Mythology. Or something like it.

Every family has it's own legends- stories filled with the heros and larger-than-life characters of our pasts; the kings and queens we descended from. Sometimes, these are actually mythologies and not a bit of truth is in them. Sometimes, they're true.

My grandmother, Lois, at 15.

This summer my grandmother turned 100 and it was my job to scan the photos and make a slideshow for the gigantic party we threw for her. In the process, I spent a lot of time mediating on her story, which is connected to this other big thing which I rarely talk about.

My grandmother was fifteen when she felt called to preach. That was in 1927. A few years earlier, her father, a pastor, had gone down to California, to a place called Azusa street and everything had changed for them since then. Her father was subsequently kicked out of leading their brethren church and the whole family was branded as "holy rollers." After she was finished with high school, my grandmother went to the closest Bible college she could find which was all the way down in San Francisco. There, she worked in a street ministry and on Sundays she sang on the radio and did a Sunday school lesson. My grandmother was really close with her sister, Verna, and they were in college together.

After college, my grandmother and her sister became the pastors of a tiny church in Oregon. The town had 500 people and the church had 5 members but soon it grew to over 30 people. They rented a tiny house in those days and since it was during the Great Depression, the rent was $5.00 a month.

One winter my grandmother and her sister went out in the snow with some of the young people from their church. They had been invited to go skiing, but since it was so cold, some of the boys lent them some jeans to wear under their dresses. The very next Sunday, they found their church padlocked and it was explained to them that since they had worn boy's clothes, they'd lost their jobs. Early pentecostals, you know how it is.

Lois & Verna as pastors

After that, my grandmother and her sister worked in a mission in Oregon, and soon after they moved to California where Verna fell in love and got married.

My grandmother was alone after that and ministry seemed impossible.

She moved back to Seattle and got a job in a restraunt. One day, a soilder came in. They became acquainted and the soldier said he could find my grandmother a better job. Eventually, they fell in love and got married.

I guess this is the crux of the story. My grandmother felt "called to the ministry" ever since she was 15. As the legend goes, she knew she was never supposed to get married and certainly not to someone who wasn't a Christian. When she met Galon Elihu Prater, she knew and felt it in her heart that it would be wrong to marry him because he wasn't really the right man.

But she loved him.
So, she did it.
She was 24 years old.

This was once just a story to me. Things are different now. I feel as though I understand the story better. What terrible disillusionment my grandmother must have felt when she was fired from her role as a pastor just because she wore men's jeans in the snow. How lonely she must have felt after Verna got married and she was left alone in Seattle. As I was scanning the old photos of my grandmother in her 20's with her new husband these past few weeks, it all became so real to me. I get it. I get where she was coming from and I could never judge her harshly for the choices she made. Who doesn't want to fall in love? Who doesn't want a family?

I don't always understand God. I don't know why some people seem to land on this earth with a dream as far away as the skies and a lifetime of jumping toward the heavens to reach it. I don't understand why others are a bit more ambivalent about things like destiny or calling. Why do some of us feel like there's so much to do while others don't? What will happen if we don't follow our vague inklings?

It's something that we scarcely talk about. Even with my closest friends, it's a subject rarely breached. Oh, I've seen snatches and glimpses of the stars that some of my friends' are jumping for. But I know I can't expect them to be completely transparent when I, too, do most of my jumping and reaching in the dead of night while nobody is watching and when no one can see if I happen to trip and fall.  

I think about it all the time. I wonder if I'll make it, if they'll make it, if any of us heard right about what we're supposed to be down here doing. It's awful important for something that's so hard to talk about.

Maybe we're talking less about our dreams because of the dead economy. Maybe because some of us have become so disillusioned and confused about what to do with this thing called The Church. I certainly miss the days when I didn't question so much, when I didn't find fault in so many people.

There's a happy ending to the story of my grandmother. Years after she got married, after her husband had lived a long life and after she had raised kids and had many happy years, after all of that, she did follow her calling into the ministry. She sold everything she had a started an orphanage in the Philippines and it's still in operation today while my grandmother, who is 100 years and one week old lives at home with us and still whispers a prayer over every plate set before her. I hope that God is pleased with her. I'm sure that He is.

Some days, I'm full of questions that I don't know the answers to, but that's okay for now.

I wish that we all had the courage to talk more about our dreams.

He fought in both World Wars.

My grandmother.

Husband & their 3 little girls in Virginia.

Together.

The hotel they owned in downtown Snohomish.

The start of my grandmother's adventures in the Philippines.

Part of the orphanage...

In the public market..

Transportation. Does that little girl look familiar? 

Dinner time at the orphanage..

Is every life different?

*This post is kind of serious and I apologize in advance for that.

And is each person’s death the same?

How can that be if every life is different?

Is every life different?

From ‘Dying Stupid’ by Li Young Lee

When my friend Masa died six months ago I couldn’t get these lines of poetry out of my mind.

I’ve seen a lot of death. I’ve had three siblings die, although I only ever talk about the one who affected me the most, my older sister. I’ve had two parents die, my biological mother and my adopted-but-divorced father.

However, when Masa died last January, it was different. I’m going to tell you why.

I met Masa my first week at Northwest University in Fall 2009. That same week I met all the people who are so very valuable to me today, but of course I didn’t realize it at the time. When I met Masa, he was surrounded by friends and he was laughing; those two traits would come to characterize his life.

We became acquaintances. It was easy because I lived with many of his Japanese friends at the time. Later, in Spring 2010, Masa learned that we have something in common through the fact that my little brother has kidney failure. We became better friends after that. 

I never told Masa that I had an older sister who died from kidney failure. 

Masa and I took a class together that summer semester at Northwest. It was New Testament survey with Charette. I loved it, but it was no doubt difficult. However, if it was difficult for me, it was three times that for Masa, who had absolutely no prior knowledge of the Bible, had English as his second language, and was going to dialysis three times a week.

If he was struggling, and I knew he was, Masa never let on. I’m not even sure that Charette knew he was in and out of the hospital daily until I told him the reason for one of Masa's absences.

One night that spring, Masa and I went on a dinner run. We’d both been in the library for most of the afternoon. It was pouring down rain outside. Masa chose a dingy little Japanese place in Kirkland that I'd never been to. I had curry udon and edamame for the first time and over dinner, Masa told me how he came to know God and why he was going to school at Northwest. He said he’d met some people through a program at Shoreline Community College called Talk Time. He said that from these people, for the very first time, he felt a different, real kind of love that he didn’t know had existed before. Previously, he thought that strong love only really existed between a parent and a child, or as romantic love.  He said he’d been very depressed after he found out he had kidney failure and that he was questioning whether or not life was really worth it. But then the people at Talk Time introduced Masa to God and everything in his life changed. Masa believed God could heal him. He’d never before known about hope before he became a Christian. 

I wish I could remember all the details of our conversation that night.

I think I remember crying just the smallest bit.

I know I didn't finish my udon. 

Summer 2010 we both went to Japan. I went to Tokyo as a volunteer English teacher and Masa went to Osaka to visit family. We both came back in August and we both took Biblical Interpretation as another summer course. 

We stayed up late at coffeeshops that were open all night in Seattle. Studying in the summer is kind-of depressing, but it's easier with a friend. No matter how late I stayed, Masa stayed later. He was diligent with his school work. 

Fall 2010 we took a third course together, Temple Imagery. I admit that it wasn’t very nice of me to encourage Masa to take it because it was a terribly difficult course, but he did it anyways. We often sat together in chapel and when they would play the song ‘Healer’ Masa would stand up and raise his arms to the roof and I’d stay where I was, watching him, pleading with God.  Some days, the song would come on and I’d weep uncontrollably. Kidney failure had already taken the life of my sister, it had already made my younger brother's life more difficult, it seemed so unfair that it should have Masa as well. 

Time passed. We took separate courses. I didn’t see Masa as often around school but I knew he was doing well. I knew he was seeing the world and spending all his free time with friends. Masa had hundreds of friends. He wasn’t so much a social butterfly as he was simply somebody that people loved to be around. He was loyal and a good friend. I remember some days we'd be studying and he'd leave suddenly because he needed to go counsel a friend. He was always happy. Always smiling. Always taking pictures and on the hunt for a good coffeeshop.

On Christmas Eve last year, Masa showed up out of the blue at my coffeeshop while I was working. It wasn’t all that uncommon since he often came in from time to time, but this time, he said he was leaving for Japan in a few days. He was looking sharp and healthy and I knew from the news I’d heard on the grapevine that he started dating someone. I was so happy for him. He was so smiley. When I asked to take his coffee order, he hesitated, and that’s when I realized that he hadn’t bumped into me by happenstance; he’d come to say good-bye. He stood there in his nice Christmas Eve clothes and

we chatted and he assured me he’d come back to Seattle from time to time, maybe even as early as January. I considered walking around to the other side of the counter to hug him good-bye, but I didn’t. It seemed like too much. I’d see him again soon, after all, and we both knew I had plans to go to Japan one day so it didn’t feel like good-bye, but I was still touched by the gesture of him showing up on Christmas Eve.

On January 5^th I came home from work to a message on facebook saying that Masa had suffered from a subarachnoid hemorrhage and that he was brain dead and lying in a hospital in Osaka.

There was already a prayer group on facebook that was at around 150 people. I watched over the next few days as that number climbed to over 1,500.

Everyone was praying.

Except me.

I was tearing apart my room. I was pulling books off of hidden stacks in my closet, under my bed, layered on my bookshelf. I was furious. I felt like all the breath had been sucked from my lungs. I had no words. I couldn’t pray.

I was looking for a book called Letters to Malcolm by C.S. Lewis. It’s a short little book about prayer, I remember it having a few chapters on praying when you don’t know how to pray. I was convinced that I needed the book, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Finally, exhausted, I gave up.

I knelt on the floor in my room and I wept uncontrollably. I considered giving God an ultimatum: my faith for Masa’s life. I considered telling God that I’d never believe again if he didn’t make good with Masa. I  considered that Masa's death, if he died, would be the end of my Christianity. How could I go on believing in a God who would let something so terrible happen? 

But I didn't have the guts to say that to God. I know my God. I know who he is in trouble and in good times, and I know that no matter what, he's there. Life is really terrible at times and sometimes it's unexplainable, but it's not for us to know, and it's not God's fault that we live in a fallen world- it's ours.

I thought about what Masa would say if he knew about my proposed ultimatum and I decided just to do my best at the praying bit.

I pleaded with God for two days. 

I wasn’t alone. 1,500 other people were also pleading.

When Masa died on January 7, 2012, I cried again, but it was so different from any other death I’d experienced.

I didn’t cry because Masa hadn’t lived a full life or because he’d missed out on something, I knew that he hadn’t missed anything. Masa lived every day to it’s full potential; he saw every sunset and every blue sky. 

I didn’t cry for my own selfish reasons, like I did when my sister died.

When Masa died, I wept for his girlfriend, and for his mother and father, but mostly, I wept for the hundreds of people who he hadn’t met yet, who would never get to meet him, who would never be touched by his life like I was. 

And is each person’s death the same?

How can that be if every life is different?

Is every life different?

In answer to the poem's question, yeah, I think every life is different. I’d like to live a life like Masa lived.