

6. To wash your car every week.

7. To do 115% on a menial job when 95% of perfection will do well and in half the time.

8. To make children do things your way when it is not a matter of morality, safety, or efficiency.

9. To spend a day without reading God’s word, a newspaper, and some pages in a good book.

10. To lie in bed when you can’t sleep when you can get up and do something significant.

11. To quarrel with your spouse just to win an argument.

12. To be distracted by grudges longer than 60 seconds.

13. To wear yourself out so you can rest or take a vacation.

14. To live for yourself, even if you tithe your money.

15. To skip a day without prayer.

16. To maintain an acre of lawn.

17. To worry about yesterday or tomorrow.

18. To neglect your family for anything.

19. To take everything seriously, especially your own opinions.

20. To worry about your failing faculties.

21. To remake your spouse or anyone else into your image.

22. To ignore a child’s cry for love and withhold support and a hug. .

23. To lavish love on yourself with selfish entertainment such as TV when there is someone right there to love, like a child trying to crawl onto your lap, begging for your attention, or a yearning wife.

24. To make excuses when the real reason is, you just don’t care enough to act.

25. To live the unexamined life.

26. To hesitate when the obvious is right before you.

27. To wait to enjoy your family until they are a bit older.

28. To watch programs like Feed the Children and World Vision, and grow old when others can’t because you only watched the programs and did nothing about it. .

29. To mope over your failed dreams when you can pray and let God do it a better way with others.

30. To strive after wealth which does not satisfy.

31. To put off until tomorrow to do the good you should have done yesterday or today.

32. To wait for a better day to share the good news of Jesus.

33. To live without priorities and goals.

34. To lose sleep over what might have been rather than considering insomnia a gift of God for fellowship with Him.

35. To worry about the rainy days at the end of life.

36. To grow older with desperate needs around us and delay in doing anything about them.

37. To repay a fraction of our debt to God for his habitual goodness to us.

38. To live for the day you can retire.

39. To hope you will feel more like helping the poor tomorrow

40. To stop sowing good deeds until you see the fruit of your work.

41. To let secret sins stifle your faithful service to God.

42. To stay depressed over strained relationships.

43. To take a long summer vacation ever year when you need only half that amount to touch base with family and church and to rejuvenate.

44. To stand there buttoning a long shirt front when you’re chaffing at the bit to get on with life.

45. To let months and years slide by without filling them with activity of eternal consequences.

46. To allow other’s negativism to get under your skin and hinder your service to God.

47. To take a long vacation when you are restless to be immersed in meaningful activity of service that is waiting for you.

48. To let marriage difficulties hang and not seeking understanding and resolution.

49. To live with personal moral dilemmas and bondage.

50. To let would be visitors wait at the door just because you have had enough visitors for a day.

51. To worry in the night about matters you know you can solve better by sunlight.

52. To neglect hobbies involving nature and the great outdoors by which you can share God’s joy of creation.

53. To be ignorant and unobservant and miss half the show of life.

54. To be concerned only with news and not reflect the meaning of happenings.

55. To let another year go by and not be 365 days ahead of the past.

56. To remember, record, and photograph every interesting and special thing that happens.

57. To memorize all your ancestral connections back to your original immigrant, unless it comes easily.

58. To limit yourself to one culture when the world is full of colorful and curious cultures.

59. To coast along in the life span with only your own age group and ignore the energy and optimism of youth and the wisdom and contentment of the elderly.

60. To follow one’s own plans and miss the best way of God

61. To lie awake at night idly thinking when one could be up and doing something constructive in the environment of the home, the mind, or God.

62. To be patient with an unconstructive or unfruitful life.

63. To retire from life before God takes you away.

64. To start doing something good until you have it all figured out and everyone approves.

65. To save for a rainy day when poverty is flooding all around you right now in the global village.

66. To only look back without a vision for the future.

67. To see the years slip by without knowing what happened. (What did happen, anyway?)

68. To have any hobby that consumes a great deal of time before you are in wheel chair.

69. To spend most of your life making payments on your house.

70. To spend any more time dreaming up more of these philosophical ideas.

                                                        Me and Daudy

“Daudy”, that is what we called my Grandfather Sam. He was my father’s father. When I came around, he was already an old man, probably 63, but not as old as I am now. But he seemed older. He and my grandmother, who we called Mommy, lived through the fields just north of us. We had a path through the crop growing there, unless it was corn or wheat. It was partly uphill, so it seemed to us youngsters. My grandmother used to be the midwife when my siblings were born. My mother would hang a white sheet on the clothes line to indicate when the time was for Mommy to come to deliver a baby. Daudy took us children home on one morning when we were there overnight. He teased us on the way in the field, “If there was a new baby, would you want a boy or a girl?” He only had to smile as he did his part in returning us that great morning when there were one more of us, probably the 8^th of us.

I used to go fishing with Daudy in the marl pits where trucks had hauled away fertile soil for farmers. In the morning we first dug worms and he would pack a lunch for us. He selected two long bamboo fishing poles which we stuck through the back curtain opening of the buggy. They stuck out back probably 8 to 10 feet, leaving no doubt to anyone we met, of where we were going. We would happily sit there on the bank with lines, "bobbers," hooks with those wiggly “fishworm” on them. We would wait for the fish to pull down the "bobbers," and we knew we had a nibble or perhaps a bite, and up we raised our poles excitedly. Proudly I always counted my fish and was happy with every one of them. Daudy would just smile at my little prized fish. I think he threw the small ones back, but I saved mine. After all, they counted up as much as his bigger ones, which were not really big after all.

On the way home, he might stop at a store and buy a bottle of pop- soft drink, which we shared. I don’t remember if he poured it out in cups for us to drink, but he had slight misgivings about raising the bottle to his lips. That reminded him too much of alcoholic drinks, which he never would have tasted, and wanted to be a good example to me by not drinking it in the manner of the drunks. I think he had an alcoholic brother-in-law, a step or half brother to Mommy although I didn’t know that connection until much later. Anyway, Daudy liked a refreshing drink, but not the “strong” drink, as they called it. Back to the fishing, when we got home he would clean them, too wise and considerate to ask me to help him clean them! Maybe he knew I was too young to learn. Anyway.

Daudy was a preacher. But I have no clear recollection of his preaching style. It seems he spoke in a rather monotone style, somewhat like my father, but I am not sure. He was discreet and respectful even when he preached on things people did not want to hear. He believed in Sunday School when it was still mostly a Mennonite thing. We were Amish but he was not afraid of other good Mennonite practices. He would take his family to Mennonite revival meetings, sometimes in cold winter evenings. Some thought Sam might just eventually join the Mennonites himself. When in his early twenties, he had moved with his father’s family about two hundred miles south so that they could have Sunday School with out disturbing the conservative fellow ministers. Of course I wasn’t around for that but that is what they tell me. I did visit that territory when I was about 16, touring with my extended family. We saw the well on a hillside that Daudy himself dug when was only about 26. It was still in good shape, perhaps 50 years later.

Daudy lived with us the last 6 years of his life. He always had his room next to our kitchen. He stayed there a lot, but came out to eat with us and took his daily walk to the mailbox a half mile down the road. He usually kept a conversation going at the supper table. Sometimes it was about stories he was reading. If it was written in German, it had more credibility even if it was fiction. He liked to raise controversial ideas sometimes which did not please our peace-loving parents, as we youth had to answer his challenges, we thought. Once he asked, “What would they (Americans) do without gasoline?” We youth had good answers, we thought. The trouble was he was just twenty-five years ahead of his day on what became a real issue for Americans in the late seventies.

He did not mind rebuking us at times, mildly, but not often. If we used an English word where he used a German word, he might ask like, “Why do you say ‘count’ instead of the German word,” which we well knew. Sometimes he saw things far from our perspective, like once when I energetically jumped on the bike and sped between the house and the barn, he remarked, “If that isn’t pride, I don’t know what is.” (He saw "pride" as a deadly sin.)  He also did not like any musical instruments, like my harmonica playing. Apparently he would complain to our parents, and I heard the rule from them: no harmonica playing. He didn’t need explanations for his convictions; he thought anyone should just know.

Daudy took his responsibilities and duties seriously, like caring for his mentally ill daughter. She stayed in a bedroom next to the living room, with the tall headboard near the door where we could listen to her but she would not know we were there. She used a comb on paper to vibrate a kind of music, sometimes for long periods of time. She also often old stories to herself of what happened to her in her sickness and earlier treatment. The time came when “friends” reported to authorities that they kept her chained to the bed. That was so she would not run out in any kind of inclement weather, or sometimes over powered her family when Daudy was gone. He went meekly to a hearing the morning after the arrest without representation or family, and pled guilty to the charge of “assault and battery”. My sympathy raises my feeling even now when I think of that almost 60 years later. He took it humbly with no malice to anyone. In prison on a six month sentence, he appreciated the kindness of the warden who called him Pop and who gave him many privileges. When he came home from prison after 3 months, being pardoned by the governor, everybody was joyful except me. I was overcome by sympathy and the sadness of the injustice done to a sincere father and grandfather. Even before he went to prison, I would spend nights at his house sometimes, and every night when we knelt to pray, he would ask God to forgive his enemies: “for they know not what they do”. Daudy did not express his feelings of affection freely, just as many in that generation and even later did not. But he cared and treated us with respect and dignity because he cared about us. His convictions were passed down for future generations, for all to be serious about the godly life as he was. I was seventeen when he went on to his reward.

[This is a third chapter in my biography, My Life Story. Other blogged so far include”Stories of my Early Childhood”, April 1; and "A Trip East When was Young,” May 1.]

                                                      My First Glimpses of Heaven

                                              (An Ambivalent Period of My Life In Belize)

In the last half of this month, November, 2006, I suppose for the first time I sensed that it may be a good feeling when I can look at my life and say, “I am happy to have completed my life”. At the same time I have again asked God to give me until a hundred years to serve people and enjoy my family and life, and having good health and a sound mind. I have never given much thought about actually looking forward to the joy of heaven and seeing Jesus, and having resolved all tensions of life. Now for the first time, I just think that might be nice, to look forward to the next life, not in theory that it will happen sometime, but that it definitely will be in the near future, for sure. Looking forward will be better than looking back as I am doing a lot now, in prep for my 70^th Celebration.

December 18. For some days last week and since, I was tired and perhaps depressed with sinus flu, with rather low energy and motivation. By 8pm, I am usually rather methodical in moving about. It makes me wish for a change, but not necessarily back to the States. It saps my motivation to envision much of service, but I still pray hard for a youth home to be established, as well as the faith of all the boys we have brought half way. I can imagine a down hill of vigor where we could pass on easily. This is so unusual. I even think I might live only into my mid 70’s. Not because my mother died 30 years ago yesterday, but that she and her siblings died at that early old age and my energy is an unusually low level presently. I want to feel much better if I press on to the century mark as I had hoped. Maybe my present low energy level is helping me to come to terms with my mortality which I have not had to face before in any definite way. Fortunately my life is in God’s hands and I don’t have to worry any more than my mother did.   

Some people like my friend Bob Miller who died last summer seem to leave rather easily, with the vacuum they left soon filled, as when you remove your hand from a bucket of water. But my life has so many tentacles into many areas; I don’t know how I could leave so easily. Friends in Belize, the very young, the youth, the mature, even the aged would miss me unimaginably. There are all my writings that I have done, who would read them? Who would even want to?  Who would want to sort them out and publish the wheat if they find some?  And of course, most of all my family who has seen me mainly summers for 20 years, and my wife whose partner I have been for half a century. No, it seems I could not slip away quietly. Yet the day I would leave, I know the waters would start gushing into the space I had occupied so many years in so many ways. I have not yet been motivated to begin closing the books on everything, nor am I anxious to do as much service as I still can. Perhaps I am only given a vision of what will transpire eventually. Perhaps I will soon feel more like staying around a lot longer. I still hope so.

January 3, 2007. What a difference a half day may make!  I suppose I was thinking more eschatologically as I could see no way forward for some days, perhaps even weeks. It seemed my wife Loretta did not like where we live, and yet could see no alternative that I could support even mildly. Moving to another location was the point of no agreement as well as about anything else. Today I talked with Alex who has a house in Second New Site which we have known for some time. When he said he would sell it for $60,000 cash, I suddenly felt there could be some hope. But then she still can’t see having boys living with us. Hortense could live downstairs with her boys who have been with us. Loretta felt I was totally out of touch when I declared that we can be doing everything for the sake of eternity for kids here. She felt I have no understanding for her feelings. She is nearly correct. I have faith again that we are potentially making an eternal difference in the lives of children and youth. With that hope, I desire and hope to go on and in spite of all adversity, and aim for a continued productive life. May Heaven wait until we have brought in a few souls!

September 16, 2007 “When we all get to Heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be”. That is a song we sang many decades ago and loved it. Now it is on TV. I had no idea of that actually become a real longing then, but just a vague hope for something in the indefinite future. But now, the vision of being released of all the ambiguity of this life! No more wondering when and if and how we can be of service to people. No more torn between the desire to give and the reminder that we are limited in what we can give. No more wondering if giving materially really meets any eternal consequence for the receiver No more wondering how we might really share the Gospel of good news for people around us that will liberate them from the snares of poverty they have brought upon themselves by submitting to their own passions and the selfishness of partners. O to be free, to have completed this course. If we could only say, “We did all we could have done”. Is there no escape from the ambiguities with out major regrets? Yes, we are torn between the hope of grace when it is all over with and the sense that we have hardly begun the task we were sent here to do. How will we rejoice when our job never will have been completed? I can hope for decades of opportunities to make things right, but would that help? How can I throw off the weights that burden me and make my progress so laborious and unfruitful?  How can I make real progress toward the glorious goal of heaven? Is it still decades afar to accomplish our mission? God have mercy on us! Only by grace can we be forgiven for an uncompleted life.

Why am I ambivalent about leaving this life? I have accomplished so little. Who said that I am important or that I should have expected to accomplish a lot? Do I feel I need to curry favor with God? Certainly not for salvation which is by grace, not of our merit of our accomplishments. I supposed I am constrained to service by an indelible sense of stewardship that was ingrained on me as a teen. We had it in our commitment to Christ, “saved to serve”. We saw it in many Scriptures, like “we were created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We had on a motto in our home, “Just one life will soon be last; Only what’s done for Christ will last”. We sang in our meetings in our youth, “Work for the Night is coming, when man’s work is done” Then we have a strong service mentality that runs broadly in our family for several generations. All this makes retirement simply unthinkable. I am rebellious to the idea of forced slow down, except by God’s direction. My paltry pile of accomplishments for God are a measly jumble of what I could have done for God. I think of the song also, “Must I go and empty handed, Must I meet my Savior so? Lord, have mercy on my soul!!

                                                                                           October 2, 2007

 About October 13, in talking to Walter about his likely short life projection with his cancer, it seemed he is so upbeat, glad for some time yet with family and friends, enjoying all of it, yet realizing reality as well; must be nice to be where he is at. May I be there at some time in the [far distant] future!

                                            FEELINGS ABOUT FOUR SONS

                                                                            (In Belize 2001)

For some time I have wanted to record some feelings I have toward the younger sons in our Belizean family. Yet I am not sure who I would want to address this to as the feelings are very personal, perhaps even embarrassingly so. Probably others around me also like these kids. They recognize the alertness, friendliness, and vigor of their personalities. Perhaps some even notice that they are fairly manageable, particularly for their stage of life. Especially the four brothers are so teaming with energy that if you are not too old or tired, you have to enjoy seeing them in their better moments, which is most of the time. Ah, there could be a catch there. Because they also have their impossible times where a little offense can set one off crying, and there is little one can do to shorten the hurt feelings that have occurred. How can anyone enjoy them, or even tolerate them then without irritation when the crying goes on and on? Usually I can anyway.

I suppose the first time I picked up the second oldest when he was about 3 years old and he leaned so snugly onto my chest, I realized something special for him in my heart, a kind of instant bonding. Then this year it was the oldest, who is so loyal, intimate, and at times jolly, that he seems like the son I never had, who should have followed in our birth family after our youngest daughter who I often think of when I am with him. Finally, there is the youngest, only a year and a half old, who loves to be picked up, and sometimes just can’t stop burying his face affectionately into my neck. He has responded so well to my care for him. When I lift him up from the little overwhelming things in his experiences he is soon comforted and can forget his crises. He knows I care and that he can come to me anytime, and he does. The three year old is also special, even as he experiences highs and lows frequently. He loves jumping from the high places, and sometimes from my knees, as far as he can. He may wonder when no means no. He sings and sings the same line vigorously over and over again, and learns parts of new songs quickly. The three youngest already sing a trio, and last night the 3 year old was beating drums with his younger brother clapping through all songs from the March for Jesus CD.

What am I trying to say about these children? They are in my heart day and night. It is so easy to pray for them as they lie down at night in pairs. They may repeat the prayer line by line, especially the next oldest. “Pray for us,” his older brother said when I asked them once of what comes next as they lay down. When I said God is Good, the youngest, who doesn’t yet talk, made sounds recognizable of imitating those words. In only the few months we have had these kids, they have developed so much love and feeling and self esteem. When their mother comes here, they may hug her, but when she takes them home for a spell, they soon want to return here. They give me so much that it is so easy to love them continually. I pray for them every day. May God wrap his love around them even so as I do. I can bear with them their inexpressible disappointments, where it could be so frustrating not to know the problem they are facing. Not that I am not slightly tempted at times to loose patience. But their tenderness helps me to be calm until their crises has passed. I wish I could have them until they grow up. But they are still free from being needed for my fulfillment. I just want them to have the full life that my other children have, or more. That goal carries me on, what ever their future will be. I just want to love them until they are safely in another home where parents are younger, and committed as we are to carry them on into faith and maturity. I love them with the love that God has placed in my heart, so that they may be his children forever, and though mine for a while.