"How to Win by Losing"

Recently I read that two of my favorite bloggers, Carol Bodensteiner and Shirley Hershey Showalter decided to collaborate their writing efforts. Both of them have written memoirs about growing up in the country (Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World by Shirley Hershey Showalter and Growing Up Country by Carol Bodensteiner). People who read their books told them so many stories about their own days of growing up in the country that these two authors wanted to provide a place for people to find each other and to share their stories. With the help of Iowa governor Terry Branstad, who signed a proclamation declaring March 18, 2015, "I Grew Up Country Day," they did just that, providing a Facebook page for people to share their stories on that day.

Our Family in Germany, 1947
(I am next to my mother)

When I read about this event in Carol's blog, I began to think about the fact that I didn't "grow up country" and that I wished I had. Suddenly I felt that this was my heritage too; an idyllic childhood had been stolen from me by Communism in Ukraine. Revolutionaries confiscated my grandparents' land and our family became refugees. It didn't seem fair and when I thought about it, it made me angry.

A meditation by Richard Rohr helped me regain my equilibrium. In "How to Win by Losing," Rohr explains the countercultural and paradoxical teachings of Jesus (Matthew 5-7). A story that begins with loss can be a very rich and can be told in many different ways, as Jesus so aptly illustrated in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus tells stories about a lost son, a lost coin and a lost sheep. 

I have to accept that I have a different story than Shirley and Carol and that it is in the telling of my own story that I will come to an understanding of who I am. I do tell this story as I live my life. I tell it orally to my children and grandchildren in bits and pieces, and I blog about it. Most often, however, it plays in my head and that's usually where it stays. I enjoy this ruminating, and so I love what April Yamasaki wrote in her book Sacred Pauses: "The blank page is not a rebuke to get busy writing, but an invitation to linger over your thoughts" (p.32). It makes the writing process inviting rather than intimidating.

I also like what columnist Jim Taylor (Okanagan, B.C.) says: "I write because I frequently don’t know what I’m thinking until I hear myself saying it. Thoughts swirl through my mind like a school of minnows darting through the shallows in a lake; I have to line individual minnows up in order to understand them. That’s the great advantage of writing. I get to see my words before anyone else does. I can parade them for my audience of one, straighten their lapels, even send them back to change into more suitable attire."

I'm grateful that I don't remember my family's losses and that I was too young to understand what was happening. It is only in retrospect that I begin to comprehend a little of what my parents and grandparents endured and how courageous they were. When they finally settled in that small village they helped build in the Paraguayan Chaco, I was four years old, and this was my first home! 

In Paraguay, 1948
(I am seated on the right)

Five years later, when I was nine, my family arrived in Canada. We lived in the country for only one year before moving into town where my dad found work. It was my great uncle who exposed me to what it was like to "live in the country." We went to his farm often and I "helped" with milking, driving tractor, taking the cows out to pasture, and playing with the horses. I also had several close friends who were "country girls"; they often invited me over to their place. These are wonderful memories for a small-town girl! So I did have my share of "growing up country" even though I didn't live in the country. 

Arrival in Alberta, 1952