Update on Jonah

To all our friends and family,

Thank you again for your overwhelming demonstration of love and support since we found out on Monday night that Jonah has High Risk (because he is older than 9) B-Cell A.L.L (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). I know many of you have been waiting for an update on Jonah, so I'll start with that.

Jonah's first night in the hospital was rough—lots of needles and tests and interrupted sleep. But yesterday morning, Jonah was able to watch a little baseball and visit with Uncle Ethan (my brother) who has a great gift for keeping Jonah laughing. In the afternoon, my dad and I got to spend several hours at the hospital, and Jude (our 8-year-old) was able to come with us. This was a good opportunity set Jude's mind at ease and allow him to see what Jonah's going to be doing for the next several weeks. Jude decided to stay the night in the hospital last night. He'd much rather be there sleeping in a recliner next to Jonah than sleeping in his bunk bed all alone.

Yesterday was a difficult day for Jonah in some respects, however. Jonah had to be sedated to have a PICC line inserted (like an IV but it delivers medication much deeper in the body and will stay in for this whole first month). While he was under he also had a spinal tap and a bone marrow sample taken. He also has received blood at least twice now, and it's amazing how his color has improved as a result. (Donate blood!)

Jonah's second day in the hospital

Jonah had a lot of pain at the insertion site of the PICC line at first, but that has subsided. Removing the IV was also near the list of his least favorite experiences, but he was relaxed and smiling again by the time I went home. He had an EKG done just before we left, and he was very relieved that it didn't involve any needles. Jonah also received his first of many doses of chemo. Because Jonah's spinal fluid was clear of any cancer cells, he is not likely to need radiation in addition to the chemo. That in itself is an answer to prayer.

We have had to absorb a lot of information during these last two days, so we're in for a steep learning curve, but we're also grateful for the highly trained staff that have been ready to answer our questions. There are four pediatric oncologists just at this one hospital, and we are thankful for their expertise in this one field of medicine. Jonah is in good hands—both human and divine.

The first four weeks of Jonah's treatment will be the most intense, and he will need to stay in the hospital throughout the first month, during which time he is likely to go through some of the worst side-effects of the chemo. Because Spokane is more than an hour away from our home, Jonah will not be allowed to return home for at least another 8 weeks after that. Then, if everything goes according to plan, he will continue to receive treatment periodically for the next 3 years. In between treatments, Jonah should be able to return to most of his normal activities, including sports (which is a huge deal for him).

Jonah, Jayson, and Jude were all able to rest soundly last night, and we're thankful that Jonah has had a bit of a break today from being a human pincushion. One particular highlight of the day was a visit from a good friend from our church in Dallas. Luis Ortiz has been a profession baseball player (formerly with the Rangers) and is now a batting coach. He happened to be in Spokane this week for an annual scouting visit with the Spokane Indians (one of the Rangers' farm teams), so he was able to come to the hospital this morning and talk baseball with Jonah—probably Jonah's favorite topic of conversation in the world lately. Luis told Jonah that when he comes back next year he'd love to take Jonah to a game and bring him to batting practice with the team. Talk about something to look forward to! Jonah is also looking forward to a little visit from his friend Rory today, and Jayson's mom and brother will be flying from Phoenix tonight. Jayson's mom is planning to stay for as long as we need her, which will be a tremendous blessing for all of us.

I have cried more than I can remember during these last two days. But half the time the tears have come when I see how well God has cared for our family and how many people love us with the love of Christ and are ready to sacrifice their time and resources on our behalf. I have also seen God's provision in ways we could never have foreseen.

My brother's family just moved back to town a few weeks ago, and because he was here, my brother was able to drop everything and take Jayson and Jonah to Spokane as soon as we got the news. He is also staying with Jonah tonight to allow Jayson and me to give some time to our other boys.

My dad was also scheduled to fly to Canada the night of Jonah's diagnosis, so he had already taken the week off of work and was able to cancel his travel plans to stay here for us. Jayson could not work for a better college during a time like this; his colleagues have already lined up to take over teaching classes for him and help cover his other work responsibilities while he's away.

One of Jaysons' colleagues who is an elder at our church has a daughter who had childhood cancer, and she was already scheduled for her annual routine scan today at the same hospital where Jonah is. Because  of this, they were able to come and visit Jonah and Jayson and offer helpful advice and encouragement—and bring a heap of cards for Jonah.

And one of my oldest and dearest friends, Annie, has taken charge of organizing all kinds of help for us and was here just this morning to bring groceries and clean.

These unexpected blessings seem to be raining down on us in ways we could never have anticipated. Our church family has surrounded us with more help than I can possibly list here. We have people ready to take care of carpooling, garden watering, meals, cleaning, grocery shopping, and much more. I opened the mailbox this morning to find an envelope containing an anonymous gift of several hundred dollars. Another friend who owns a local coffee shop (Thank you, Bucer's!) e-mailed me to let me know that an extremely generous account was set up there in our name so that we can grab lunch or lattes on busy days. We have other friends who live in Spokane and have offered to help—one of whom is letting Jayson borrow a car today so that he can get home to have dinner with us tonight.

We are grateful for so many things, but we are especially grateful for your prayers. They do not fall on deaf ears. In addition to Jonah's healing, our most immediate need for prayer is for the planning stages of this situation. Jonah will need to keep up with his schooling as much as possible, so we have details to sort out on that front. We are also going to try to keep life as normal as we can for the other four boys, so that they can continue at school and maintain their own friendships there. At the same time, we need to figure out a place to stay in Spokane for the next three months and decide how, where, and when we might be able to continue to function as a family during Jonah's time in the hospital. We don't yet know how to divide our time and our family for three months between two cities that are 90 miles apart. We will be spending more time in the car during these months than we've ever spent before, so we also need to find worthwhile ways to spend that commute time.

Thank you for your love, your kind words, your generosity, and your prayers. God bless you all. He is our rock, our fortress and our deliverer; our God is a rock, in whom we take refuge, our shield and the horn of our salvation. He is our stronghold, our refuge and our savior.

Hannah

Magic Beans

Two summers ago, I let my boys dig a huge, Holes-inspired pit in a grass-free corner of the yard. There, after several days of shoveling, they unearthed, to everyone's general disgust, a damp, reddish wad of moldy, foul-smelling cotton that had once been a pair of men's briefs. Fruit of the Loom does not, apparently, produce fruit of any sort when planted. As a matter of fact, if you take almost anything you own, bury it in the dirt, dump water on it day after day, and expose it to summer heat, all you will get for your trouble is rust, decay, and stink.

But apply the same brutal treatment to a handful of seeds, and the results are quite the opposite; those seeds rise, glorified, from their soggy graves to become all things pleasant to the eye and good for food. How is that possible? Who would have believed it? And having believed it, how could we ever grow tired of seeing it happen?

Our fourth season of gardening is nearing its peak, which means my sense of wonder at the garden's transformation is also nearing its peak. Every time I return to survey the bounty that has sprung from the ground behind our house I marvel: Where did all this come from? Granted, we have a few bare patches where slugs or birds or beetles have done their worst, and a few other empty squares where some much-anticipated herbs never so much as raised a tiny green flag before they surrendered to sad mortality.

But for all the unforeseen failures, we have also discovered unforeseen blessings; there are places where tomatoes and squash and even a cherry tree volunteered to grow where we did not plant them—surprise gifts whose flavors and colors will remain a mystery until we see the fruit ripen. We also have brilliant red, ruffled poppies and hollyhocks that popped up unbidden in the middle of the lettuce, and I could not bear to remove them. Their cheery flashes of color have certainly been worth the loss of a salad or two.

So while the results of our work in the garden have been inconsistent they have always been rewarding. Just discovering the newly emerged seedlings in the spring is a kind of reward. But harvest time is, doubtless, one of the most unsullied delights of the year.

What other time would it be possible to eat outside without bringing anything with you from the kitchen? Red-purple raspberries literally fall into my hand before I can pluck them. Sweet strawberries peek out shyly from under their leafy tents. Fat green snap peas dangle from their curling vines, quiet and camouflaged, waiting to be discovered by the careful eyes of hungry boys. And what sensation, I ask you, can rival the seedy-sweet explosion in the mouth from a sun-warmed yellow cherry tomato that has traveled less than two feet from the vine to the lips? Then afterward, the bright, greeny smell of tomato vine on my hands is as close to eau d’été as I have ever found. This is the season that raises distant memories of Eden.

Once the back yard harvest begins, it is easy to forget the work that went into forming these fruits. We may have spent hours digging and composting and weeding and watering and slug-smashing, but when those ripening tomatoes first appear, they still seem miraculous. And in many ways, I suppose, they are miraculous.

What logical connection can there be between those tiny, pale, dried up seeds that we started with and the exuberant, branching, fruit-heavy greenery that is taking over our garden today? In May I could carry them all in the palm of my hand. But in August I am hardly able to tame the tomato jungle they have become, even with the aid of ropes and cages and sharpened steel.

And the sunflowers! Those humble little seeds that litter the ground at every baseball field in America are capable of rocketing into the sky and bursting into massive solar blooms over our heads. It almost defies the imagination. Wherefore these horticultural fireworks? I have two of these green and yellow giants standing sentinel over my back garden at this moment, and although I planted them there, I cannot explain their regal existence. How could anyone deserve this? What a transformation! Beauty for ashes! Edible sunlight! Water in excelsis! O brave new world that has such produce in't!

Knowing what we know, how is it that we are able to casually stroll through the farmer's market without our awe-struck jaws dragging on the pavement? How can we shuffle half-heartedly around the grocery store, cringing at the price of melons and failing to recognize them for the hefty spheroids of botanical wonder that they are? How can we bear to pass by an August garden without stopping to sing loud alleluias at the sight of every unaccountable tomato?

The truth is, dear Jack, that every bean is a magic bean. A splash of water can turn one of those dry, unassuming legumes into a fairy tale stalk that will ascend, spiraling and twisting toward the heavens—and almost overnight. What person in his right mind wouldn't trade his only moo cow for a marvel such as this?

Yes, yes, I realize that we did a lot of work to make this garden happen. Yes, we scraped a few shins and pinched a few fingers as we built the beds and worked the soil. Yes, we did battle with weeds and slugs and birds and heavy clay and cold nights. But even with all our hard work in mind, we hardly seem honest to claim the harvest as our rightful reward. What did we do—really—to deserve this bounty? The answer, ultimately, is nothing.

The very strength to carry a garden spade is grace. Fertile soil? Grace. Sunlight? Grace. Rain? Grace. That magical transformation of seed into seedling? Grace. From seedling to vine? Grace. From vine to flower? Grace. From flower to fruit? Grace. The hands to pluck and the mouth to taste? Grace. And that transformation again from fruit in the mouth into the strength to carry a garden hoe? Again, grace. What do you have that you did not receive as a gift?

This evening, after we say grace, I plan to eat it. I plan to fill my glass with water that has been turned into wine and to fill our plates with piles of fresh-picked magic; with resurrected seeds; with fairy-tale fruit; with crisp, green, sweet piles of amazing grace.

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

"Look, Mom! A aaambulince!" sings a voice in the back seat of our van. We are waiting at a traffic signal on our way to pick up my big kids after school, and our eyes are drawn to the flashing lights and the cluster of people standing nervously in the grass outside the building on the corner. One woman has her eyes closed and her arms tightly crossed. Even though the day is unseasonably hot, she rubs her hands up and down her upper arms, as though she is trying to keep warm. Someone puts a friendly arm around her shoulders.

The kids behind me are bouncing with excitement. There's nothing quite like the flashdance of emergency lights to raise a thrill in the heart of a small boy. We have toys, puzzles, board books, and cartoons depicting every kind of car, truck, or van with lights on top, and our boys associate these automobiles with fun and amusement. We entertain our kids with the machinery that attends tragedy, and so it is no surprise that these boys of mine find pleasure in the grim song of sirens.

Small necks crane and blue eyes widen as we accelerate through the intersection and alongside the church-turned-movie-house-turned-tattoo-parlor where the scene is unfolding. A stretcher is about to emerge from the double doorway.

I tell myself that I must drive slowly here because one must be responsible and cautious—on the alert—when emergency vehicles are present. But the truth is that I drive slowly because I, too, am fascinated, filled with my own wide-eyed curiosity. But unlike my boys, I understand what these flashing lights must mean, and my interest in them is more gruesome than childlike. If I were being honest, I would tell myself that I am driving slowly because I hope we will catch a glimpse of a broken limb or a little blood.

What we see, however, is something much more unsettling.

"What happened to that guy?" my six-year-old asks, pointing. A man's shirtless body is wheeled through the open door and down to the sidewalk. I absorb what details I can in the few seconds it takes for my minivan to pass the scene. The man is young. His skin is smooth and  pale. A swirl of tribal motifs are inked along his motionless arm as one EMT rhythmically presses the heels of his hands into the man's chest and another prepares the paddles of a defibrillator. A third pulls upward to bring the stretcher through the back doors of the waiting ambulance. One of the bystanders has both hands pressed together over her mouth. And then the scene is behind us.

The colored lights spin their dizzy pirouettes in my rear-view mirror until we round a bend in the road and resume our afternoon routine. "I don't know what happened to him, buddy," I say, letting out the breath I didn't know I had been holding. My reply is delayed, my mind still processing what I've just witnessed. But the shudder that heaves through my neck and shoulders reveals my dark surmise: that what I just saw was the unexpected end of a story.

I do not say this to my sons. I keep my suspicion to myself, and instead I say, "We should pray for him, shouldn't we?" I put this in the form of a question, partly because I want to be assured that there is still a reason to say a prayer—that I did not, truly, see a fresh corpse on my afternoon carpool run. The soft "yeah" from my four-year-old helps calm my rattled nerves. Yeah. We should pray for him, for this tattooed stranger who might, or might not, already be dead. So we do. We pray for the people in the ambulance to take good care of him. We pray that the doctors at the hospital would be able to help him get well. I breathe a little more freely. But I still wonder if the man I saw will ever breathe—freely or otherwise—again.

And with that, my kids are on to the next topic—baseball, or the heat, or their brother's field trip. I don't remember. At school, I collect children, herd them across the parking lot and down the grassy hill back to the van, and buckle them in. Then we retrace our route back home, which means that we must pass the tattoo parlor.

We are, again, waiting for the signal to turn green. But this time the flashing lights are gone, and instead a group of people—mostly young—are gathered on the lawn. Some hold each other, some simply look stunned, and one sits near the curb with her knees touching her chin, her face in her hands, and her shoulders shaking with sobs while friends gather around to provide comforting words that she does not seem to hear.

I no longer suspect. I know. 

My second grader sees the dismal crowd and wonders aloud what has happened. I tell him about the ambulance. But for a moment I consider what else I should say, how much I should reveal. We are rolling forward again, and then I say it, "I think the man on the stretcher died."

"Really?" he asks, swiveling his head around for a second to look again at the mourners. And then he asks the same question that is in my own mind, "How did he die?" Heart attack? I wonder. He looked too young for that. Asthma attack? Plausible. Overdose? Not a very charitable thought, but there it is. All I can say is that I have no idea, but I can't help speculating.

For the next few days I scan the obituaries and death notices in the newspaper, expecting to put a face and a name with that inked and lifeless right arm, but there is nothing. And so again I begin to think that I might be wrong. Maybe he is still alive. Maybe that public display of grief was simply a manifestation of concern and stress—even emotional relief—in the aftermath of a medical scare. Maybe that nameless man is, at this moment, sitting up in a hospital bed eating Jell-o and mashed potatoes off a plastic tray.

On Friday morning, I pick up the newspaper and flip absently through the first few pages, this time not looking for an obituary, or for anything else in particular, when I find it: a photo of a young man. His name was Timothy, and he did not survive. No cause of death is mentioned, and so I will probably never know what took his life. He was very young—born in 1985—and his baseball cap is turned backwards, the corners of his mouth curving up slightly, giving him an expression of cheerful defiance. But he could not defy death.

A memorial service will be held at the tattoo parlor. It seems an odd location, unfit for so solemn an occasion. I wonder why his loved ones would choose his place of death as the place for remembering his life. It seems stranger still that a place that provides people with permanent ink could be an appropriate place to reflect on the impermanence of this life.

But then I am struck by the irony—and perhaps it is a bitter irony—that this particular tattoo parlor had once been a church. It had once been a place where earth had met with heaven, where sinners had sung their alleluias. It had once been a place where the dying had gathered and embraced the gift of everlasting life.

Tell Me a Story

"In Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.”  

—C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

• • • • •

My grandmother had a black eye. She also had a tremendous bruise on the back of her leg, vaster and more technicolored than any I'd ever seen. She was sporting the injuries of a prizefighter after a street brawl, but there was no violent tale to tell—no sweat or glory or heroic story behind those black and blue welts. They were simply the evidence of an aging body—of the falls she has taken in recent weeks while trying to perform the mundane task of walking from one room to the next. My grandmother is 92 years old, so her failing health should have come as no surprise, but during the last month her decline was sudden and precipitous. Although she has begun to improve, she remains weak, and tired, and frustrated by her inability to perform basic tasks.

My grandmother, who once spent her Saturday nights swing dancing at the Hollywood Palladium to the live music of Benny Goodman, can hardly stand without help. She, who never left the house without every strand of her thick red tresses pinned perfectly in place, now struggles to lift her arm to brush the tangles from her thin white hair. She, whose graceful fingers once speed-typed scripts for Jack Benny at NBC studios, can hardly bend her crooked knuckles to sign her own name.

Her health and strength may rebound as they have done so many times in the past, but they may not. And as I visit her and try to help her in what small ways I can, I am constantly nagged by the realization that so much of her story is unknown to me, that there must be countless episodes of her life's adventure that  will go unremembered and untold.

Here is my grandmother, living right in my own town—even in the same house for a time—for all these years, and I have hardly begun to explore the pages of her history. I feel like that person who, having lived her whole life in New York City, is now about to leave it forever and is realizing she's never visited the Statue of Liberty, never seen the view from the top of the Empire State Building, never attended a Broadway show, never strolled through Central Park. It was always there, so I could do it anytime. And now time is nearly up. I have had this tremendous and enviable array of stories and memories close at hand for nearly two decades, and I have not availed myself of it. Her life spans nearly a century, but I could not recount more than a pitiful handful of the episodes that her long story comprises.

• • • • •

Realizing that the time I will have with my grandmother is limited, I started making a point of hearing at least one story from her every time I visit. As we chat, I simply ask a few questions, and then I sit back and listen as she turns to the colorful pages of her past. These hours with my grandmother have been some of the most rewarding of my life. In one short hour I was with her recently, scene after scene unfolded before my imagination.

She told me stories of family members whose names I'd never heard. I learned that her grandfather died in a coal mine collapse, and that her grandmother, who never remarried, spent the subsequent years cooking meals for the coal miners in order to support herself and her two young sons—Grandma's father and his brother, Charlie. 

She told me how her father was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge to be the postmaster of their small Illinois town, and how the subsequent postmaster was so incompetent that her father remained on the job to perform the other man's duties. She chuckled as she suddenly remembered a huge, friendly German postal carrier named Otto who delivered the mail on horseback and who knew everybody in town.

With a wry smile, Grandma recounted her first date. A high school senior had invited her, a lowly freshman, to the Fireman's Ball, and was she ever flattered! Knowing how much she loved to dance, her parents gladly gave her permission to go, and her mother immediately set to work sewing her a new dress for the occasion. At the ball, the high school coach—a young newlywed nicknamed "Hap" who had been a friend of Grandma's older brother—was cutting the rug with his pretty wife. As they spun around, they both lost their balance, stumbled, and fell right on top of Grandma and her date, knocking them to the floor where they all fell into fits of embarrassed laughter. Grandma laughed till the tears came as she remembered it.

And tears continued to trickle down her creased and freckled cheeks as she told me about the painful years of World War II when her brother, Rock, served on a munitions ship carrying explosives across the Atlantic from New York to England, always fearing attack by the Germans. Her voice quavered as she recalled how she never knew where her youngest brother, Ken, was during those years or whether he was still alive. She frequented the movie house, partly for distraction, partly to see if she could glimpse a familiar face—his face—in the news reels at the start of every show. She did not hear a word from Ken until he came home, and he would tell only one story from his time serving in the Marines: his unit had stormed the beaches at Guadalcanal, and as they neared land, he was certain that they were all going to die. As they ran together up the tropical sand, the men on either side of him were shot and killed, but somehow Ken survived. And that was all he could bring himself to tell her.
  
One hour with my grandmother was all it took to sit and relive all these scenes, and a half dozen more, from her colorful life. One hour. And this is just the beginning. I could have made a point of doing this countless times before, so why didn't I? Even at 92, my grandmother's mind is still lucid and her memories  vivid, so I am learning as much as I can in the time that we have left.

I know that every cinematic genre is represented in the sweeping screenplay of Grandma's life—action, comedy, adventure, tragedy, romance—and at this late hour, I am realizing how much of the plot is simply mystery—at least to me. Having casually walked in near the end of the show, I am now scrambling to find out how to stop and rewind to the better scenes before the screen fades and the credits roll.

• • • • •

In revisiting the the Little House series of books this year, I have been struck by the gift that Pa had for telling stories to his girls—stories about his own life and about his family. His daughter Laura committed those stories to memory and was able to put them in writing so that generations of readers can still enjoy and learn from them. What a gift. What a legacy.

I suspect that we as a culture are losing the art of handing down family stories. We bequeath physical objects—furniture and jewelry—to our posterity, but how often do we think of stories as a valuable part of our inheritance? I have only recently begun to think of stories in that way myself. But now that my grandmother's story is nearing its final chapters, I want to hang on—and hang on to—every word of her recollections. I want to remember them and bequeath them to my own children, precious heirlooms that cannot be broken but that can be easily lost.

As I've considered what questions I should be asking my grandmother, I have also been asking myself what family stories I hope to pass on to my own children and grandchildren. What form should these stories take if I want them to be remembered? What can I do to make these stories a joy to hear? A good story well told can express powerful truths that will stay with us far longer than any abstract proposition. Good stories give shape and color and texture to ideas. Good stories put flesh on words. And family stories can also help us to understand our own lives in the context of history.

My great-great grandmother raised two sons on her own by cooking meals for men who worked in the mine that had killed her husband. As a child, my grandfather was struck on the knuckles at school for speaking Norwegian instead of English. And years later, those same knuckles were lost entirely in a logging accident involving a chainsaw. My great uncle narrowly escaped being shot to death in the South Pacific. When my great-grandmother's dear friend fell ill and came from St. Louis to live with the family until she could recover, my great-grandfather had to seek special permission from the city council to have this woman stay with them—because she was black. These family memories help me to see my own experiences from a different perspective. Their lives helped shape the story of my own life. This is part of my inheritance; those stories are my stories.

So what if we made a point to not only read to our children but to share our own stories with them? What if our children grew up with a sense of their own history, of their unique place in the greater narrative arc of time? We have a history that bears repeating. In Scripture, the people of Israel were commanded to tell the story of their Exodus from Egypt to their children (Deut 4:9-10). The people were told to take care lest they forget. And if we are able to see our own lives in the context of history—as a brief chapter in a tale that stretches back to the first "Let there be"—then we may realize that the Exodus is also a part of our own story as much as it was part of theirs. And we forget it at our peril.

But forgetting is all too easy. Remembering will take work. It will take writing and repeating and re-telling. It will involve more talking around the table, more asking, more listening, more patience. In this tweet-riddled age, we rarely produce so much as a handwritten letter to save in a box of keepsakes, let alone a book of family history to pass on to our posterity. So, as I focus on collecting my grandmother's stories, I also need to think about how to collect my own stories and how to teach my children to do the same. We may need to spend some time learning the Calormene art of storytelling if our lives' narratives are going to amount to more than a disconnected series of status updates.

I want my sons to know that they are characters in a grand epic that includes all of us. I want my sons to learn and remember the best tales from their own lives, from their parents' lives, from their grandparents' lives. I want them to learn the stories from their great grandmother's life. But this means I would do well to learn them first, before her final chapter closes. It's time to look my grandmother in the eye—the one that was swollen and black and blue—and ask her to tell me a story.

An Open Letter to My Pro-Choice Friends

Dear pro-choice friends,

As I'm sure you've already heard, last month the nation's largest breast cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, cut its funding of the world's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. That decision, and the subsequent decision to reconsider Planned Parenthood for future funding has resulted in public expressions of joy, anger, frustration, and confusion from both the pro-choice and pro-life sides of the abortion debate. The editorial staff of our local newspaper responded with this sentiment (which I have seen repeated in various forms all over the internet): "We fail to understand how cutting funding from an organization that provides life-saving screenings to under-served women could have kept the focus from finding the cure" (Moscow/Pullman Daily News, February 8, 2012, pg. 9A).

It's this pro-choice expression of "failing to understand" that I want to address. If you truly cannot comprehend why anyone, especially any woman, would want Planned Parenthood to disappear, then please, I beg you, read on. Because until you do understand the reasons, you cannot possibly know what it is you are are opposing. After reading this, you might still continue to disagree with us, although I certainly hope not, but you will at least know why we stand so firmly against Planned Parenthood—and against all other abortion providers—the way we do.

I fully realize that many of you are disgusted by the way pro-life advocates appear to be treading all over women's rights and using the issue of abortion for political gain. And although I have no doubt that some people do champion the pro-life cause for all the wrong reasons, I nevertheless want to explain the central, apolitical (if you can believe it) reasons that so many people like me oppose abortion in all its forms.

Cutting through all the political posturing and bumper-sticker sloganeering, the one critical question at the bloody beating heart of the abortion debate is this: What is a human person, and who gets to decide?

It may seem at first like an easy question to answer. After all, we talk all the time about "human rights" and "personal dignity" as though we actually know what we mean by those words. But what makes a human being a human being is more of a matter of debate in this society than one might think. If somebody questioned your personhood, how would you defend it? Your humanity is probably a fact that you simply take for granted, so of course it's obvious to you that you're human. But how would you prove your humanity to someone who doubted it?

The words "human" and "person" must have clear definitions, some set of criteria, that we can all, surely, agree upon. So what exactly is it that makes a person a person? If we cannot agree on the definition of "human person", then I cannot prove to you that I am one, let alone that an unborn child is one. So I want you to ask yourself how you know—really know—what a human person is and, more importantly for this discussion, is not? Where do you get that knowledge? How can you trust it? Who gets to write that entry in the dictionary or on the law books? The issue of definitions might not sound like a big deal, but it is absolutely central to the abortion debate. To capture the disagreement in a single sentence, pro-life advocates believe that the unborn are human beings to whom all basic human rights belong, and the pro-choicers do not.

So what does this definition of personhood have to do with the question of funding Planned Parenthood? To answer that, I ask that you try, just for the sake of understanding, to view the issue from the perspective of a pro-lifer. If the unborn are human persons, then they, too, have basic human rights. If the unborn are human persons, then they have as much intrinsic value as the women who carry them. If the unborn are human persons, then they, on account of their utter dependence on others, are the most in need of our protection. If the unborn are human persons, then we must demand that they be recognized as such and granted every protection that belongs to any human child. If the unborn are human persons, then every time an abortion is performed, early or late, a child is killed. If the unborn are human persons, then Planned Parenthood is one of the world's largest violators of human rights.

To truly understand the degree of horror that a pro-life advocate has for abortion, try replacing the word "fetus" with some other people group—especially one that has at some time in history been labeled "subhuman" by those in positions of power. Try when you see the word "fetus" to think, "black child" or "Jew" or "disabled person," and then you'll understand the uncompromising stance that we must take on behalf of unborn children. You must see clearly that if the unborn are human persons, then every argument in favor of abortion utterly collapses.

If you honestly wish to gain insight into the pro-life mindset, please take a few minutes to carefully read through some of the reasons (based on the premise that the unborn are persons) why we who are pro-life cannot agree with the arguments that support abortion or those who provide it:

1. Nobody should have a right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body.
This is a declaration of absolute independence that will backfire before the words leave your mouth. In what society in the history of the world have people been free to do whatever they want with their own bodies? In order to have a safe and civilized society, we must tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

My fist and trigger finger are part of my body, and there are laws—rightly so—about what I may or may not do with them. A man's penis is part of his body, and there are laws—rightly so—about what he may or may not do with it. My mouth is part of my body, and there are laws about what noises (let's call them "words") that I form with my very own tongue and my very own vocal cords in the presence of other people. My foot is part of my body, but I may not use it to kick children or knock down people's doors. Just because something is part of your body, you should not be automatically allowed to do whatever you want with it—particularly if what you are doing with it is destructive to the life of another human being.

2. It's my body. It's my choice.
Secondly and more importantly, your womb is part of your body; the one growing inside it is not your body, even though he or she is vitally connected to it.

If you've ever worked in a garden, you know that when you pull a plant up by the roots, remove it from the soil that has been its source of water and nutrients, and toss it in the trash (or compost) heap, it withers and dies. Does the fact that it dies when removed from the dirt therefore mean that it is dirt? Or an extension of the dirt? How much more ridiculous is it to believe that because a person is dependent on your body, it is your body? An untouched patch of soil cannot suddenly produce roses, and your body on its own cannot produce anything like a child. The one growing inside you is a distinct human being with its own completely unique DNA and its own identity, separate from yours, and the fact that he would die without you does not make that any less true.

The argument often goes that it's "my body" simply because it doesn't look like much. They describe it as "just a blob of cells" (something that could be accurately said of all of us). But from the moment of conception, this new creature's unique traits are present in the DNA—hair color, eye color, sex, and even personality—all utterly distinct from the mother.

The separate identity of an unborn child becomes increasingly obvious as the unborn human body develops clearly identifiable parts—heart, head, hands, feet, spinal cord, and so on. As groups like Planned Parenthood donate aborted heads and livers to "science," the whole "my body, my choice" slogan becomes painfully laughable. With that logic, we now have a woman with two heads—one of them expendable. And two hearts—one of which is, from what I can tell, made of cold granite. 

3. It's not a person until it can survive outside the womb.
Says who? No, really. In all seriousness, who inscribed this utterly arbitrary rule upon tablets of stone? Was it revealed by a prophet descending holy Mt. Sinai? You had better hope it was, because this thoroughly unscientific statement supposes a degree of god-like knowledge that you simply do not have. I know women who have had premature babies at almost exactly the same stage of fetal development, and in one case the baby died within a matter of hours, and in the other case the baby is currently a thriving toddler. Would you honestly say that the first baby wasn't human because it could not survive outside the womb, while the other one who lived was a human person? Or were they both not human until they could prove their physical strength to survive?

Do you not see how capricious and unreasonable it is to define personhood based on physical strength to not die? Gianna Jessen, an outspoken pro-life activist, actually survived a legal saline abortion. So tell me, if you know, at what moment exactly did she become a person? If you don't know the answer, then (God have mercy) you are advocating the taking of lives like hers, without knowing if it is killing human persons or not.

And let's take the above pro-choice argument further. If personhood is defined by physical viability, then is a child with terminal cancer no longer a person? How about the elderly? A woman with AIDS? And you? Are you a person? Because I hate to break it to you, but you cannot survive outside the womb either. Does the fact that it takes you eight decades to die make you a superior being to the baby for whom it takes eight minutes?

If you look carefully at this popular pro-choice statement, what you are saying is that the weaker and more vulnerable the person, the more acceptable it is to kill her. It is completely morally backwards.

4. It's not a person until it's born.
See above. Only more so.

5. Pro-life people don't really care about women. They want women to be oppressed.
This is absurd. Did you ever notice how many pro-lifers are women? If that statement was true, it would be like black Americans wanting to return to race-based segregation; it would be completely self destructive. Rather, unlike those who champion abortion "rights", we pro-lifers actually care about both the woman and the child. We care so deeply about women, in fact, that we demand the right of an unborn girl to grow into one. Human rights for one group should never mean withholding the human rights of others, especially those who are most vulnerable. If by "rights" you mean the freedom to take the life of another human being, then no, then we do not support those "rights". And neither should you.

Abortion also has had terrible consequences—both physical and mental—upon countless women. That is not to say that giving birth is without its risks. But abortion cannot be called a "safe" alternative to giving birth. There is no such thing as an "easy" outcome to a pregnancy for the woman. Believe me, I know. But birth allows two people to come out alive, whereas abortion allows for only one.

Furthermore, most women who seek abortions say that they feel they have no other choice. In other words, they feel like they are being forced—either by people or by circumstances—to have abortions. How can that possibly be called "care" for women? And how, exactly, does "choice" figure into their decision? Adoption and motherhood are real choices that pro-"choice" organizations like Planned Parenthood rarely present to women in crisis, whereas pro-life groups offer numerous free goods and services to women that allow motherhood and adoption to be truly viable options.

Pro-life groups also strongly encourage the men who got these women pregnant to take responsibility for their actions—something that abortion providers will never do. When men are completely stripped of their reproductive rights (which is what the pro-choice cause does), it also strips men of any sense of responsibility for pregnancy. If it's her body then it's clearly her problem. Nevermind that the thing being exterminated received half its DNA from him. The availability of abortion allows men to abandon pregnant women without any sense of guilt or responsibility. After all, if she's having a baby removed or a wart removed, what difference should that make to him? Until men step up and face the enormous consequences of their sexual actions, it's always going to be the women—and their children—who pay the price. Abortion encourages behavior among men that actually damages women.

6. Planned Parenthood is a worthy charity because it provides healthcare to disadvantaged women and uses the aborted fetal organs for research that might save lives.
Now hear me out on this. Try, once more, to do that same thought experiment I mentioned earlier; try replacing the word "fetus" with the name of some other oppressed group of people. Now, imagine that there is a charity hospital in your town where under-privileged people are routinely cared for and treated at little or no cost. Sounds terrific. I'd support it. BUT, imagine that this same hospital encourages people to bring, say, kids with with Downs Syndrome, or black people, or Jews (all groups of people that have at various times been labeled "subhuman" and deprived of basic human rights) to be killed. Would you support this?

Imagine that you could bring one of these people into this hospital and request that a doctor burn her to death with chemicals. Or tear off her limbs until she dies. Or surgically sever her spinal cord. Or remove her brain with a syringe. Or poison her with lethal drugs. (These are all legal means that are currently applied for performing abortions.) Would the fact that this hospital helps a lot of other people outweigh the hundreds of cruel doctor-assisted murders taking place in the same facility each year? Would you continue to give money and support such a hospital on the grounds that it's "saving lives"? If you would, then your moral problems are far deeper than I suspected. If the unborn are human persons, then Planned Parenthood is killing them in truly brutal ways. That it is legal does not make it right any more than the legality of racial oppression made it right.

And as for supporting the willful destruction and dismemberment of human lives simply because scientists can use the aborted babies for medical research, this is simply another way of saying that the ends justify the means—even the most brutal means imaginable. The reason these babies' bodies are so medically valuable is because they are human bodies. Planned Parenthood is destroying real human lives—by the hundreds of thousands every year—and justifying it for the sake of possibly saving hypothetical human lives. According to this line of thinking, we should all start waving flags in support of drunk and reckless driving because of all the (mostly) intact human corpses it produces. Just think how many lives a healthy teenage corpse could save if we could just donate their various organs to people on transplant waiting lists! Three cheers for vehicular manslaughter! Should we praise drunk drivers as heroes for providing hospitals and researchers with so many valuable bodies?

7. I don't approve of abortion, but abortions account for only about 3% of Planned Parenthood's services, so what's the big deal?
Read #5 above. Would it be a big deal to you if "only" 3% of the activities at the hospital described above involved dismembering and killing defenseless human beings? And what if there were so many of these hospitals around the country that the total number of these killings added up to nearly 300,000 per year—every year? Then would you care? That is exactly what we see Planned Parenthood doing. And then, what if you found out that roughly a third of that hospital's funding came from these killing procedures? Would you then, perhaps, waver in your support of these hospitals? Again, Planned Parenthood receives nearly one third of its revenue from abortions. If the unborn are human persons, which they are, then although Planned Parenthood does provide (or at least refer) cancer screenings, it also provides discount infanticide. And the infanticide brings in a lot more cash.

8. I'm personally against abortion, but I'm not going to judge any woman who gets one, because I don't know how much heartache she's going through, and she need my support, not my condemnation.
This sounds very sweet and caring, but if abortion is the killing of a helpless human being, then heartache is no excuse. Countless people have gone through all kinds of heartache and struggle taking care of an aging relative or a disabled child. And yet, if those people had chosen to hire a hit man to take out their elderly relative or their disabled child, it would not be an act of kindness to give them lots of hugs and support as they go through with hiring that hit man. The true act of kindness would be to try to stop the killing of a helpless individual, even if they think you are being "judgmental". We must condemn acts of murder and oppression, while at the same time doing what we can to help and love those involved. Instead of supporting a woman's choice to abort (which doesn't require much commitment from you), offer instead to do something much more difficult—give her the long-term support she would need in order to give birth to, and possibly raise, a child. If a woman knows she will have an ongoing network of love and support when she gives birth to her baby, she is far, far more likely to choose life. Again, most women get abortions because they feel they have no other choice. If you care about her, give her that other choice.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of abortion in America is that so many women go in for abortions fully believing that they are not taking a human life. In cases like this, when the woman believes the procedure to be the equivalent of having a mole removed, the doctors and counselors who have lied to her bear the guilt, whereas she deserves our compassion. But she also deserves to know the truth.

9. I oppose abortion, but I make an exception in the case of rape and incest.
Rape and incest are terrible crimes with devastating consequences. But the solution to one horrific action is not to commit another even more horrific one. Rape is bad. Murder is worse. We cannot solve a problem like rape by taking the life of the innocent child.

The reply often goes like this: "How can you say you care about women if you force them to give birth to a rapist's baby?" First, the only use of "force" involved in this situation is the rape itself and the abortion. Keeping the baby alive and securely in the womb means deliberately withholding force. Second, I have met a child born of violent rape, and I have met her mother. The mother will tell you in no uncertain terms that neither she nor the world would be a better place if her daughter had ended her existence in a biohazard bin somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Children born of rape are living proof that something truly horrible can be beautifully transformed into a powerful force for good. Abortion gives violence and horror the last word and tells women that "nothing good can come from this," which couldn't be further from the truth.

10. Until you actually step inside a Planned Parenthood facility or meet the caring people who work there, you have no right to condemn them.
If what is happening in a particular location is wrong, setting foot inside that location does not change anything, no matter how well meaning the staff is. I don't have to come and see what an angel of light the local abortionist appears to be before I have a right—a duty—to condemn the violence she has done.

Serial killer and child rapist John Wayne Gacy was a local volunteer, a favorite entertainer at kids' birthday parties, was nominated as Jaycee Man of the Year," and was loved by his neighbors. One former neighbor said, "I know they say he killed 33. But I only knew him as a good neighbor...the best I ever had." Does friendly—and apparently altruistic—behavior undo the evil that is done behind closed doors?

Horrific deeds are occasionally committed by obvious creeps with devil tattoos and heavy black eyeliner. But for atrocities to be committed on a mass scale, it takes the public support of ordinary, pleasant folks with clean fingernails who condone the evil because they (deeply, sincerely) believe they are acting in the name of "the greater good."

Although many of you will object loudly to comparing Nazism to the efforts of abortion groups, the similarity on this point is hard to miss: During WWII, German physicians were seeking important medical knowledge and looking for ways to help military personnel survive in extreme conditions. That, in itself, could have been noble. But one way these doctors were doing this research was by performing excruciating and deadly human experiments on Jewish prisoners.

These physicians were not monsters with fangs and forked tongues. These were respected, well educated, well trained doctors with families and pets that they loved. They, too, had friends, gave money to charity, and cared about people—so long as they got to define the word "people." I most certainly do not have to set foot in a Nazi laboratory to condemn what went on there. And I do not have to meet the friendly folks at Planned Parenthood before I can justly condemn their promotion of infanticide, no matter how good their intentions appear and no matter how many other kindly acts they may perform.

• • • • •

You may hate what I'm saying here. You may hate me. You may disagree with everything I've written and respond with scathing comments. But at least you cannot say that you "fail to understand" why we oppose the funding of Planned Parenthood by an organization that aims to, of all things, save lives. It would be like funding an environmentalist group that uses part of its money to clean up endangered wetlands and the rest of its money to dump toxic chemicals into rivers and streams. 

Only by declaring that the unborn are not human persons can anyone accept what is done to them at abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood. Human rights, as we all know, can belong only to humans, so the surest way to deny the human rights of any group of people is to dehumanize them first. If you can redefine "humanity" so that it excludes a certain group of individuals, then no rights need be extended to that group anymore—a tactic that has been used with astonishing popular success over and over again throughout human (whatever that is) history. It happened to Jews in Germany, blacks in America, and disabled persons in both. Is it not possible that this is precisely what is happening right now in the case of the unborn?

The dehumanizing of true human persons is exactly what we believe the pro-choice cause has done. We don't believe you are intentionally out to hurt people. But we do believe that you are hurting people—the most helpless and vulnerable of people—even while you see yourselves as doing good. What could a fetus possibly do to prove to you that she is a human being and has a right to live? But why must the burden of proof lie with the fetus? Let us ask instead, what can you do to prove that she isn't? The definition of personhood, in fact, is a matter completely outside the realm of science. There is no scientific or federal law that you can point to that proves that an unborn baby is anything less than a human person. You may want to believe it, for the sake of your conscience or for the sake of convenience. You may have doctors and lawyers who eloquently and persuasively defend the inhumanity of the unborn, but remember that Hitler, too, had lawyers and doctors who could provide "irrefutable evidence" of the inferiority of disabled persons and the subhumanity of Jews and blacks. However, you and I both know that their "proofs" were, simply, false and led to all kinds of atrocities.

I beg you who are pro-choice to ask yourselves if there is even a remote possibility that you could be wrong when you deny the personhood of an unborn child. Is there just the slightest chance that the tiny creature with a beating heart and utterly unique human DNA is a person with as much right to live as you or I? Even without absolute proof that an unborn child is actually a human person, would it not be better to err on the side of life? After years of supporting abortion, how would you live with yourself if you one day discovered that you have been terribly, murderously wrong? If there is even a hint of doubt in your mind, you must realize that this is not merely a matter of politics or of harmless opinion; it is a matter of life and death.

So the central thing that we who are pro-life need you who are pro-choice to understand is that you have arbitrarily defined "human" in such a way as to exclude the unborn. And I would ask that you please consider the possibility that the very belief that makes the act of abortion seem acceptable—that the unborn is not a human person—is based upon wishful thinking and outright lies. Please question your faith in the declaration that the unborn child is not a child at all. Reconsider the humanity of the unborn. Millions of innocent lives depend upon it.

Very Sincerely,

Hannah

Car(apace)

Even after two years of sliding gracefully through stop signs and spinning in place while attempting to exit our well-glazed parking space, my husband and I had continued to question the necessity of a new set of snow tires. Was it really worth 1000 whole dollars just to be able to stop when we wanted to stop or go when we wanted to go? Then came the first genuine snowfall in November, which sent us van-skiing down a steep hill toward a busy intersection right in the middle of rush-minute traffic. That thrilling brush with disaster ended the debate. We wanted to live through another winter. So we slimmed down our bank account, handed over a hefty chunk of our savings to the hardworking folks at Les Schwab, and drove away, accompanied by the reassuring crunchity-crunchity-crunch of metal studs against ice.

And then the snow promptly quit falling. We spent nearly all of the last two months wearing down our shiny new studs on perfectly clear roads.

I'm usually the only one around here who's dreaming of a green Christmas, but the complete cessation of snow this winter has had me wondering whether that fat wad of cash would have been better spent on something useful like, say, a lifetime supply of washable markers. But then all it took was one more good snowfall and a slippery drive up a hilly country road to convince me that those new tires were worth every last penny.

Snow tires or no snow tires, however, I was grateful to avoid any extensive traveling this winter. Three years ago, as you may recall, we flew to Phoenix for Christmas, and in the process of missing our first flight on account of impassable roads, driving back home past stranded cars to buy all new tickets, spending the night in Spokane both before and after our flights, and staying at two different houses while we were in Arizona, I both packed and unpacked suitcases for our entire family six times.

Combine that with the experience of loading and unloading the portable crib, transferring and retransferring car seats, rolling and unrolling sleeping bags, slipping and sliding around the highway in winter storm conditions, and hurrying tiny children with tinier bladders through crowded airports, and you'll understand why holiday travel has, for me, lost most of its luster.

My inner pragmatist would be more than happy to swear off all holiday traveling adventures until the entire family is old enough to not only be out of diapers and car seats, but also to pack their own suitcases—and to help push the van out of a snow bank, should the occasion arise.

• • • • •

When I was a kid I used to enjoy winter travel, usually because it meant spending Christmas with my multitudes of cousins. Long road trips were always as much a part of our holiday traditions as Grandma Kvale's roast turkey, Uncle Ken's egg nog lattes, and Aunt Marilynn's "Hyill-hyill-hyill!" laughter emanating from the kitchen. Each year my family would open our gifts early and then pile into our boxy Toyota Tercel wagon for the drive to Tacoma, to my grandparents' house on the hill.

As we neared our destination in the evening, after six hours of sharing the back seat with my little brother, I would watch expectantly through the window for the brightly lit star my grandfather always set atop the roof—high enough to be seen from the freeway.

When we finally arrived at the house, I loved to run up the spiral staircase to the guest bedroom. From there, through the age-rippled window glass, I could glimpse ten thousand red brake lights and ten thousand white headlights forming a peaceful rolling stream along the interstate below.

After experiencing the speed and intensity of city traffic, the transformation seemed  surreal. Who, seeing that view, would consider the possibility that tragedy could, at any moment, interrupt that graceful slow dance through the fog? As bright and cheerful as a string of Christmas lights, rows of cars, trucks, and buses glistened under the pink-orange glow of the sodium vapor street lamps. What danger could there be in such a lovely procession?

• • • • •

As a child, of course, I never gave the road conditions so much as a second thought. I had implicit trust in my father's driving abilities and never once suspected that there might be even the slightest hint of danger in all that winter driving—not with my dad behind the wheel. Deep in the recesses of my mind lay an early memory of our brand new car being struck by an elderly lady's land yacht, but that did not shake my firm belief that accidents were distant events that happened in other places to other people.

My first true encounter with the hazards of winter travel didn't come until I was a teenager when, due to an impassable blizzard, we were forced to spend New Year's Eve in an Ellensberg Motel 6. As we set out along an ice-encrusted Interstate 90 the next day, we found ourselves watching in tense amazement as the pickup truck immediately in front of us slid out of control, started into a slow-motion spin, ricocheted off the median, struck another car, and then slipped, missing us by what seemed like inches, into the shallow ditch next to the freeway.

That's when I began to wonder if there was, perhaps, something slightly ridiculous about that annual trek over the ice and through the mountains. I began to understand that even the best of drivers can do nothing to prevent black ice, or drunk college students, or wildlife crossings. (I once watched my brother's Suburban collide with a swooping owl.) Scary things happen on the road—things beyond our control.

Every Christmas of my childhood had sent us weaving our icy way around the Palouse hills, through the Columbia gorge, over the mountain passes (chains or snow tires required), and along roadways blasted out of the rock with countless sticks of dynamite. We zipped through snow and ice and rain at historically unprecedented speeds, passing mere feet from other vehicles that raced along at equally breathtaking speeds. One unexpected bump, one careless flick of the wrist, one brief error in judgement, and goodbye family, goodbye beating hearts.

We—all of us—have been living on the edge, and yet most of us hardly consider whether this whole wintertime travel business is a good idea. In fact, most of us hardly think about driving at all, regardless of the season. Even when conditions are at their worst, we remain largely undeterred.

• • • • •

Last Monday the "check engine" light blinked on in our van, but for an entire week neither I nor my husband had time to take the vehicle in for a checkup. What was wrong with our engine neither of us knew, and on the way to school one of the kids nervously asked me if I thought our car might explode. I laughed and said I sure hoped not. How often does that really happen anyway? In my ignorance, however, I couldn't make any guarantees. But did that stop us from going where we wanted to go? Not at all. The kids must be educated, and the groceries must be hauled from afar. Driving is a luxury that most of us really cannot live without—not even at our own peril.

And it is perilous. Not to sound panicky or anything, but, well, you could die out there, you know.

As a mom with young children, I read and hear a lot of buzz about the terrible risks we take with our kids when we vaccinate them, or don't vaccinate them, or feed them foods tainted with high fructose corn syrup, or expose them to chemical pesticides, or (perish the thought) let them catch a breath of second hand smoke. But honestly, I suspect that all of those potential dangers pale in comparison to the kind of overt danger we face just driving our little ones to the mall—let alone across hundreds of miles of frozen freeway—on a snowy January day.

Stop and think about it. If there were any other behavior-related cause of death that was comparable to traffic collisions, the national outcry would be deafening. More than 6500 American children die—and tens of thousands more are injured—every year as a direct result of motor vehicle accidents. If that grim statistic were associated with a drug or a chemical or a tainted food product, you can imagine the backlash. If we could blame a corporation or the government or some other high profile scapegoat for knowingly gambling with the lives of these innocent victims, we'd all be writing letters to congress to make them stop, demanding fines, prison time, and heads on a platter.

But the thing is, even after hearing all about the risks involved, we're the ones voluntarily buckling our very own children into our minivans everyday. We're too busy stressing out about the the trans-fats that the children in the back seat are absorbing from their drive-through fries to think about the death-defying means we took to arrive at the drive through in the first place. We don't even blink when a fully loaded eighteen wheeler comes hurtling toward us at 60 MPH. We fret and worry about long-term hypothetical risks and completely ignore the immediate—but apparently acceptable—risks that are racing along in the lane next to us. Have we lost our minds?

• • • • •

If I'm reading the numbers right, traffic accidents kill more children in a single year in this country than the total number of US military deaths (combat- and non-combat-related combined) in Iraq during the three years from 2003 to 2006. Just a stone's throw from our home in Dallas, a drunk driver swerved out of his lane on Highway 183 and sent a gasoline tanker plunging off of an overpass, where it burst into an white-hot inferno and transformed the stretch of road next to the IHOP into a charred mass of unstable rebar and concrete. A few too many Budweisers and one careless driver had effectively detonated what amounted to a roadside bomb.

But I, just like everybody else, was back behind the wheel—on that very highway, no less—the same day. There was no question that the fire-blasted overpass would and must be rebuilt. Most of us read the headlines, shake our heads, and then cheerfully strap our little ones back into their car seats without a second thought. It's simply a risk that we've grown so accustomed to that we rarely think of it as a risk at all.

Most of us, after all, would rather not revert to the old covered wagon routine for bringing home the weekly mountain of groceries, let alone for heading across the mountains to visit grandma—especially during the winter months.

• • • • •

Driving at any time of year, of course, is risky—particularly if you live in a college town like mine, where roughly a third of the population consists of impatient, inexperienced, and irresponsible drivers.

Just a few months ago, a speeding car ran a red light and nearly collided with me as I was on my way home from my boys' school. And while I was in college, I had not one but two cars totaled by 17-year-old drivers—one that suddenly turned left directly in front of me on a residential street and hit me almost head-on, and one who ran a red light at an intersection and slammed into my front end with her uninsured orange Ford Bronco. Neither of those accidents happened on icy roads, and they both occurred years before anyone had ever heard of texting while driving. I've been an extremely defensive (translation: tense) driver, and an obnoxiously jumpy passenger, ever since.

• • • • •

What I've come to realize is that every time we go zipping merrily along the highway toward an oncoming car, we are defying sudden and violent death. Who of us doesn't have a few dramatic car-crash (or near-miss) stories to tell about a friend or a loved one—or ourselves?

I've spent a blazing hot afternoon stranded in the middle of a fallow field in Central Washington with my radiator punctured by a rusty, half-buried tiller—and with only a 300-pound Spanish speaking junk man and his great dane to keep me company. I've had friends hospitalized after being struck by incautious and intoxicated drivers. I've attended the funeral of a young man who fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from the university. One of my college friends lost her new husband to a wintertime car crash. The lives of the sister, brother-in-law, and baby nephew of one of my high school classmates were taken all at once by a drunk driver. Limbs and hearts have been broken on nearly every roadway in America.

And aside from the terrible human cost of driving, there are all kinds of animal casualties as well. Ten years ago, on a trip from New Orleans to Monroe, Louisiana, my husband and I drove past countless dead dogs, cats, possums, turtles, and even small alligators—a veritable natural history museum of roadkill. I know multiple people who have struck deer on the highway. The streets where we now live are polka-dotted with crushed squirrel carcasses—but then again, perhaps dead squirrels are an argument in favor of the deadly power of cars? In any case, as long as we persist in our driving habits, all sorts of traumatic events are likely to occur again.

So the question is, what keeps us going back for more?

• • • • •

Driving is, frequently, a mere matter of convenience. Even when walking or biking is a viable option, we choose driving as a quicker and easier way to get from point A to point B. Let's face it. Sometimes we're just lazy.

But often, driving is not a matter of convenience but of necessity. Unless you live in New York or Chicago and have nowhere to go beyond the fixed train routes, alternative forms of transportation are hard to come by. You might try to absolve yourself of fossil fuel guilt by taking the bus, but that does nothing to keep you off the busy roads. Besides, as my shocked children immediately discovered, buses do not have seat belts. Most American cities were not built for foot or bicycle traffic, much less for a horse and carriage. And for those of us with multiple kids and gallons of milk to haul across town, we need some kind of vehicle to help.

We also drive out of a sense of obligation. Because modern transportation has made it possible to visit distant friends and family, we feel that we must. Nobody with a functioning vehicle and some money for gas can legitimately say, "Sorry, Grandma. 100 miles is just too far to travel for Christmas."

And, in spite of the obvious dangers, most of the population isn't hitting the road in search of an adrenaline rush. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm not naming any names, but I know some people who  like to take a drive to relieve stress. There is, in fact, a whole genre of driving-for-the-love-of-it songs, typified by Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again." And even I can be carried away by that easy, free-wheelin' feelin' of watching the yellow center stripes flick past to the rhythm of a good-mood soundtrack. You just better hope that a stray moose doesn't wander across your path while you're, in the words of Son Volt, letting the "wind take your troubles away."

That brings me to what is, perhaps, the central reason for our automobile habit: it makes us feel free. "A car in every driveway" is still very much part of the American dream, and individual autonomy is arguably the reigning American value. According to American Public Media, the city of Los Angeles is home to nearly twice as many cars as drivers. It sounds ludicrous. But for us Americans, a car is more than a tool; it is a status symbol. It is more than a status symbol; it is an extension of who we are. To own a car is to hold a sense of power, independence, and importance. We select the time of departure. We set the speed. We choose the music. We decide where to go, and when to stop, and why. We are kings and queens ruling over our own little steel-and-rubber worlds. This might explain why sweet little old ladies can turn into cussing hussies when they get behind the wheel; on the highway we are tiny independent states vying for dominance, and pity the brazen fool who attempts to invade our territory. ¡Vìvà la vehicle!

So, while we may drive for convenience, necessity, pleasure, and the grand illusion of freedom, I have to wonder if even these motivations, powerful as they are, can fully explain our decision to accept the risks involved. Why are we so overwhelmingly willing to play the odds?

• • • • •

The odds themselves are, obviously, part of the answer. Even in the wintertime, you're not statistically likely to die on the way to grandma's house. For every trip that ends in a deadly crash, there are a million more that reach their destination in perfect safety. The bet is a fairly safe one. But that doesn't change the fact that it's our lives that are on the line. Even if there are a million empty chambers in the revolver, Russian roulette is still the game we're choosing to play. (C'mon, kids! Give it a spin!)

Why not stay off the roads whenever possible? Why take the gamble when the stakes are so high? For many, ignoring the risks and trusting blind fate are the best reasons they can offer. But for me the overarching reason is probably best summed up in a quote that I've heard attributed to General Stonewall Jackson: "My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle [or behind the wheel] as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me."

In other words, the risks we take are never governed by impersonal chance. They are never automatic or meaningless. Which is to say, they are not, in the ultimate sense, risks at all; every outcome was fully planned before we were born.

The well lived life is not the one spent locked indoors, wearing a crash helmet, and popping vitamins. It is spent loving our kids, and visiting our friends, and doing our work with the confidence that comes from faith: Yea, though I drive through the turnpike of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.

This naturally raises deeper questions about the unfathomable relationship between God's sovereignty and human responsibility, but I will let the theologians and pastors expound that one more fully. I will simply say that I believe God uses indirect means, from Roman crosses to snow tires, to accomplish His ends, and that there is no contradiction between trusting God and buckling our seat belts. We are not called to express our faith by being stupidly suicidal but by living each day as we ought, in spite of the apparent danger. We can drive to school or go to battle assured that in God's hands we are as safe there—or as doomed—as in bed.

So, while purchasing expensive new tires was part of being a good steward of our family's lives, and while I may have been grateful to stay comfortably at home for the holidays, there is, perhaps, no better time than during the Christmas season to recognize that evading death is not the point of living. This life is not meant to be lived for the sole purpose of its own preservation. That momentous birth in Bethlehem was all about taking up a mortal life in order to lay it down. Because of this, we are free to take risks, even deadly ones, in order to fulfill our duties and in order to love others—which is, after all, essentially the same thing.

Sparkling

Today, our house is sparkling—not the tidy, freshly polished kind of sparkling, but the kind spangled with twinkle lights, glistening with chipped bits of tree ornaments, littered with shreds of metallic wrapping paper, scattered with glitter fallen from children's craft projects, and sprinkled with colored sugar and a fine dusting of flour all around. Very messy. Very merry. May your Christmas be so blessed it sparkles.