{"id":1473,"date":"2025-03-22T10:56:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T17:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2025-03-22T10:57:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T17:57:01","slug":"the-unbroken-circles-of-love-and-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/?p=1473","title":{"rendered":"The Unbroken Circles of Love and Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A blessing of age is being able to see how life, love, and grace moves in great circles<\/strong>. I noticed this one blustery day on the beach with my mom who was in her nineties. I had reached around her from behind to help her zip up her coat. I came to the front, adjusted her hood, and kissed her on the forehead. We had come full circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>When Teckla and I lived in Kansas City, we took in a couple who found themselves homeless<\/strong>. Don explained that he was worked in \u201ccollections\u201d for a motorcycle gang. Lorae, his wife, had suffered great trauma and heartbreak. Her teenage daughter was in rehab. Lorae had serious back problems from a car accident that took the lives of two of her children. After one night in our basement Don disappeared. Lorae was left broken spiritually, emotionally, and financially. It turned out later that Don had a second wife in Minnesota and had run up huge telephone bills that Lorae had no way to pay. Her life was so terrible that Teckla used \u201cLorae\u201d as shorthand for any situation that was really bad and then got worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>For a couple years, Teckla drove Lorae everywhere: doctors, social workers, stores, and church.<\/strong> Teckla was content to give freely as long as we could. I impatiently looked for solutions. After we moved from Kansas City back to Oregon, we lost track of Lorae. Years later we were contacted by her nephew on social media. He sent a friend request and asked if we were the Mark and Teckla that had done so much for his Aunt Lorae. He thanked us and explained that Lorae had died a Christian and never forgotten our love and kindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This reminder came at a good time because Teckla and I were now in Lorae\u2019s place<\/strong>. Our son, Peter, was in and out of ICUs with his brittle diabetes, and Teckla had just been diagnosed with cancer in both breasts. We were living paycheck to paycheck. After surgery, Teckla needed to come to Eugene for four weeks of radiation treatments. I was still teaching at the college. Teckla and I were the legal guardian of Ari, Peter\u2019s son. Everything seemed impossible until our friend Rosalie offered to drive Teckla wherever she needed to go\u2014even the two and half hours to Eugene and back five days a week for four weeks. Others watched Ari when both Teckla and I needed to go to Eugene. In the midst of \u201cour Lorae\u201d, we had come full circle and were given the care Teckla had given Lorae so many years before.<br><br><strong>Our \u201cLorae\u201d experience continued for a while with my prostate cancer, Teckla\u2019s gall bladder removal, Peter\u2019s death, and Teckla\u2019s diagnosis with dementia.<\/strong> Just when things couldn\u2019t get worse, they did. But we are now blessed to complete more circles. When we adopted Peter as a baby, my parents stepped in and paid many of our expenses and we have recently been able to cover most of the cost of Dylan and Vanessa\u2019s adopting Ari. Teckla and I rejoice in these great looping circles of grace and love that God weaves into our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This morning after eating breakfast, taking medications, and praying and singing together, Teckla said, \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/strong> &nbsp;I asked her what she was thanking me for, she said, \u201cFor all you do for me.\u201d For years, Teckla did so much to care for me, our sons, and so many others. It was now my turn, and my blessing, to care for her. I am now doing most of the cooking, cleaning, and management of our finances. Here is another circle of love and grace. None of these circles are simply the impersonal workings of karma. These circles are covered with the fingerprints of God and the fragrance of His love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Time has taught me not just to love God, but to love His ways<\/strong>. Love never fails. Nothing given in the name of Jesus is ever lost, ever wasted. Even when we are weary, even when we can\u2019t see the good ending for which we long, may the circles of God\u2019s love and grace remain unbroken. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A blessing of age is being able to see how life, love, and grace moves in great circles. I noticed this one blustery day on the beach with my mom who was in her nineties. I had reached around her &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/?p=1473\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[395,4],"tags":[442,443,444],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-john317","tag-circles-of-life","tag-time-and-being","tag-ways-of-god"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6y6Br-nL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marksletters.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/cropped-cropped-cropped-cropped-Teckla-Mark-Mill-Creek-Falls-June-2011-3123.jpg?fit=1000%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}