More Than Ordinary Lives

Although we haven’t mastered salmon fishing in Washington, we have caught a couple. This day on the Sol Duc River within Olympic National Park we didn’t get any. A park ranger confirmed that we had missed the fish’s upstream journey by a few days. That didn’t spoil our day. See me fishing a deep hole in the idyllic setting. The experience was deeply satisfying.

A lot of things in life are like fishing. Improving your skills and using them to make an excellent effort at a difficult endeavor is a great joy. Your effort is flavored by the hope you might, will probably, succeed eventually. That success is made all the sweeter by the memory of the effort.

Here’s hoping you strive for some great prize and that you’ll find fulfillment in the effort. And in the case of our fishing, steelhead season is coming.

Drew Coons

Kit and I each hooked three king salmon. Kit caught two. Drew lost three. A seal had grabbed one of Drew’s hooked salmon. All Drew landed was part of its head. The day was nearly over when Kit hooked her third fish. “Take my rod,” she insisted. And so I caught a salmon too, but not as big as Kit’s.

Whatta wife! 

Drew  

A thousand years before Christ a lively people called Celts populated Europe. Pockets of nearly pure Celtic DNA remain today. Kit and I consider ourselves to be predominately Celtic in origin.

Celtic peoples are frequently noted for cleverness-of-tongue alas rarely noted for modesty. In the pre-Christian Irish literary epic Táin Bó Cúailnge a husband and wife, Ailill and Medb, are pillow-talking in bed. Ailill comments on Medb’s good fortune to be his wife.

“True enough,” Medb returns and cites the many suitors she rejected. Then Medb wisely  compliments her husband while exhorting him and asserting her own worthiness. “For I asked a harder wedding gift than any woman ever asked before from a man in Ireland – the absence of meanness and jealousy and fear. If I married a mean man our union would be wrong, because I’m so full of grace and giving. It would be an insult if I were more generous than my husband, but not if the two of us were equal in this. If my husband was a timid man our union would be just wrong because I thrive, my self, on all kinds of trouble. It is an insult for a wife to be more spirited than her husband, but not if the two are equally spirited.”

Although Medb’s witty response is amusing, her words are worth considering. Wisdom would have young men and women seek to develop admirable qualities in themselves and seek the same qualities in a spouse. My Celtic princess, Kit, has these noted plus Medb’s cleverness.

Drew

The war in Afghanistan cost Americans a great deal. Over 6,000 US soldiers and contractors who had wanted to do something good lost their lives. Over 800,000 service men and women invested years of their lives in Afghanistan. Of  these, more than 20,000 received injuries many severe and life changing. Families grieve due to the loss or suffering of their loved ones. Afghans who sided with Americans by necessity or hoping for a better life now face an uncertain if not catastrophic future. Most of the suffering is due to poor decisions or self-interest of authorities.

I understand feeling of deep loss and frustration. I’ve expended intense effort, invested time and money, and made great personal sacrifices only to see ministry initiatives intended for good ultimately fail due to authorities. Perhaps you have as well. Maybe you poured your heart into a church only to see it languish or even disintegrate.

Kit and I have learned to apply a principle I call “integrate-under-the-curve” after such failures. For those not conversant with calculus, the term would mean the sum of what happened rather than how it concluded. We look at the lives touched and the good accomplished rather than the loss of greater potential. Admittedly, the cost to us sometimes seems greater than the positive results. But that is because of our own selfish perspective. Who but God can accurately place a value on one changed life or the general betterment of lives even for a season?

So, what about Afghanistan? We’ve lived in a Muslim country and have ministered in many others including Syria. Kit and I supported the initial war in Afghanistan to dispose of Al Qaeda but opposed subsequent occupation of the country. Same with Iraq when thought to be stockpiling WMDs. We believe the disasters following both ill-conceived occupations were inevitable.

I won’t try to enumerate the good from Afghanistan. You would not consider it sufficient for the cost. But by faith I know that some good was accomplished and intend to focus on that.

Kit and I wrote a mini-book, More than Ordinary Faith – Why Does God Allow Suffering? I reread that biblical compilation in the context of the Afghan debacle and was astounded anew at the insight scripture offers. The mini-book is an in-depth look at biblical principles not a feel-better treatise. But it can booster faith especially if read before a crisis. I’ll email a PDF copy to anyone who asks.

In Our Lord,

Drew   

Mount Rainier, also known as Tacoma, is an active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1894. At 14,411 feet, Rainier is the highest point in Washington and dominates the skyline except where towering trees block the view. On average, sixty feet of snow falls on Rainier each winter and feeds dozens of year-around glaciers. Many roads are closed depending on the accumulation starting in the fall.

On the day of this picture, Kit and I hiked a couple of thousand feet of elevation up the  base of the mountain. The views were spectacular even at our relatively low height. We have been filled with joy at the beauty of God’s creation all summer. Our prayer is that you are experiencing God afresh in your own fashion.

Drew

Not really.  But try this safe link to see a hoot.  

See us speak Spanish

Familylife created this to help train Latin America.

We are having a lovely summer and hope you are too.  

Drew

Last week Kit and I hiked into the heart of the Olympic Mountains. The picture is Marmot Pass. The effort made me feel young for a day.

My seventy-one-year-old body didn’t feel young the day after, though. But the aches and pains were a small price to pay for a trip in time.

We can recapture experiences with careful planning. Just be careful to prepare beforehand and not overdo it. We passed on the summit of Buckhorn Mountain.

Drew

Last winter a storm dropped thirteen inches of snow here in Kitsap County. I started feeding some local deer. One doe seemed to select the vicinity of our home as her own. We named her Darma. She nibbled plants in unfenced portions of our gardens but did little serious damage.

As spring approached, Darma’s abdomen started to swell. And she became voraciously hungry. Surprisingly she cared little for lush green grass but preferred the growing tips of shrubbery and recently planted trees. Plants advertised as “deer resistant” went down her gullet.  Birth of two fawns—which we call “deerlings”—did not curb her appetite. She stood on her hind legs to pull down cherry branches and crawled under a fence to ravage an apple tree. She has learned to avoid our sprinklers. Now her growing offspring are devouring everything they can reach.

Animal lovers relax. We won’t hurt Darma or her fawns. But if anybody has tips to deter deer, we’ll try anything.

In Our Lord,

Drew

Crabbing season opened in Washington.  Kit and I took our little inflatible boat onto Puget Sound and caught four large red rock crabs and one barely legal size. They are feisty creatures. Then we boiled and ate them.  The claws had a hint of kelp taste but the legs were sweet.

Our prayer is that you’re trying something new this summer.

In Our Lord,

Drew

We imagined that news report as we struggled on the water. Kit and I live near Puget Sound. See the blue dot. We had bought an inflatable rowboat to easily transport in our little truck. Blake Island, only 1.1 miles away, appeared near and inviting over calm water.

I had always imagined tides like rocking water in a bathtub. So they may be on an ocean shore. But tides must flow in and out of an estuary. Puget Sound’s forty cubic miles of water moving toward the ocean on an ebbing tide has a lot of momentum and does not change direction easily. But when the tide changes, the sun’s gravity pulls water in from the ocean to clash with water flowing irresistibly out. Estuaries even when smooth on the surface can be full of currents and opposing streams of water. We saw one large whirlpool where flows passed each other.

The currents gave us quite an adventure. Eventually, we realized that rowing almost directly into the current was necessary to get home. You may think I’m going to make an analogy about the adverse currents of life. No, my advice here is that if embarrassing news reports are all the danger you face, then try it. Oh, and we’ll be getting a motor for our boat.

Drew