getting back to normal

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Nathan Grohn

My Grandpa Baker died on June 3.

We buried him on June 8.

His estate sale is done, and the remnants went to auction.

The keys to his duplex have been turned over.

Only a few details remain.

Everything can go back to normal now.

For about two months I made the most of my time in order to spend as much of it with him as I could. I crammed my workweek into less than four days so I could get to where he was by Thursday afternoon. But there are no more Thursday afternoons. I am no longer a caretaker. My time is left to me to do what I will with it.

There is time enough to afford an extra fifteen minutes in the morning to commute to work by bicycle, and and extra thirty in the evening to get back home again. There is enough time to do some chores I’ve put off, like cleaning out my storage unit. All that stuff I’ve been dragging around, saying I was going to sell it on Ebay? I’ve got most of it listed. My laundry is not just washed, it is also folded and put away. I even made venison stew for supper, which required a monumental commitment of time since a whopping nine ingredients were involved, and most of them required cutting up. Yes, now that one of those unavoidable sad and bad parts of life is over, everything is getting back to normal, and everything is good.

Except it isn’t. This world is still pretty rotten.

It’s funny how we look back on a year and say it was good or bad. From my perspective, 2009 was a good year – my nephew was born. ’10 was bad – Mom got sick. ’11 was a good year – another nephew was born! ’12 was pretty much awesome – my brother got married. But ’13 is shaping up to be a tough haul, and it’s only half over. People die, people are still sick, churches split, brother is set against brother, disasters strike, accidents happen, healthy people are killed in the course of their work, perversion abounds, and the list goes on. All of it is simply what happens in a broken world, in a world in which people sin because they are sinners, in a world in which creation groans under the curse. It’s messy and dirty and painful out there, but it is still better than we deserve, sinful sinning sinners that we are.

People want to comfort you in your pain. All of them mean very well, and their comforts usually take some form of one of the stock phrases hauled out for this purpose. One I heard was, “Well, everyone dies!” I thought, Not permanently! If you think death is permanent, your sense of time is rather short! A more common one is, “Well, he’s in a better place now.” And I wanted to reply, Only half of him is! We had to bury the other part! Finally, there is the ubiquitous “Well, he had a good long life.” By the point of this utterance, I’m almost bursting to shout, He still has!

It isn’t normal that we had to bury Grandpa. It isn’t normal that he has to wait. It isn’t normal that we suffer and die.

Do you want to know what normal is? You can see it, in a way. You can actually hear it. You can even taste it. Eternal life isn’t so much a place, as it is a Person. He comes to His people with the words “Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” He comes in the faithful reading and preaching of His Word. He comes in the absolution. He comes in ordinary water with the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

It’s just a foretaste, but it is still eternal. And it’s entirely normal, right now.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:18-25, ESV

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This painting was on the wall of every house my Grandma and Grandpa Baker lived in during my lifetime. It now hangs here on my wall, which is really too small for it. It reminds me of them. It reminds me of the hymn in the previous post. And in that way it reminds me of my Comfort.

falling asleep

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Nathan Grohn

These days I go about life with one primary objective: Thursday afternoon.

My workweek begins on Monday at 7 am. I am fortunate to have an employer that permits me to do my job at hours that suit me. By Thursday at 11 am, I have completed my 40 hours for the week, and I hit the road for Mom & Dad’s, 99 miles away. That is where Grandpa is. I usually get there by one in the afternoon, and that is where I stay until Sunday evening, when I drive north again to do my job the next week.

So I do everything else in order to get here on Thursday, and relieve some of the burden on the rest of the house who gives care seven days a week. It is my great privilege to watch over Grandpa two nights a week, taking my turn on the sofa opposite his bed in the living room. Dad takes two nights a week there when I am gone, and the other three are covered by people from outside the house. Tonight is one of those.

The outside is nearly as still as possible. My bedroom window has been open for two hours, but the air has not changed. Nothing stirs. Strange that amid the exhaustion of the routine, tonight is the night I cannot sleep, the night when I have my chance. Strange that I cannot sleep as Grandpa cannot stay awake, preparing and being prepared to fall asleep in Christ. He is tired – 33,000 days of tired. Perhaps two handfuls remain. His Old Adam has been under water for 65 years, and the sentence pronounced so long ago is almost carried out.

Music plays most of the time in his room. Usually it is country western for this old cowboy, a 15-hour loop of classic hits from Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Alabama and the like. But most concerns of this world don’t concern Grandpa as much anymore – only one foot stands here I suppose. And so the last evening, these songs of heartbreak, cheating, and loneliness were traded out for the 24/7 stream from Lutheran Public Radio. The songs that sing of fallout and consequences of sin are now replaced with the Alleluias he will sing with the greatest choir ever. The Te Deum comes in over the speakers in the middle of the night. Grandpa probably doesn’t know its name, but he has sung it before in his low, gravelly voice that scoops and slides to all the notes. Too soon for me, he will sing it better than I ever can here.

So too, the familiar sounds of the gospel music playlist are used a little less. When one song asks, “What will you choose? Heaven or Hell?” I cringe a little. Should doubt be cast in his mind? Why would this be asked of a man who already has 100% certainty of salvation on account of Christ’s death for his sins and Christ’s righteousness that enrobes him? In addition to the human eyes that watch tonight, there are those of His holy angel that watch to ensure that the evil one has no power over him until such time as his Master calls.

So too, time and space have lost their usefulness. There is no need of hours or minutes. Even day and night are little matter. It seems to be one continuum that goes on forever, yet somehow unmetered. Time works different on the other side, but I don’t know exactly how, and it doesn’t really matter. Meanwhile, I count the minutes here between three and four.

I’m not OK with death. Death is not good. Death is not a part of life. Death is not a rescue from temporal pain. Death is not a gift. Death is not a friend. And death is not natural, except in a broken nature such as ours is. But what death is for the Christian, is temporary.

When I tell people about Grandpa, they usually ask how old he is. When I say, “91,” they usually reply, “Well, he’s had a good life.” It is as if all that there is to live for is what has already happened, and that spent, it is all over. It is as if his great fortune was in a long number of years. I want to say, “No, he has a good life!” He’s already had a good life for nearly seven decades and it goes on eternally! It doesn’t start when he gets to heaven. It doen’t start only when he goes to his Lord’s side. No, until then, his Lord comes to him in with and under the bread and wine, in the absolution, and in the Word. He is baptized!

Yes, it is rough going here, especially for Grandpa. And caretakers say this is the hardest part of being a caretaker, these two handfuls. But I don’t mind it because Grandpa is a Christian. I would have a difficult time of caring for a non-Christian because apart from Christ there is no hope of salvation. But I know that Grandpa will be waiting the resurrection there as we do here, waiting for the final fulfillment of all His promises. And on Sunday, when we sing with all the heavenly host, “Holy, Holy Holy!” that means Grandpa too.

So please forgive my one-track-mind, and forgive me if I write about Grandpa a few more times. After all, these days I live for Thursday afternoon, but Grandpa lives forever.

A chaplain in a whiteout, a mortar, a boulder, water and the Word, and some neighbors

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Nathan Grohn

To most people, Grandpa’s stories of his service in World War II are just war stories. He will tell about how he was a marksman. He will tell about the weapon he used, an M1 Garand, and how he preferred 12- and 6-round clips over the larger 18-round clips. He will tell of the service dogs used in his unit. He will rattle off some of the places he was: Salerno, Naples, Leghorn, Monte Cassino, Mt. Belvedere, Venus, Brenner Pass, and lower Austria. But until the last fifteen years, he didn’t tell much. He didn’t like to talk about it, and that is understandable – PFC James Baker was a marksman in the middle of a horrible war. But as he began to tell more, it became clear that to him, the story was not just of the war.

His parents were not Christians. A neighbor had taken him to church, but that was it. The war was when he became a Christian. The story is rich, the scope wide, and many of its branches are only glanced at and passed by here.

+++

A story he told long ago was of when he was in a meadow, and enemy tanks were advancing to his position. He began to dig a foxhole, but found that where he had been digging, there was also a massive boulder that was too large to move, and there was no way to dig around. The hole was not deep enough, and the tanks were too close to begin a new hole. He had nowhere to go. He blacked out. When he awoke, the tanks had already passed, he was in the hole, and the boulder was lying in the meadow.

+++

I . . . might tell you how I found the Lord. That was, I always believed in the Lord and the things that He done for me, but I was over in Italy one early morning. A German barrage of mortar shells come in. Usually the first one falls short of it’s target, the second one goes just beyond the target, and the third one is usually dead on. There was a man ahead of me on a little trail, myself, and a man behind me, and we were about 30 foot apart and we were on a hillside. The first shell came in below us and it didn’t hurt us because it spread out below. The second one came in, it come above us, we were lying down and all the shrapnel came out over the top. The third one come in and it lit in the trail just ahead of me, close enough that it cracked the ground back to where I laid, and it did not go off. It was what we called a dud. And a dud seldom ever happened in a German mortar shell. And knowing that that was . . . my life was handed to me by God from that point.

+++

I had a gold leaf bible carried in my pocket all the time, a little bitty guy. Whatever happened to that, I have no idea, but I would give just about anything to be able to carry it again, but whatever happened to it, who knows . . . it got hit with a bullet, and it saved my life, because with that little metal bounding on it, it kept the bullet from going through into my body . . . I had a great big black spot there where that little bible was, but it got over it.

The bible had been worn over his heart.

+++

It was my sister who thought to ask, “When did you become a Christian?”

“Do you know what a whiteout is?” came the reply. He beckoned to Poppy, the dog at his feet. “When I’m standing here in a whiteout, and I can’t see Poppy, it’s a whiteout. That’s what we were into, that kind of situation. It’s not that our uniforms were white, the fact is that there was nothing there to see, just a blank wall.” Grandpa proceeded to tell of the terrifying conditions in which he, eight other soldiers, and a Lutheran chaplain were trapped on Mt. Belvedere.

We had to dig a hole to get into, because the enemy tanks were coming down upon us. Their constant behavior to us was hard going. And we all held hands together, not a one of us knew how to pray except Chaplain Davis, and he started a word of prayer. And his praying is what got us into a position where we got out of this predicament, which we all said, if it wasn’t for him and him and his prayer and teaching us to pray, and about three-and-a-half hours, that’s why we got into the position that we were as Lutherans. There’s a lot more to that story than just what I can tell you here tonight, but it’s old and original, and it’s been good for us. It’s been good for me. Bradford Russow, and Dick Cundy and myself, all of us got together and had prayer together. Dick Cundy and Bradford Russow never got out of it, but I did. And because of being taught how to pray, what to pray for and how good it was for us, that’s why we became Christian people amongst us. . . All of us joined the Lutheran Church when we got over this scramble in this whiteout.

Grandpa continued to tell of another day when he and Dick and Brad parted ways.

We had been called voluntarily out to help some of our people that were in a serious position. And I myself was one of three of us us that volunteered to do this job. There were excellent reasons for the three of us to volunteer at that time. We had shell plates and so forth for protection, but not like what we had hoped for. . . The Germans threw mortar shells [at us], lobbed them in. The mortar shells usually go off at the rate of third one is deadly. One hit in the cowpath up the mountain right ahead of me, the next one hit in the cowpath just a little to the right, both of those were what we call duds which you never heard of, and I was saved because both of them were duds. And the third one was not. I got up to where the third one went off and stood up to see what was going on, which was a foolish trick to begin with. . . It was hard to explain why did we go up there on the third one and stick our neck out to a good chance of being killed. . . The machine gunner opened up fire and I got shot through the leg. They got shot and killed by ammo and that’s why they died. . . When the German traversed his gunfire, I jumped up on a stump to see where it was coming from. Got up on the stump and I looked both ways, both sides, both directions, and Brad and Dick were shot in the chest and killed, I was shot in the leg because I was on a stump, above their elevation.

He had intended to protect Dick and Brad by taking the more dangerous position. It was seven days before he reached a hospital.

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I knew when I came home that [your] Grandma had accepted God years before I ever did. She knew what it was all about. Not me. Thank goodness she knew how to accept God, what God’s pleasures were to our life. I knew nothing of her acceptance of God, only that she was a very highly Christian lady.

In 1948, the year after his discharge, Grandpa was baptized into Christ at Perrydale Christian Church, near where he was farming. The farm was sold in 1954 and the family ended up in West Salem. Some neighbors invited my grandparents who were raising two daughters by then, to visit their church, Peace Lutheran. Peace is where both daughters were baptized, confirmed, and married. And one of those daughters is my mom. And that’s about half of how I came to be baptized into the body of Christ as a Lutheran. All it took was a mortar, a boulder, a Lutheran chaplain in a whiteout, water and the Word, and neighbors some thirty and forty years earlier.

+++

Thank you, Grandpa.

Remembering today my brothers in Christ, Brad and Dick . . .

Hero

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Nathan Grohn

My grandfather is dying. I find that I am unable to collect my thoughts well enough to adequately explain why he is so respected by his family, at his church, and in his community. There will be time for that later, with a few stories selected from hundreds.

For now, here are the thoughts of children who wrote to him last week. These are children whom my grandpa visited in their classroom and to whom he told his story of military service to the United States in World War II. These children have never known a time without mobile phones, and he told them about about dogs trained to run communications wire over rough terrain. He showed them a pair of wooden skis he restored, identical to the ones he used to traverse the Italian Alps in the 10th Mountain Division. He showed them his medals. He told them about trenches, tanks, mortars, being shot at, and being shot. He showed them patriotism. For thirteen years he has visited these children, and when they were told that he would not be returning again, they wrote letters and sent hand-made cards decorated with construction paper Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, and United States Flags. Here are a few of them.

Dear Mr. Baker,

Wow, it seems like yesturday I was shaking your hand and thanking you for fighting for our freedom.

I remember in the year of 2009 you came into [our] classroom and we were told that you are the only WW2 veteran. You were one of the veterans that helped me fold the flag.

Mr. Baker you have taught and shown me so much about what is going on everyday of our lives that we may not see.

I don’t want to see you go away so quickly. I’m sorry very sorry that a good man like you has to leave this earth so quickly. Thank you Mr. Baker for standing up for our Country. You make me Proud!

Dear Mr. Baker,

To a veteran who participated in the second World War 2 that I wanted to honor and say thank you for everything you have done for us. You are the best hero I’ve ever met. I felt so lucky to be able to shake your hand and look into your eyes and thank you for everything you did, but when I did it immediantly brought tears to my eyes… knowing that I met the strongest man was a great pleasure.

Leaving your friends and family to serve in WW2 means more than anything. Thank you for coming to [our] school and sharing your wonderful stories with us.

You are loved by Many people and you will Never be forgotten.

I was amazed that I was able to meet someone who made such a big impact on us.

Always,

Dear: Mr Baker

I want to thank you for your Heroic serves, thank you for giving your life too this country so that we can live in a safe and free country that we live in today. I remember when you came into class, and talked about your exspeance in the war of WWII. And you made me feel like I was in the war and I got to exspeance what it felt like to get shot at and having to keep cover in the trences.

I hope that this letter brout some warth to you hart.

Love,

Dear Mr. Baker,

You probably don’t remember me by heart, but I remember you like the back of my hand! Thank you so much for coming to our school and talking about your life and the memories you had in WWII. You made such a HUGE impact on our school and community. You are so brave for what you have done for our country and I Thank you thouroughly for your support! You have such a BIG heart and the stories you told to us are so heart-warming to me. I pray everyday for you and no matter how high the tides get for you, god is going to take you to a better place where theres a special place for Heros of America. I thank you for your service and wish you the very, very best.

Love,

P.S. you are loved by many people who are thankful for your service

Nothing New

Tag Archives: Grandpa Baker

getting back to normal

falling asleep

A chaplain in a whiteout, a mortar, a boulder, water and the Word, and some neighbors

Hero