Crushed Oreos

The dirt pudding recipe called for a package of crushed Oreos. Esther took the package outside to the garage and grabbed the hammer. Our garage there in our off-base house in Tzuzu, Japan was a narrow concrete-floored area, covered with an awning and squeezed between our house and our neighbors’ (not the shoe-throwing neighbor, the one on the other side of us). Pouring the cookies into a bag, she started hammering away, thud, thud, thud. After a few blows, the bag ripped open and six cookies fell out onto the floor. Rats! She had wasted the cookies. Esther picked them up, tossed them into a cardboard box next to her and went on hammering.

The box needed to be thrown away anyway, so she planned to toss it into the trashcan after she finished making the dirt pudding. She closed the flaps of the box and put it on the steps of the back door. After she was inside and mixing whipped cream and chocolate pudding together, however, she promptly forgot all about it.

Our neighborhood got really dark at night. If you stepped into garage after sunset, it was as pitch dark as a stack of black cats. Micah threw open the back door, intending to just run out in his sock feet to get wire cutters from the work bench. As he stepped on the first step, he felt jaws close around his ankle and clamp tight. He kicked his foot, trying to get loose but the jaws held tight. Something was rattling around his foot inside the mouth of whatever it was. As his foot came down, it slid on the smooth concrete and almost sent him to the floor completely. Where was that light? He couldn’t see a thing. He kicked again and felt the stuff rattle, he lost his balance and fell against the work table. Calm, keep calm. Where was that light? He groped for the switch and finally found it.

He stared down at a battered cardboard box with the flaps holding it tight to his foot. He sat down and pulled it off. OREOS?? That was what had been rattling around his foot. What in the world was a cardboard box with six Oreos doing on the back steps? Quickly Micah stepped inside the back door. “ESTHER!! Are these yours?”

Esther came out of the living room, a little surprised at Micah’s angry tone. “Oh, yeah. Thanks. I guess I forgot it.”

“Forgot it? Don’t EVER put something like that on the steps!”

------------------------

Amendment from Micah: Esther didn’t really forget it. The younger kids were always putting whatever they couldn’t think of a place for into the garage. She didn’t want to bother getting her feet cold, so she just put it on the steps.

Answer to Micah from Esther: How could you know my motives? It was an accident, I tell you!

A memory and some thoughts...

My first bad bike wreck was when I was six years old. Not many people have the ability to hot-dog a bike at that age, but I did. The mountains of Japan afford many places to careen down crazily steep and windy roads – and that was what I was doing. I was having fun weaving back and forth as I flew down a narrow, mountain path between rice fields. Before I knew what had happened, I had lost control, flipped over the handlebars, and smashed by face into the road. A bike wreck can be traumatizing when you’re not old enough to really think it through rationally. In my mind, I had been doing just fine when suddenly the bicycle bucked me off. What was to prevent it happening again? For months I crept along the streets, refusing to go faster than a crawl and getting off to walk my bike at every hill.
My sister, Esther, who is six years older than me, liked taking me with her when she rode her bike to the store, but my fear of hills was rather cumbersome after a while. “Mommy, can I put Martha on my rack to go to the store next time? It would make it go a lot faster.” She said one evening.
Mommy looked at me, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t want her getting her feet caught in the spokes.”
Daddy glanced up from the helping my brother Peter with his math school work. “We could get her some boots to protect her feet. Maybe riding around with Esther will help Martha’s fear of hills.”
I wasn’t so sure. Riding on the back of Esther’s bike? Was it really safe? What if I fell off? Mommy went to the store and bought me a pair of black boots that zipped up the side to make sure my shoe laces wouldn’t get tangled in the gears. I put them on and with some qualms settled myself on the bicycle rack behind my sister. Esther pushed off and began peddling down the street. I discovered I loved it! Those became some of my favorite memories: Feeling the warm breeze in my hair while holding onto my older sister’s solid back and watching the neighborhood slide by. There is safety in not being the one in control – in just being along for the ride. I felt completely at ease. Esther wouldn’t wreck and I could hold onto her for protection.
I was reminded of this recently when I was worrying about my plans for the future. Which school should I go to? When should I go? But this picture of riding behind Esther rose in my mind – my safety is in letting God ride the bike. I’m just holding on to him and enjoying the scenery.

Forming Dreams (essay written for the U of A application)

“Either a nurse or a teacher” was always my answer when someone asked me what my plans were. That answer was fine until I entered my senior year and panic set in: “Mommy, I HAVE to know what I’m going to be, but how can I choose?”

I’ve loved anatomy ever since I can remember, but then I’ve always had a heart for working with children. Actually, I was on the job at the Drew County Boys and Girls Club when I got a call from my older brother, Peter: “Hey Martha, why don’t you come with me to an Urban Health Missions Conference in Los Angeles? Then you can see all the cool stuff you can do when you are a nurse like me.”

“How am I going to get out there?” I asked.

“I’ll pay your way.” He answered.

“Well, that sounds great to me!”

A few days later, when talking with my older sister Esther (also a nurse), I mentioned the travel plans. “Why don’t you stop by in Tulsa for a few days and shadow me at work? I can arrange it with my supervisor,” she suggested.

So a plan was formed for an amazing trip to discover nursing—from small-town Monticello, Arkansas to Tulsa to Los Angeles! I packed my bags in a flurry of excitement, impatiently waiting the three weeks until the travel dates rolled around.

For three days, I shadowed my sister in the ICU. I looked at chest tubes and saw blood transfusions in progress, examined heart monitors print-outs and x-rays of collapsed lungs, talked with confused old ladies and ultra-paranoid young men – and loved every minute of it!

Then the day came to fly from Tulsa to Los Angeles. Peter and I had tried hard to coordinate our arrival times, but I still had to wait an hour for him to arrive. Fortunately, everything went well (thanks to cell phones) and we were leaving in our rental car for our lodgings by nine p.m.

I live in Monticello, Arkansas—a small town of ten thousand people in the Arkansas delta. Exploring Los Angeles was an adventure from the start. “Hey Martha, look on the map and find somewhere to eat. I’m starved,” Peter ordered from the driver’s seat. The place I found was a Church’s Chicken in the middle of a downtown, rough neighborhood. “If we get mugged, it’s your fault.” Peter informed me as we looked at the bars on the windows and surrounding the cash register.

“Oh, thanks a lot!” I answered sarcastically.

The conference lasted for two days, but I would say that it was the conference together with the city that convinced me to be a nurse. I’ll never forget the experience of sitting through a session about healthcare for the homeless and then watching a ragged man panhandle outside of the Starbucks where we ate. Or listening to a lecture on gang youth and then wandering through the fringes of the tough barrios and seeing the graffiti.

That trip showed me the realities of life in the inner-city. When I told people at the conference that I wanted to be a nurse, but also wanted to work with children, the answer was “Why not both? Why not become nurse AND a Children’s Pastor? Both are desperately needed!”

So a plan formed to become a nurse to fulfill physical needs, and then go to Bible School to be better equipped to fulfill gaping spiritual needs. And that is my dream.