Category Archives: Memories

Prayer. And Westmont. And my friend Kim.

14 Thursday Nov 2013

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The back door of my office led to a wooden bridge, and beyond the bridge was a sidewalk along a retaining wall, and beyond that golden hills and familiar purple mountains.  I would leave the door open, hearing the rustle of the wind in the tall eucalyptus trees, feeling the breeze, watching for visitors who were coming to see me or to speak with Pastor Tim.

I was hired on as an assistant to the pastor.  It was a blessing.  I had graduated from seminary with my degree in Church History that May, having enjoyed four years in Boston while being filled with the love of good books and writing and ministry and The Church with a Big C.  I drove my Ford Escort back to Santa Barbara and waited for the next step. First, there was a temp agency, and I edited the plant production manual of a gas processing plant.  Not exactly what I’d had in mind, but I was grateful for some work.  And I kept waiting, and praying, as summer began to turn to fall.

And then Pastor Tim looked at me and saw an assistant.  It was a great fit.  I sat at my post outside his office, working on events and writing Bible studies to go with his sermons and creating Power Point outlines and working on generally interesting things.

But the best part was the people.

I had Maggie and Eleanor in the office, and my best friend Sheila who came in to put the bulletin together and do graphic design projects on Thursdays.

And there was Kim.

Kim and her husband were professors at Westmont.  She was in computer science, and Ken was a physics professor famous for walking on fire and laying on beds of nails and intriguing students with other physics miracles.  Kim always seemed to be smiling, laughing, with her golden hair around her lovely face, mentoring students, having them over.  When she listened, she really listened. You could see it in her eyes. And Kim and Ken had committed themselves to listening and praying, particularly with their pastor.  They came, faithfully.  They prayed, faithfully.  They were friends even when ministry got hard and people were unhappy.   One or both together, they would come through that open back door and listen and pray.

The prayers of righteous brothers and sisters are effective…

I kept working with Tim for a semester or two even after I was hired on in my dream job at Westmont.  They had needed an instructor in Church History–a professor had gone on sabbatical.  I arrived for my interview with a complete syllabus of what I planned to teach, all of the books laid out, lectures suggested…and, in a move that can be attributed only to the grace of God, they hired me to teach one class.  I jumped into teaching in January of the new millennium, and I loved it.  I was young.  I only had a master’s degree, but I had a passionate love of the subject and I thrived on keeping two steps ahead of my students.  Using the same text I had studied in seminary, adding in my favorite primary sources, taking  my students on a tour of history and Christianity in two-hour lecture blocks–it was so much fun.

And Kim and Ken were there.  Especially Kim.

When you are a twenty-six year old instructor in your first semester in a new place and know that every single other person teaching has more education than you do, you feel intimidated.  You might even keep to yourself.  And yes, you might take a nap in your office after your 8-10 am lecture because you were up til 5 preparing the PowerPoint to go along with it.  But you might well be lured out of your office if your sweet friend is always willing to sit next to you at the faculty lunches and is always shining in her encouragement and humor and asking you about your classes and generally making you feel that you fit in just perfectly.

That’s how I remember Kim–one of those friends who sees you and knows you and draws you out, even in her quiet way.

My friend Kim is suffering right now.

She has been battling Stage IV ovarian cancer for almost two years.  And in the last two weeks, the doctors at home and the doctors in her treatment at Stanford have come to the same conclusion: there is nothing more they can do.

Barring a miracle of healing, Kim will be in the presence of her Savior not too long from now.  And even as I say that, I know the greater miracle is that she will indeed be in the presence of her Savior, a truth that has shone through her life with deep and penetrating clarity, especially in suffering.

It was five years ago this week that Kim and Ken lost their home and all of their possessions when the Tea Fire swept through Montecito while they were leading a group of Westmont students on Europe semester.  They handled that tragedy with grace, with hope, with steadfastness.  They fixed their eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of their faith, who for the joy set before him endured the Cross, scorning its shame.  And I know that Kim and Ken were part of the joy set before him.  His own faithful children, scorning the shame of their particular crosses, focused on the joy set before them because of his sacrifice.

Joy.  And steadfastness.  I will add these words to my mental picture of my friend Kim, and her dear husband.  And as I pray them through this time in their lives, I know from their example that my prayers will be answered, and the Lord will meet them, and he will draw near.

And I will see my friend again.

Grandma Dorothy

08 Sunday Sep 2013

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I just finished making a batch of chocolate chip cookies with Lily.  We don’t bake very often, but when we do she loves to add the ingredients and crack the eggs and try one chocolate chip or four, “Just to make sure they’re good.”

Chocolate chip cookies always remind me of Grandma Brown.  Whenever we would make the trek up to San Jose to visit her, she would have a couple of batches ready for us, stored in the old yellow Tupperware container on top of the fridge.  She was a cookie baking sort of grandma.

I had a deep, sweet relationship with my Grandma Brown.  Or Grandma Dorothy, as we sometimes called her, as she called herself. For most of my childhood years, she lived less than a mile away.  She moved when I was ten, but our relationship was already cemented in the hours spent together, the lounging hours, the hours at bedtime.

She will always be sixty-two in my memory, the age she was in my childhood.  Sixty-two, still working in the credit department at Robinson’s with her stylish outfits and honey-colored hair and high heels.  Petite and pretty, sipping a glass of Chardonnay on our back patio after a long day, listening to the Dodger game on the radio while my dad grilled Chris & Pitts hamburgers.  The backyard would be streaked with late afternoon sun, the grass damp from the sprinklers, everything golden and sparkling.  Vin Scully’s voice takes me right back there, and there is Grandma Dorothy, sipping her glass of wine, sneezing those tiny sneezes if she had more than half a glass.

On many Friday nights, my parents would go out to dinner–I remember them standing there in the foyer in their dressy clothes.  And we would stay home with Grandma Dorothy.  I remember her voice in the dark of the room I shared with my two sisters, guiding us back through the decades and across the prairie to her childhood on the farm in Montana.  We would marvel at the stories of barn dances, of the piano they raised with a winch to the barn loft.  You could feel the heat of the farm families packed into the barn, skirts swirling and twirling, boots stomping, cheeks flushed as the music filled the evening air.  We would giggle as she told us about doing her chores barefoot in winter, leaping from one pile of manure to another to keep her feet from freezing as she fed the animals.  We loved the tale of Uncle Bud tossing the rotten apples to the pigs, and the hilarity which ensued when the whole lot of swine became intoxicated.  We could see the young Dorothy who fell in love with the dashing young Bill Brown, playing her favorite tune at The Palm, necktie draped over his trumpet.

I was her eldest–the eldest of her five granddaughters.  And she was the eldest in her family, the first of three girls and a boy.  She always called me her eldest.

And when I think of it, I could cry for missing her.

When Jack scrunches up his nose just so, I can see her.  And I see more of her in my reflection every day.  I grew up looking like my mom, but now I look more and more like a Brown, more and more like Grandma Dorothy.

Grandma, Grandma, and Dad