Tit for tat

I have been enjoying Michael Harkin’s column in the Sunday section of Today’s News Herald for many months. Always I get a chuckle. His column today related much about his being an army brat. I, in turn, wish to reveal, “I am a dam brat.”

It all started by being born on a site in California where my father and grandfather heave-hoed their grist against dirt and concrete in order for Shasta Dam to hold water.

My Dad named me Joy “Helen”- the latter name being that of an “early” school classmate. This, I found out years later. However, Mom became Dad’s “forever” sweetheart from high school days; their marriage lasted 75 years.

Aside from that, my blood type is “B Positive” and I have become a chaplain. This is my second calling; raising children and being a wife and homemaker were my first. With three adult sons and a grand flock of grandchildren—even great-grandchildren, plus a recent newbie, Malachi, who is Gary’s and my first great-great-grandchild. How many people can live so long as to be able to write that word—and own it? (I started early, at age 17.)

Now, thinking back to what it was like when my father and grandfather helped build dams in the Northwest and the Southwest. Parker dam was my Grandpa’s first as carpenter superintendent. They lived in a tent in 130 degree temps. Then Boulder Dam became my father’s first paid employment at age 18. In 1931, a strange thing happened. Voila`! In honor of President Herbert Hoover that dam was renamed “Hoover Dam.”

What stands out about being a “dam brat” clearly resembles the experiences of kids who mastered life with the tag of “military brats.” It centers on how education came zigzagging down the pike for us. Most of us had to adjust to being mobile: I attended 5 high schools in 3 states in 4 years.

As a result, this kid never knew a stranger, which helped me within the types of work I’ve done during adult life: sales, sales management, and then chaplaincy. The latter being not only my favorite but also the most challenging. In chaplaincy all faiths are honored, so never do I try to “sell” mine. This has made me a much more loving, caring person as I am not “out there” to gain something, but always to extend what is most real in life: God’s love. Chaplains wear “the God tag” as one patient informed me. Awesome—-but heavier than a bucket full of nails at times.

Chaplains always go “cold turkey” into patient rooms at the get go . . . never knowing what we are walking into. What is most astounding is often surprising: like when out of our willing hearts comes exactly what that person finds helpful. Of course, we do have a few encounters with people who say their “I’d rather nots” as we knock on the door then introduce ourselves.

“Never a dull moment” truly describes chaplaincy. For sure, chaplains often experience, while one-on-one, people who are facing ordeals that challenge them to the core. And, “strangers no more” fits the experience of patients meeting us while lying there in a hospital gown. Almost exclusively they have only the ceiling to enjoy—hour by hour—then day by day! It is a great thing that (by far) the majority want a visit and those who are open nearly always want prayer. This says there is a spiritual hunger aplenty on the planet these days. This is a good sign!

Many of us look with big-eyes at the changes we see in society. Some of us are old enough to recall the aptitudes of grandparents and great-grandparents who, for the most part, attended church. Those people had moorings. Mine knew the Ten Commandments by heart, plus studied the teachings of Christ to its depths. They desired to live righteous lives, a seldom used expression nowadays, simply meaning “right doing.”

Encountering the love of God through Jesus Christ, then living into it, finds 2.5 billion people committed to it globally according to current stats. What is clear about this truth? It is a purposeful life in which we are trying to make it better for others as well as for ourselves. It is a life that brings peace and joy—and a whole lot less fear.

See Joy's website healing-with-joy.com for multiple free help with depression, disillusionment, disappointment and many matters that derail us in life.