Tag Archives: Siblings

Chapter-a-Day

Life’s Injustices

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Life's Injustices (CaD Job 24) – Wayfarer

“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?
    Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?”
Job 24:1 (NIV)

There is a classic, oft told, story in my family. My sister (the only girl in the family) and our older brother Tim were in the living room sitting apart from one another. Tim claims that my sister would, without provocation, scream, “MOM! TIM IS HITTING ME!” Mom would rush to the living room to reprimand and punish Tim while Jody gloated with satisfaction at getting him in trouble.

Welcome, children, to a lesson in injustice.

One of the many problems in this fallen world is that of injustice. One does not have to look far to find injustice. We have a neighbor at the lake who repeatedly treads on the rights and property of others. One of my neighbors has been repeatedly unsuccessful at getting the city, county, or lake officials to do anything about it. “I’ve given up,” he commented to me. “Nobody cares.”

Of course, this is a relatively small dispute among neighbors about property. Look at the headlines and you can find all sorts of larger scale issues. There are rule makers (on both sides of the aisle) who make rules they break themselves. There are double standards (on both sides of the aisle) in which political enemies are prosecuted while political friends get away with wrongdoing. Law enforcement sometimes look the other way and compounding a victim’s suffering. Law enforcements sometimes show up with a SWAT team to arrest a non-violent individual for political reasons.

Life is filled with injustice.

Today’s chapter completes the first of Job’s discourses in the third round of conversation with this three friends. Job, who feels that he is suffering unjustly at the hands of God, begins by complaining that you can’t make a court appointment with the Almighty. It would be nice, he reasons, if one could see the wicked get their just desserts. Injustice happens all around, and Job bemoans the fact that God appears to be silent and unconcerned. In the end, both the wicked who get away with it and the righteous who suffer end up in the grave. I couldn’t help but hear echoes of the Sage of Ecclesiastes in Job’s complaint:

And I saw something else under the sun:

In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
    in the place of justice—wickedness was there.

In the quiet this morning I found myself recounting the many personal examples of injustice I have experienced along my life journey. I’m grateful that I have not been victimized by injustice on a large scale. Still, I do share Job’s wish. It would be nice if human justice was more just. It would be nice to see divine justice on an earthly level.
As a follower of Jesus, I’m mindful that Jesus spoke often of the Day of Judgment when justice will be doled out for eternity. Unlike Job, I don’t believe my desire to see divine justice is in vain. I have faith that what Jesus promised will, indeed, come to fruition. In the meantime, I will encounter injustice in this fallen world just as humans have been experiencing it throughout history. My experience is not the exception, but the rule. I believe this is why the story of Job resonates for everyone who grapples with life’s injustices. Just as I have faith that Jesus is exactly who He said He was, that He rose from the dead and holds the promise of eternity, so I have faith that one day all of earthly wickedness will receive divine justice. In the meantime, I hear Jesus calling me to daily live out the mission given through the prophet Micah: to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.

I’m also glad to say that my siblings enjoy a loving relationship and have embraced mercy over justice for all of those childhood infractions!

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

We Are Family

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We are Family (CaD Jos 12) – Wayfarer

Moses, the servant of the Lord, and the Israelites conquered them. And Moses the servant of the Lord gave their land to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh to be their possession.
Joshua 12:6 (NIV)

Last night, Wendy and I went to a local watering hole for dinner. It’s a place where locals gather and we like to sit at the bar where we can meet people and chat with the staff as we eat. Next to me was a woman whose husband died just three weeks ago. She was alone, and with the way she engaged me in conversation, I could feel her emotional desperation. Wendy received a phone call and stepped outside the restaurant to take it.

The woman shared her story, weeping off and on as she did so. She and her husband had lived at the lake, but she’d discovered that the “friends” they’d made weren’t friends at all. They partied together, but the only person who showed her any compassion through her husband’s illness and death subsequently tried to con her out of money. Her family was not with her. She was preparing to move, but was obviously alone and feeling the weight of everything. So much so, that she was pouring out her heart and grief to a perfect stranger who sat next to her at the bar.

Last week I was on the road for business and my travels afforded me several hours of windshield time driving hither and yon. I took the opportunity to spend some time talking to each of my siblings. It had been a while since I’d simply caught up with each of them. It refreshed my soul. Our lives are so spread out, and each of them is full, so it is that we can go long stretches of time without connecting. At the same time, we’re family. If any of them called and said, “I need you,” I would drop everything in a heartbeat. I know they would do the same for me.

Today’s chapter marks the end of the first half of the book of Joshua. It’s one of those chapters that seem insignificant on the surface of things. It’s like a box score of the conquest campaign, marking all of the Canaanite kings they defeated.

What struck me was the mention of Moses, who died thirteen chapters ago at the end of the book of Deuteronomy. The author of Joshua is listing off the conquest victories that made way for the lands on which the tribes would settle. He goes all the way back to before Moses died on the other side of the Jordan. Three tribes asked Moses if they could settle there. Moses pledged that as long as the three tribes supported the other tribes in the conquest of the land, they could have the land they desired (Num 32). They kept their pledge. The three tribes could go back over the Jordan to their land, as the rest of the tribes settled theirs.

This got me thinking about families. My family is more spread out on this planet than ever. When I think about my parents, siblings, and children, we’re a relatively small crew, but our life journeys have us spread out from Scotland to the southeast U.S. and all the way west to the Rocky Mountains. Yet, we are family. We are connected. That is an earthly reality.

At the same time, Jesus said that there is a Kingdom of God reality that is just as true. Jesus made it clear to His followers that they were His brothers and sisters even as His own earthly family stood outside waiting to see Him. Jesus went on to tell His followers that sometimes the Kingdom of God supersedes earthly family. Jesus recognized the possibility, especially among His Jewish followers, that being His disciple would divide families. Jesus’ ministry had even divided His own earthly family and at one point His mother and siblings wanted to have Him committed:

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
Mark 3:20-21 (NIV)

In the quiet this morning, I am exceedingly grateful, for I am doubly blessed. I have an earthly family who loves one another and supports one another across the miles and in spite of differences in the way we may sometimes see the world. I also have a spiritual family that is just as intimate, connected, and supportive, though the bond is Spirit and not flesh.

I’m praying this morning for the woman who is alone in her grief.

It’s a good thing to have family, both of blood and Spirit.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Throwback Thursdays

TBT: The Sibs

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Vander Well Siblings - 1

For Throwback Thursday, here’s a rare picture of me and my siblings sitting on the porch of Grandpa and Grandma Vander Well’s house in LeMars, IA. (L-R Terry, Tom, Tim, Jody).

Throwback Thursdays

TBT: Sibs on the Glider

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Tom & Jody on Glider

For Throwback Thursday I found this little gem of me and my sister, Jody, sitting on our grandparent’s glider rocker that sat behind their house. The same glider rocker now sits on the lower porch of the Playhouse at the lake.

Chapter-a-Day

Low-Key Birthday Confessions

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Birthday Cake
Birthday Cake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“May the day of my birth perish,
and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’”
Job 3:1 (NIV)

There are always interesting differences that emerge when you marry someone from a different family system. I never expected birthday traditions to be one of them, but life is full of surprises. I come from a family that celebrated birthdays, but did it as a rather low key affair. Mom baked our favorite cake. There were a few small presents from mom and dad, but we never did much of anything between siblings. In the childhood years birthdays meant you could have a sleepover (with a maximum of two friends). It was a special day that I looked forward to as a child, but as the years went by my feelings and expectations around birthdays diminished.

As I progressed into adulthood, the low key birthday traditions of my family evolved into even more low key expectations. If my siblings and I even remember each other birthdays there may, perhaps, be a phone call or voice mail message with kind wishes, though even that is not an expectation. Once in a great while there might be a token gift or a gag gift, but those rare occasions are frosting on the proverbial birthday cake. My family is so bad with remembering birthdays that my siblings and I will occasionally text each other reminders knowing that it’s likely someone forgot.

I’m not proud of this, mind you. It is what it is. Yet, along the journey I’ve come to realize that my low-key traditions and expectations surrounding birthdays are rather offensive to particular friends and loved ones. Wendy finds it appalling, and it only took one memorably disastrous birthday into our marriage to discover that I had better raise the bar for myself when it comes to the annual celebration of her birth. I’m a work in progress.

All of this pondering about birthdays comes as I read Job’s lamentation this morning. His tragic circumstances cause him to rue the day of his birth. Forget being low-key about the date, he curses the day he was born. No matter where you land on the importance of birthdays, there is no doubt that the day of our birth has inherent meaning. It is a special date because it was the date we entered this world. Birthdays, whether low-key or grand affairs, are linked to a celebration of life. To curse the day of our birth is to curse the precious gift of life that God purposed in our being and existence in this world.

I hear in Job’s words the kind of extreme, all-or-nothing thoughts that I have commonly witnessed coming out of despair both in myself and in others. Our life can feel so terrible in this one moment that we are blind to anything worthwhile, life-giving, or redemptive about our lives to this point. Extreme circumstances birth extreme emotions which, in turn, produce extreme thoughts (and sometimes actions). I don’t find anything sinful or improper in this. It is altogether human to experience these thoughts and emotions. The threat that this brings to our lives is to either give in to the extreme thoughts and emotions until it conquers our spirit, or to deny the thoughts and emotions in what will be an unsuccessful attempt to pretend that we are unaffected by our circumstances. Either of these ultimately end in the diminishment of Life.

Today I am thankful for Job and the day of his birth. I am thankful for the example he gives us in the honesty of his grief. This important human emotion, when experienced and processed in healthy ways, can lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of life.

I am also thinking today about birthdays and my relative nonchalance surrounding them. Birthdays are a celebration of lives that mean a lot to me, and lives that have deeply impacted me and my own life journey. They are an opportunity to say, “You are important to me.” Lesson noted. I’ve got some work to do.

Wayfarer's Journal

Day 27: Talk About Your Siblings

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30 Day Blogging Challenge Day 27: Talk about your siblings.

I imagine they are all scared at this moment. lol.

This is an interesting one because many of the friends I’ve come to know and love over the past 10-20 years have little or no knowledge of my brothers and sister. I was born the youngest of four children. My brothers, Tim & Terry, are twins born seven years before me. My sister, Jody, is two years older than I am. Like many families, life has scattered us to different places. We see one another, and talk to one another, far less that I’m sure we all desire. Nevertheless, there is always plenty of love and laughter when we are able to gather together.

It’s hard not to begin the discussion about Tim & Terry without talking about them as a pair. They are twins, after all, and most people would find it hard to tell them apart. As a kid I idolized my brothers and was the pesky tag-a-long that they put up with more graciously than I think I would have. When they were lifeguards at Birdland pool for the summer they would take me along and let me hang out at the pool all day. They let me jump in the back of their ’66 Chevy Impala hardtop and accompany them to the bowling alley to hustle a game or two of foosball. Because of them I became a swimmer and because of them I have a knowledge of, and an appreciation for, a wide, eclectic range of music.

Terry is my oldest sib as he beat Tim out of the womb by a few minutes. He is one of the most gracious and gentle spirited people I have ever known. Some of the fondest memories I have of Terry go back to my formative adolescent years when Terry was living in Des Moines and going to Grandview College. I always appreciated that he made a point of showing up at my various events and was always open to letting me hang out with him. Of course, I can also remember him dragging me out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to help him deliver the Sunday Register on the multiple paper routes he kept to help pay for school. I’ve always appreciated Terry for a deep loving-kindness that flows from deep within him to everyone he meets, and I greatly respect the exemplary way I’ve observed him love and serve his wife and daughter.

While Terry hung around home during his college years, my brother Tim went off to Iowa State and then moved to Texas for an engineering job right after school. As a result, I didn’t see Tim as much for several years, though he did make a point of letting me hang out with him from time to time. One of my favorite memories is of Tim letting me spend the weekend with him at ISU. He took me to a keg party and when girls would notice the “cute little kid” in the room Tim would introduce me as his genius little brother who was attending ISU as a 12 year-old. One of the things I appreciate most about Tim is his gentle, contemplative spirit. Through the years Tim and I have shared long, life-giving conversations as together we’ve tried to grapple with some of life’s core issues, to understand how our family system has molded us, and what it really means to be a man.

With Tim & Terry being the older pair, my sister Jody and I naturally banded together to become the younger pair. Jody and I were closer in age and we became playmates, confidants, partners, and friends. We worked out secret deals to tell one another what mom and dad were giving us for Christmas, and fought like cats and dogs (until I got bigger than her). Jody and I started our respective faith journeys on the same weekend when we both committed our lives to Christ. We went to college together and hung out all the time. Because we have been so close, I sometimes think that Jody and I have the ability to feel deeper sibling love and more intense sibling anger depending on the moment. Anyone who gets to know Jody comes to love Jody, and I laugh to think that Jody was at one time frustrated at always being known as “Tom’s sister” because most of my adult life I’ve been pegged “Jody’s brother.” I appreciate her unquenchable joy, her contagious laughter, and her sincere faith which I find to be at once simple and infinitely deep. Jody is currently winning a courageous battle with lymphoma which has served to reveal to me even greater depths of her fragility and her strength.

I’m blessed with great siblings .  We share great memories of a really good childhood and I’m fascinated to see how our respective journeys have created strong intersections while remaining very independent.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Judges 15

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Sibling squabble. Three companies of men from Judah went down to the cave at Etam Rock and said to Samson, "Don't you realize that the Philistines already bully and lord it over us? So what's going on with you, making things even worse?" He said, "It was tit for tat. I only did to them what they did to me." Judges 15:11 (MSG)

As a child, there were plenty of conflicts between me and my siblings. My sister was my closest sibling and, therefore, the one with whom I fought most of the time. We would cycle into periods of conflict when all we did was fight with each other. There was always a past hurt or misdeed she or I could point to justify our current attack. "She did that to me," I would argue, "so I don't feel the least bit guilty about doing this to her." And so, the pattern of perpetual conflict continued. Fortunately, our sibling grudges faded with time and maturity.

Nevertheless, I have seen the same patterns of conflict between married couples, friends, neighbors, and nations. There is no end to conflict when each party perpetuates and justifies it by pointing to a host of past wrongs. We see the same cycle at work in Samson's continuous acts of violence and retaliation.

Today, I'm thinking about conflicts in my own life and contemplating the ways I may be contributing its' ongoing cycle. The holidays are approaching and I'm mindful that God chose not to hold my sins against me, but to sacrificially reconcile me to himself. I think it's my job to be engaged in the act of sacrifice and reconciliation rather than perpetuating conflict.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and KenWilcox

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 133

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Vwell_50th_four_kids4_LR How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along! Psalm 133:1 (MSG)

Like most people raised in a house full of kids, I remember days of knock-down-drag-out fights with my siblings. My brothers were seven years older than me, five older than my sister. So, they generally couldn't get away with beating up on the "little ones" outright. Their attacks took a more sinister approach, such as asking me if I knew what a "Hertz Doughnut" was. When I responded "no" I was immediately punched by the offending brother who then asked "Hurt's, don't it?" as he cackled with glee. My sister was closer in age and the only girl. So, our fights were worse. One of her favorite things was to grab my wrists and dig her fingernails into my skin until they bled. It was not lost on me how much nicer she became immediately after she realized she was no longer large enough or strong enough to sit on me and hold me down! As for my sibling infractions, those records have been sealed 😉

How my mother made it through the madness, I'll never know. I know that I was responsible for many of those white hairs on her head. But, now we are grown and our parent's house is filled with laughter rather than the screams of rival children. It's a wonderful thing.

How sad that, for some families, the madness never ends.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 133

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Vwell_50th_four_kids4_LR How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along! Psalm 133:1 (MSG)

Like most people raised in a house full of kids, I remember days of knock-down-drag-out fights with my siblings. My brothers were seven years older than me, five older than my sister. So, they generally couldn't get away with beating up on the "little ones" outright. Their attacks took a more sinister approach, such as asking me if I knew what a "Hertz Doughnut" was. When I responded "no" I was immediately punched by the offending brother who then asked "Hurt's, don't it?" as he cackled with glee. My sister was closer in age and the only girl. So, our fights were worse. One of her favorite things was to grab my wrists and dig her fingernails into my skin until they bled. It was not lost on me how much nicer she became immediately after she realized she was no longer large enough or strong enough to sit on me and hold me down! As for my sibling infractions, those records have been sealed 😉

How my mother made it through the madness, I'll never know. I know that I was responsible for many of those white hairs on her head. But, now we are grown and our parent's house is filled with laughter rather than the screams of rival children. It's a wonderful thing.

How sad that, for some families, the madness never ends.