A Matter of Perspective

I have taken it upon myself to preserve and circulate some important family history. I am creating a new (digital) edition of a little booklet written by my great-great-grandmother, Hripsime Kassarjian. She was an incredible woman of God. Her book is my window into her world ... and it satisfies my grief at having been born after she had gone to be with our LORD. Here is a piece of her life, in my hands.

Life can cloud us, can't it? The sludge of negativity and discontentment slows us down. That moment-by-moment comparison game always yields a winner and a loser. I get so quickly sludged down into a kind of 'slough of despond,' as in Pilgrim's Progress. It starts out innocently enough, and then turns fatal. The lies which draw me deeper into myself, my pity, my heavily-guarded pride ... will sludge me into the bottom of the slough, unless a hand reaches out to pull me back to the grassy banks.

Sometimes, that hand is reaching out from eternity. As I transcribe her story, I cannot help but see how small and ugly my attitude and problems really are. She survived four wars - and the Armenian genocide. She was separated from her brother for forty long years, believing him to be dead. Her years as a school girl were spent as an orphan, not sure of her birthday, without the comfort of parents to love and support her. She and her classmates spent their days between class and hiding in barricades from the Turkish soldiers who came to kill. When the Muslim Turks sought to obliterate the entire race of Armenian people [due to a primarily religious conflict], she kept her faith. She understood that her very life rested in the hand of God. He kept giving it back to her. She kept praising His name. Her hand reaches out to me even now ... pulling me out of the dirty mire of self-pity and into the light.

You may be wondering about her name. What does it mean? Here are her words, from the preface:

"I was named after an Armenian princess (the daughter of an Armenian King). She was a very beautiful young girl, eighteen years old, who had become a Christian at the end of the third century, A.D.

There was a prince, the son of a Gentile king, who intended to marry her, if she would give up her faith in Jesus Christ. He tried to persuade her for some time, but without any result; so she was put in jail. Everyday this prince would visit her to find out if she had changed her mind; her answer was always the same. She would say, “It is far better to die for my dear Savior, Jesus Christ, than to marry a Gentile prince.” Finally, she died in jail. She was called a saint. Of course, I am not worthy to bear her name, but many parents like to name their daughters in memory of that dear princess, who held fast her faith and her deep love for Jesus Christ, her Savior."

All worthiness aside, it is a fitting name for a woman who held so strongly to her faith and her Lord in spite of all obstacles, a lifetime of suffering, and overwhelming grief. Between the lines of her story, there is a deep love for Jesus. May that love speak to me right now, today, and tomorrow, and into eternity.

{A New Year}

Happy New Year, friends. Are you still reading? I will be rather shocked if you are. This blog has been quieter than the 'western front,' this past year. Life, and all it's questions, demands, trappings and adventures, has stolen me away from my little pondering place. It's high time I return.

Perhaps I should set modest goals for this place, instead of hoping that every word will be profound and life-changing. Perhaps we shall merely talk about what we are reading. Perhaps we shall ruminate about what God is saying through the mundane things of life. Perhaps this will clear the clutter of worry and regret from my mental attic and clear the way for new growth.

Today, right now, God is good. In spite of all the clamor of unfulfilled hopes, empty ambition and the sourness of discontentment, God is good. He is unchanged by my intense worry, He is unmoved by my frustration and doubt. He is the same - yesterday, today and forever. Is that enough for me today? Right now?

..Rain..

"For after all, the best thing one can do 

when it's raining is to let it rain." 

- H. W. Longfellow

I have had a long absence from this little blogspot, but the longer I stay away the more the themes of life stay the same. The very difficulties that I write myself out of come back, haunting, returning to see how well I have learned the lessons of yesterday. The cycle of life and struggle and death and eternity will always be the same: a ring of endless light, as Madeleine L'Engle wrote. But to see the light through the struggle, now that is a challenge. Sometimes even the rain can blur my view. I've made plans for the day, I've done everything I can to order my piece of a disordered world, and then I step out the door and ... it's raining.

The pitter-patters and the rushing of a the little rivers sound so peaceful. The rain has come after a long summer drought. It's not enough. But for right now, today, it is. Suddenly I stop hearing my own selfish thoughts, my frustrations, all the drama in my little tiny world. It's raining. For a moment, the world has stopped turning and I just listen.

Suddenly I forget that my dearest grandparents are dead and gone. I forget the loneliness of being home without a husband for thirty-six straight hours. I forget the pain of watching a friend lose their loved one to cancer. I forget that the dog had spread mud from one end of my house to the other, wagging her furry, shedding behind. I forget that I was discontent with myself, my appearance, my attitude. For a moment, the world is nothing more than a beautiful place where God sends down rain, both on the just and the unjust alike. The transcendent beauty of this truth is enough.

When the rain stops, the birds come out and sing and the grass looks greener. The trees are rushing in the breeze, as if to dance because they've had a nice drink. The world goes back to its turning, spinning, whirling state. But I do not. There is something about the rain that makes all things new again... even inside of me, where sin and selfishness so quickly take root. The rain has made the soil in my heart soft, so that the Gardener can pull the weeds out. He can make all things new again.

The troubles of the day, of the week, of the year, can be forgotten. They can be laid at the feet of the Master Gardener. He can cultivate them into something more beautiful than I could ever imagine, if I will let Him. But first, I must stop, and let it rain.

.Far More.

"Far more hinged on Abraham's obedience than he first realized. Abraham came to understand that his actions did not affect him alone, but his obedience to God would impact generations to follow."                        -- Blackaby 

What you do is not about you, nor limited to you. My actions are the stone that skips across the ponds, rivers and streams in life and makes ripples in the lives of others. The choices I made on a daily basis will influence others. It's inescapable. I've heard so many people deny this simple fact. "It's my decision," they protest. "It only affects me." Nothing could possibly be so simple, so isolated. We're creatures of community, made to be social, designed to be fully human with others who share our humanity. No single act is limited to just me. I can see my whole world through a very small lens, and yet, that doesn't limit the real consequences of my small-minded decisions.


I can walk through my day intently focused on myself, my wants, my desires. There's no shortage of people, places and things to help me along the short, broad road to selfishness. In my focus on self, I become oblivious to the needs and wants, hurts and desires of the people that I claim to "love" most. They are the ones that suffer when I make myself queen of my world. Looking down from a self-made throne gives me a false sense of superiority - when I ought to be on the ground level, looking eye to eye before kneeling down and washing the feet of those whom God has given me to love. 


All too often it is something unexpected that brings me back to seeing who I really am. The chisel slips and cuts my finger. The pain wakes me up with a sense of urgency. A cutting remark from a friend or family member suddenly shows me how careless I've been. "But I didn't mean it!" is my first defense. Is that enough to excuse me from an apology? Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ suddenly not necessary because my offense was "accidental"? Hardly. Have we cheapened the power of forgiveness because we don't believe we really need to ask for it? Guilty as charged.  (Daniel 9:8-10)


God has been chiseling away the concrete parts of my conscience, and He continues to ask for more. This is sanctification - to be in the process of becoming conformed to the image of Christ. It is a process, from one day to the next. The closer I become to Him, the more ugly and rebellious my sin becomes... and it is only my perception that is changing. The truth is, the vileness of that sin has been true all along.  Far more hinges on my obedience than I realize. The least I can do is submit myself to the work that the Holy Spirit can do - it will be far more than I can ask, think, imagine, or ever accomplish alone. 


Far more. 

.On Aging Gracefully.

Something happens when, as a young adult, you spend time in a nursing home. Especially when the person you have come to see is beloved…

Everything material melts away. All those ambitions you had for losing weight and looking better than your friends become stupid. The question of what to wear tomorrow vanishes. The self-pity that was about to swallow you shrinks back to a manageable size when you stop, and think about someone else.

Last night I had the pleasure of spending an hour at a nursing home. I had the privilege of hearing Grandma tell stories of Dad’s first piano lesson, how she used to do her hair, and all the things you can do with flowers. She is in a wheelchair now. She suffered bleeding on her brain, and has a broken pelvis. Her mental faculties have lost some of their sharpness. Her hands tremble. But she still sings the praises of our Lord.

Twice in that hour she broke into prayer, and twice she started singing hymns of praise to Jesus. Her words of faith in the midst of her pain and confusion touched and convicted my heart in a way that I needed so very much. To see my troubles as small and stupid is the best thing that could have happened to me last night. To realize that when the rest of life and all its trappings fade away, the true person is all that will be left.

Questions  linger in my mind… when it’s my turn, who will they see? Whose praises will I sing? Or will I sing at all? Is there any place where God is not, or does not see?

Grandma Badeer told me another story. It’s the one where a Christian lady goes to a Good Samaritan nursing home to recover from bleeding on her brain, and God uses her in a mighty way. “That Mrs. Badeer, she is not like the other girls,” the Skill Care Staff said, “not at all.”  

[re-posted this week, originally composed July 29, 2008]

My November Guest

"My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list:

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise."      -- Robert Frost, "My November Guest,"

We walked our little parade, dressed solemnly in black suits and ties. The ladies wore skirts and heels, wondering why they had bothered to apply the mascara that tears would soon erase. Friends and neighbors flew and drove to sit in a little chapel in Firth, NE and remember a remarkable woman of God: Miriam [Kassarjian] Badeer. We exchanged many words about her. All of them are true, yet none of them truly do her justice.

The ladies from Bible study came all the way from Omaha to remember the lady who added so much vitality and energy to their weekly group. They barely recognized me - the scrawny little girl with blunt-cut bangs that used to follow Grandma to Bible Study on Tuesdays during "cooking camp," times at her house. One woman spoke of how she had been a traveling companion to Grandma en route to a Christian Women's Conference. "Some of the things that happened at that conference were outside of my theological comfort zone," she said honestly, "but Marie always told me, "I want all that God has for me. I don't want to miss anything." She pursued God her whole life..." and then the tears broke in and stopped her briefly. 

It brought back so many memories for me, to hear the stories of others about things back in Aleppo, Syria, all the way up to her gracious attitude when she and Grandpa sold their home of 40 years and settled in GoldCrest only 10 minutes from our home. On one occasion I tagged along with Mom to go see Grandma for the first time in months. Travels had kept me out of State and away from family. I was shocked to see that her physical frailty was like I had never seen it before - she rested in a wheelchair, still smiling, praying, singing hymns when nothing else could hold her attention. She looked at me, took my hand, and said, "I want you to have the best that God can give you. Not for the glory of Noelle, but for the glory of God. We serve an awesome God."  I almost burst into tears, right there in the hallway. All the way home, I wondered what kind of faith speaks those words at the end days of life in a nursing home? And how can I cultivate that faith in my soul right now? 

I remember, too, those mornings spent in Grandma's kitchen, around the table with Grandpa and my sister Leah, reading the Bible. The day did not begin until we had opened the Bible, read aloud, done some singing and prayed for those that needed prayer. Grandma gently opened my first Bible, a little blue Precious Moments copy, and taught me how to cross-reference. Her handwriting still marks the margins of that little Bible, all over in the book of Psalms. The books that I inherited from her library are underlined with red pen where she found things pertinent to her spiritual life. I may have traded the red pen for a pencil, but those habits have become an integral part of who I am, just as they were a part of her. 

.an empty doorway and a maple leaf.

"For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf."
-- Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica"


“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”
-- William Shakespeare


Give sorrow words. But which words shall I chose? The happy words of the past or the sorrowful ones that present me every morning? Shall I tell you about her favorite Christmas dress with the little red canaries? Or should I simply weep knowing that she'll never wear it again? 

The Autumn leaves just started falling. They dance to the ground in celestial harmony, unaware of the gravestones between them. The casket, baby blue with paisley and flowers, lay silent above the ground as of yet, still and serene. The very print spoke her name to me. It is just like her. It holds her now, still and sleeping while her soul has gone on to be with her Lord. Truly, she has the better end of this deal. Now in glory with her Lord, we are left behind on this earth with remembrance, and nothing more. A pretty casket, lowered into a quiet stone vault and a headstone with her name: Miriam Kassarjian Badeer. Such is life.

There are no words to put to grief. Perhaps it's just that they haven't found me yet. Perhaps another look at the fresh dirt will bring the healing tears about. Perhaps.

Life marches on at an alarming speed. There's work to be done, people with needs, demands to be met, and promises to keep. The sun shines as though it doesn't care if it's raining in my heart. The leaves continue their divine dance through the Fall breeze, reminding me that all is not lost. The same God that orchestrates their colors and shapes has a design and plan for my brief time here on earth.Though that plan will end with my body in the grave, that is not it's goal. Life is worth the toil, grief and struggle because it is not the only thing we have to look forward to. It's only the beginning. One day, each of us will step through the doorway of death into eternity. Grandma Badeer has walked through it into glory. Hospice care and nursing homes are history. She is whole again. I cannot grieve for her, but I can grieve for the loss of her in my life. She has stepped into eternity, and those who love her are left to wait their turn.

"Life is real! Life is earnest!
        And the grave is not its goal;
    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
        Was not spoken of the soul." 

        -- H.W. Longfellow, "The Psalm of Life,"