This morning at church we sang a hymn that made me think of Anna and what she would be singing. I have changed the pronouns from “I” and “me” to “she” and “her”. The hymn reflects the thought that you would find, for example, in Psalm 19:
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
The hymn is “This is My Father’s World”:
One of Anna’s most irritating characteristics began when she was a toddler. She was a child that some might call “tag-challenged.” All of the tags in her clothes needed to be cut off before she could wear them. But not only tags; we needed to sit with tiny shears and carefully cut away all remnants of the tag, the threads holding the tag, and any hem remaining from where the tag was. It was like trying to dress the princess from The Princess and the Pea. She could find the tiniest irregularity in her clothes and then order them off and repaired.
This aversion to tags extended to her footwear. Before she would wear socks, the hem on the inside of the toe had to be cut off and the sock carefully arranged around her toes so that no bunches of cloth remained. Her socked foot then had to be placed inside her shoe without any displacement of the sock. It became quite a project.
Sometimes the project became too much and we allowed her to go barefoot. I suppose that might be seen as good preparation for going to Indonesia, but it made for some difficult yet comical scenes before we left. At our six-week orientation before leaving the US for Indonesia, Anna as usual refused to wear shoes and socks. The problem was that we were in Richmond, VA in one of the coldest winters on record. The daytime temperatures were usually freezing and frequently dropped to single digits. There were many mornings we had to carry Anna to breakfast. She wore a winter coat, long pants, and two little blue feet sticking out the bottom.
When Anna was a baby we did not have very much money, and we depended often on the goodwill of others to give us clothes for our children. We had the good fortune to have some relatives and close friends who had older children and who had very good taste in clothes. So we always had nice clothes for our children. We tried to pass on the clothing to others when our children outgrew them and today there are Indonesian children running around Salatiga and Semarang who are the beneficiaries of the generosity of our family and friends. In fact, as Samuel got bigger, his clothes got passed on to some adults, too.
On one occasion in Louisville when the children were young there was a lot of clothing that had been given by someone at our church. Mixed in the clothing were some costume items. Anna found a pair of red, sparkly shoes that fit her perfectly. She brought them home and Anna’s red shoes became the only ones she would wear for some time until she outgrew them. I remember hearing from her Sunday School teacher the first week that Anna came to church with her red shoes on. She was so proud of her new shoes and wanted everyone to see them. Soon everyone knew Anna as the girl with the red shoes. An artist friend of ours at church later wrote and illustrated a book about each of our children and Anna’s book was called Anna and Her Red Shoes.
The red shoes marked the beginning of Anna’s life-long fascination with wearing costumes and playing “dress-up”. As she grew older the dress-up always tended towards playing the elegant woman. Sometimes she would be a queen or a princess, but the overarching theme was that of sophistication, poise, and elegance.
On our last Christmas together we came to the United States and spent the holiday with my family in California. One day Timberley and Anna got together with my mother and planned a tea party. They all found hats and scarves and sat on the back porch drinking tea and eating snacks. The men were not allowed to attend so we went and did other things together, but I can just picture Anna, Timberley, and my mother sitting on the back porch, in very cold weather, drinking their tea and chatting all the while in a very distinct British accent. This was Anna in her world. One of the most beautiful pictures we have of Anna was taken that day. She wore a big feather boa she borrowed from my mother and a ridiculous orange hat. And she is absolutely stunning beneath it all.
We knew pretty early on that Anna was a different child than Samuel. We never did figure out if it was the difference between first and second children or the difference between boys and girls. I am sure all of these factors combinde together to create the personality of each person. But whatever the various factors it is God who works them all together to make each person unique.
Samuel and Anna were certainly different from one another. While Samuel was headstrong, Anna was compliant. While Samuel was excitable, Anna was calm. While Samuel was loud, Anna was quiet. But they were not only different; they were complementary. When Samuel led, Anna would follow. If he wanted to play a game, Anna was ready.
At times it perhaps went to an unhealthy point. There were times that Anna would sit down to play with some blocks or a puzzle. She would find her spot. She got all of her things out of a toy box and had them all in order ready to go. Then Samuel might come by and say, “Hey Anna, can I play with those blocks?” Wordlessly, Anna would hand everything over to Samuel, smiling all the while. She seemed content that she could so easily make him happy.
Anna adored her big brother. We have a video of the kids playing ring-around-the-rosie in our kitchen. They must have been about four and two years old at the the time. Sam was definitely the leader as he led the song, looked into the camera, and at the final “we all fall down” would pull Anna down to the floor with him. Anna would never say a word until the end when she would stand up and say, “Do it again.” And Sam would faithfully get up and do it again. All the while Anna would just smile her big open-mouthed smile and stare into her brother’s face. They played the game over and over again and Anna’s gaze never left her brother. As Anna grew older she displayed a capacity for a deep, compassionate love. Looking back we can see that love shown even when she was a toddler.
As we continue to remember Anna, tears become our constant companion. What we have found over the past several months is that tears have a multiplicity of meaning. They express joy, sorrow, pain, happiness, hope, despair. And the messy thing about these emotions is that they sometimes come all at once. There are certain songs that we listen to that are guaranteed to bring us to tears.
I want to share these songs with you, not with the thought that you will share the same emotions as we, but that you might hear some familiar songs in a new light. Perhaps you will know someone who is grieving and you can pass them along. At the very least, you will have the opportunity to listen to some good music.
The first two are by Chris Rice. Deep Enough to Dream gives me a glimpse into what Anna is doing now. The line that sends me over the edge, if I am not there already, is “Deep enough to reach out and touch the face of the One who made me.” Here is a video of the song. I am not crazy about the pictures in the video. I much prefer the video I already created wth my imagination. But I had trouble uploading that one to the internet. So we will have to take what we can get.
The second song, also by Chris Rice, is called Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus). An old friend of mine that I had not seen in years sang this song at Anna’s memorial service in California. I did not know it well at the time, but I sure do now. The last verse speaks for itself.
One day Timberley came to me and said that she thought we should begin reading from the New Testament at night. At the time I think we were in the historical books of the Old Testament for our nightly devotion. Her concern was that the kids were not learning enough about Jesus.
“They are learning a lot of history and Bible facts, but they know nothing about the most important parts of the Bible,” she said.
“Be patient,” I replied. “First of all, they are learning about Jesus in other ways. They learn from us, from church, from others. Second, if we try to change our devotion routine there will be a small riot. But third, and most important, by reading through the entire OT, the children will be ready to hear about Christ. They will know why he needed to come and what his mission was. The Gospels will make much more sense to them if we finish out our plan.”
It was difficult to keep up some times, but we persisted and I think the results were good. The children knew the story of Israel in the Old Testament, and they knew the prophecies about Jesus. When Matthew wrote in his Gospel, “This happened to fulfill what was written . . .,” they understood what it was all about.
Our devotion times with the children began a process of reading through the Bible that continued up until Anna’s death and will hopefully continue on alone with Samuel. Before Anna died, we had read through the Old Testament and the New Testament up through Philippians. I find it interesting that in one of Anna’s last family devotions she read with us, “To live is Christ; to die is gain.” Anna was already convinced of that truth before reading it in Paul. It had become a commonplace in her speech and I think became an imprint on her thinking. She was well-convinced that living with Jesus in heaven would be better by far than life on this earth.
Timberley and I have always tucked in our children at night. The shape of that routine has taken various forms over the years, but as the children grew older we developed a fairly stable routine. After cleaning up from dinner we might gather for reading a book aloud as a family or a game of some sort. Around 7:30 we had our devotion time that included Bible reading and family prayer.
Several years ago the children made a request for our Bible reading. I think Samuel initiated it, but Anna was right behind him. Samuel came to me and said, “Daddy, I think we ought to change the way we read the Bible for devotion time.”
“What should we do?” I answered.
“Well, when we have our devotion now we read little pieces from all over the Bible. But if what you say is true, that the Bible is the word of God, then we should start at the beginning and read through the whole book.”
I could not argue with his logic, but was a little unsure how it would work out. I agreed. That night at bedtime I read the first chapter of Genesis to them. They sat with wide eyes and took it all in as if it were a fairy tale. I promised that the next night I would read chapter two.
The next three nights we read about the creation of man in chapter two, the first sin in chapter three, and the first murder in chapter four. When I finished reading chapter four to the children I told them that the next night I would tell them the story of Noah and the ark in chapter six, since chapter five was simply a genealogy and it might be pretty boring for devotion. Both children bolted upright. “No, no! You have to read chapter five. You have to read all of it.”
“But it’s just a list of names and how long each person lived. Don’t you want to hear about Noah’s ark?”
“But Dad,” Samuel interjected, “Isn’t all of it God’s Word?”
“Yes.”
“Then we need to read chapter five.”
I can still remember their faces the next night as the children lay in their beds and I read from Genesis five. They were not listening excitedly, as if I were reading a children’s story, but there was a seriousness to the night’s devotion. When I was done I prayed with the kids. I kissed them good night. Samuel simply said, “Thank you, Dad,” and turned over to go to sleep.
I remember another thing about Anna that was a sign of her devotion to her Lord. That is not the right phrase. It is the sense that Anna existed in a different world—one very much closer to our Lord than we normally are in this world. The thing I recall about Anna is her ballet practice. She loved to dance and would do so with freedom and a spirit difficult to describe. She was not the best dancer. She seemed to have difficulty getting all of her limbs to do the things she had in her head. Read the rest of this entry »
Anna had not infrequently spoken of death. In fact, it was but a few days before that Anna was upset about something at home and told her mother that she would rather die and go be with Jesus. Just two nights before her death we had a guest for dinner. In the course of conversation, the subject of the children’s savings came up. Out of the blue, Anna said, “What will happen if I die? I don’t have a will.” Our guest, a pastor, said, “You can make a will. All you have to do is write it down on a piece of paper.” Nothing more was said, but I would not be surprised if we found a brief will among Anna’s things.
Anna Resurget 