Missing the mark . . .

 A little story about Hank and Rhoda

From time to time, we all miss the mark. That’s just baked into our DNA as humans. We fail. We just do. We fail, I think, because sometimes we settle into safe assumptions. We fail because sometimes we lower our expectations of ourselves - and our relationships with others.

We miss the mark, I think, because we forget what the mark is and where it is. We forget what it is this life is all about. Why we are here.

Let me give you an example. I want to tell you a story about Hank and Rhoda. Hank was a Hospice patient of mine. That’s not their names, of course, but Hank and Rhoda could be any couple in the rural area of Sussex County. Or, anywhere, actually.

Of all the stories I heard about Hank these two about Hank and Rhoda became the bookends of all the stories of their 57 years of married life together.

Hank met Rhoda when he was 19 and she was 15. Rhoda was on vacation with her family in DE and when she and her two sisters walked to the dance hall they went by Hank's house where he was outside washing his car. That’s when he first laid eyes on her. He was totally smitten.

At the end of her vacation, Rhoda went back home to PA and Hank went into the Navy. At the end of his Navy career, he was stationed in Philadelphia and decided, just on a whim, to look up Rhoda.

He went to the addresses he had for her only to find that her family had moved. Hank started calling everyone with her last name listed in the phone book (remember those?), asking them if they had a daughter Rhoda. He called and called and called all day and into the evening until he found her.

He surprised her one night when she was leaving her job at the A&P store and showed up in his Navy uniform. To hear him tell it, he instantly won Rhoda's heart. At the time Rhoda was already sorta-kinda "engaged" to someone else, but, she admitted with a shy smile, that once she saw Hank in his Navy uniform, she broke off her relationship with the other guy. Hank and Rhoda have been together ever since.

The second story is one that is more recent. A few years ago, Rhoda needed to be admitted to a local skilled nursing facility for a few weeks of IV antibiotics. Once she had the dose of medicine, she was allowed to come home for a few hours but had to be back at the facility by bedtime.

Hank was always used to Rhoda taking care of him, so when she came home he still expected her to clean the house, do the laundry, and cook his meals. One day, while she was home, they had a disagreement and he was fussing and she decided that she was not coming home for the day anymore until she was discharged because she was just not able to do the regular housework and he just did not understand.

That night, he called his daughter and daughter-in-law and wanted a family meeting. He wanted an explanation of what exactly was wrong with Rhoda, for goodness sake, and why she was mad at him. And then, when they did, his family told me, he cried. They had never seen him cry. His "girls" told him that maybe he needed to do something special for Rhoda to show her he loved her. They suggested flowers.

 

Then Hank, probably just a little embarrassed, allowed his sadness to turn to anger. "She knows I love her and I have never bought flowers in fifty-some years and I am not going to start now," he thundered. Well, Rhoda wasn't going to give in either. She wasn't going to come home until Hank apologized.

The next morning, Hank called the florist and ordered "a dozen of their prettiest roses and he said he didn't care what the cost was". Then, he took the roses and his cane and took his unsteady self to the second floor of the Skilled Nursing Facility where Rhoda was staying.

The story was that no one was certain who cried more - Hank or Rhoda - but Rhoda called the girls that evening, crying happy tears and saying "In 50-plus years he's never given me flowers, much less roses." The girls said, "This story just goes to prove that it's never too late to give flowers and tell someone that you love them."

Well, yes. That is one thing that the story just goes to prove. It also proves that it’s not so much the expectations we have but the comfort we feel in the assumptions we have made about ourselves and others and our relationships.

And, it is also true that life often tests us and finds us wanting but it’s never too late to rise to the challenge and exceed everyone’s expectations, even our own.

 

Lent is such a time. It doesn’t have to be grand and glorious or dramatic and tested on the battlefield. Forgiveness and redemption can be held in a simple bouquet of roses, brought by an aging, fragile body, to a spouse of almost 60 years, and contained in a contrite heart.

 

I have learned that the most powerful three-word sentence in the English language – after “I love you,” is “I am sorry.” That one small sentence – said with truth and oftentimes courage – can melt a wall of ice built by anger and heal a heart broken by disappointment or betrayal.

 

Lent is such a time to examine our assumptions about our relationships, to take another look at the priorities in our life, to ask “What’s really important to me? What do I value most and how do I demonstrate that in how I live my life?”

 

Lent is a time to take out our household budget and see it as a statement of our theology – of what we believe about God. How we spend our money, where we place our treasurer, is a statement of our expectations and assumptions about ourselves and our family and God.

 

Lent is a time to admit our flaws and faults and those times we have trespassed against others and seek forgiveness for our trespasses and to forgive those who have trespassed against us.

Lent is a time to check where it is we have placed the mark in our life and, if we keep missing it, to make a few adjustments. Either we need to lower our expectations or step up our game. Maybe it’s that we need to do a little of both. 

 

The nuns of my youth used to call this process “making a good examination of conscience”. It always sounded so sterile to me but it’s actually not a bad description. They encouraged “an examination of conscience” daily, at the end of the day, to confess how we had missed the mark, and to determine to make adjustments so that, when we awakened the next morning, we would, as they said, “start on the right foot”.

That sounded too much like Sisyphus to me. Remember him? He was the guy whose whole life was to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill. When he finally got to the top, the boulder would go down the other side and his job was to then push it back up again.

Sisyphus did this daily. Every day. That was the sum and substance of his life. Well, that may have been okay for the nuns - and God bless ‘em at it, as my grandmother would say - but that was not the mark I had set for my own.

There’s so much more to this one, wonderful, wild, precious life we’ve been given - no matter the limitations of our assumptions and expectations - not to spend at least some of the time dedicated to love and forgiveness and joy.

I encourage you, during this Season of Lent, to “make a good examination of conscience”. Or, as the rappers say, “check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

It’s never too late to say, “I’m sorry.” You’re never too old to say, “I love you.”

And, to love wildly, generously, lavishly, and wastefully, the way God loves us.