Crônicas do Cotidiano

Growing up in the Faith. A Farmer’s Daughter but also Child of the King

I spent several hours recently interacting with our oldest son, very grateful because he decided to update the version that my blog is made in. I’m quite proud of the fact that I have learned to post by myself (and even insert images!), but I always end up confronting obstacles—be they small or big. My italics disappear, the spaces between the paragraphs vanish, I add an image and the entire text gets centred, the information on the right decides to take off to the bottom of the page… I fix everything and, then, when I push “save,” it all goes back to the wrong way it was before…. Since David lives on the other side of the planet, I often have to wait for him to wake up or come back to the computer to help me. In less than two minutes, he works with the “html” (something that I understand very little of) and everything is wonderful again.

We normally communicate through MSN chat (or on Skype) while we are working “side-by-side” (actually, it’s more like “face-to-face”). There are times that we maintain a “comfortable silence”. Or we can spend hours or even some days without “chatting.” Now and then, we tell or ask about something relevant to our lives or share thoughts. When I “chatter” (there is a huge difference between “chat” and “chatter”), and he’s busy, he lets me know. And if I’m hard-at-work, I tell him.

Now and then, he corrects or comments on the things I write. Or we discuss something he has drafted or produced for his activities with his church in Bangladesh or for the blog that he maintains in conjunction with his brother. It’s a special privilege to be able to maintain a dialog with adult children and to be both the person counselled and the counsellor. Especially when the persons that share an affinity are physically far apart.

The Internet can be an incredible blessing in this respect, since it makes long-distance communication much cheaper and easier. We can even see and hear each other on Skype! This is so different from the time that he left to study in a Canadian university in 1993. At that time, we suffered a lot more than now because of the cost of phone calls and because letters (when written) took many days to arrive. A two-way “conversation” might take a month or more to take place and, often, the problem recited would be resolved and the news entirely passé.

But I’m rambling. The reason that I’m telling all of this is that David asked me, while he was reorganizing my site—Mom, why are you keeping a “private” post? Is it a secret between you and Dad?
I didn’t even know what he was talking about. —I’ve never stored any secrets on the blog.
I went to have a look and told him—That’s something I posted in February 2007.
And he answered.—You posted it but no one can see it, because it’s listed as “private.” Only you can see it.
—Really? No one sees it?! How can that be?
—Somehow, someway, you must have hit a wrong button and stored the text in this way. It only needs to be “unprivatized.” Do you want me to do it?
—No, not yet. I’ll have a look at it to see if it needs to be revised.

And so I went to have a look. And I perceived that those thoughts fit right into the subject that I started to deal with in the previous post—the spiritual legacy that has been passed on to me by my ancestors. Isn’t that interesting? And so, even though I’ve already prepared the one that I had intended to be my next post (also on this subject), I will insert what David found “hibernating” on my site.

February 08, 2007
Growing up in the Faith. A Farmer’s Daughter but also a King’s Daughter

When I think of the first years of my life, in Canada, I perceive that I always expected to marry a young farmer of Dutch descent. I thought that he would have blue eyes and that his handsomeness would peak in the summers when his white skin would become tanned and his blond hair would get even lighter as he would work in the sun from dawn until dusk.  He would be very tall (almost a giant—as were my father and uncles and, eventually, my brothers), and we would live on a farm with woods, a creek and plenty of animals. I would take care of the house, the kids and the garden. He would be of the Reformed faith and I would accompany him to the church services, always being very quiet and reserved. He probably would qualify to be a deacon or an elder.

Well, the last part came true—my husband is an elder and a practicing Presbyterian—thus Reformed. And I have a home and kids. But as to the rest, nothing turned out as I had imagined! My husband is of medium stature and has (or rather had) pitch-black hair and brown eyes. I live in an apartment in the third-largest city in the world, never had my own garden and it has been well over twenty years since I’ve touched a cow or a pig. They were nice dreams—legitimate and lovely. But God had other plans, which ended up being even better….

I was born during a snowstorm in the month of December—nine months and one day after my parents got married. My father barely made it to the hospital that was about 30 km away from the tobacco farm that he managed. Yes, I really did say “tobacco.” At that time, in my denomination, smoking was not considered to be sinful and it had been the owners of tobacco farms that had sponsored the immigration of my parents’ families. They needed industrious people to perform the hard work related to this type of crop and the Dutch Protestants were developing a reputation for their skills and reliability. The farm owners of that region in Canada were generally decent people and there was rarely exploitation like that which we sometimes hear of in other parts of the world. They provided decent living quarters and salaries that covered the cost of the voyage within a reasonable time period. When my father showed himself to be capable and trustworthy as a worker, he soon ended up being promoted from fieldworker to manager.

My dad, however, had left Holland because he dreamed of being a landowner and not a hired hand. He wanted to run his own farm, but land in the Netherlands was scarce. Thus, when I was about four years old, he had already saved enough to make a down payment on a dairy farm (with a “milk quota,” cattle and hay and grain crops). By the standards of the region where we lived, it was of an average size. Here in Brazil, it would be considered a very small farm, only 100 acres (which doubled to 200 when my brothers grew older). It was what one man (with plenty of effort and sacrifice, and a little help from family and neighbours) could work by himself, using a tractor and farm implements.

Many of the Canadian farmers that we knew (the ones that didn’t have employees and really put their “hand to the plough”—or to the tractor pulling the plough) were relatively simple people, with limited education and minimal interest in reading or knowledge. They knew very little about geography or history, mathematics or literature, chemistry or biology, art or music….

The Dutch, on the other hand, were a race apart. The education they brought from Holland was generally restricted to the elementary level but they knew lots of things, especially in the areas of mathematics and general knowledge—things that I would only learn in high school or college. Plus, since they were believers, they also brought along the tradition of going to church twice every Sunday, studying the catechism, and reading the Bible and devotionals out loud (and praying) at every meal. For most of them, this was spiritually sufficient.

My father, however, went beyond this. When he finished his work, many times exhausted, he would reenergize by reading theological books. Thus he became a farmer-theologian and an informed critic of the “modernism” and “liberalism” that he perceived as growing in our denomination. It was not easy for him because few of the other Dutch farmers managed to accompany his analyses, while the pastors and theologians around us would not always give importance to a man that came to the church council meetings with calloused hands and stained fingernails, even smelling a bit like animal manure at times!

I was my father’s oldest daughter and I loved him intensely. Bit by bit, as I grew and matured, he started to share what he knew and discovered with me. And, though I never fully read most of the authors that he so loved, I learned from him how to evaluate and test what I would hear and experience—in the family, in the school, in the church and in the many books in other categories that I would devour. The only thing I was not to question was his opinion—something which hindered his relationship with some of my siblings—and which we won’t talk about that now). But it was thus that was formed the foundation of my theological understanding.

Nevertheless, now that I am reflecting on what God did in order to make me who I am spiritually, I perceive that this foundation was built on several previous or complementary contributions.

1. The first influence was that of my mother. My mom rarely participated in theological conversations. In fact, she did not understand why my dad would argue so much over certain issues, and would suffer because this created barriers with relatives and friends that she cared about. As an adolescent, I came to feel a certain superiority over her and I am sorry until today over the opportunities that I lost as to getting to know and appreciate her more. I’m not sure what her expectations were and how much she actually suffered over this. But I do thank God for allowing me to have a closer relationship with my own daughter.

My mother loved biographies and stories (imaginary or true—the kind that always came out in the Reader’s Digest, ladies’ magazines or works of fiction) that illustrated kindness, goodness, patience, generosity, unselfishness—virtues that she knew that her heavenly Father wished to see in her. She did not desire to understand or pore over the details of theological doctrine. She only wanted to put it into practice, without arguments or fanfare.  Thus, without meaning to and without realizing it, Gertrude Zekveld managed to be a stabilizing factor in our family.

I now realize that her faith was as strong as my Dad’s—perhaps even stronger. While he would get anguished and angry over each new indication of ecclesiastical straying from the doctrines that he so treasured, she would simply trust that God was in control and that He would resolve everything in His own way, in His own time. And now that I know better what it means to have chronic pain, I can only admire her faithfulness in trying to accomplish, day in and day out, all that was expected of her as a child of God—as a housewife and a farmer’s wife. After all, she never enjoyed good health, even before having and raising five of the six children that she bore in the short space of seven years. (She dreamed of having 12 children!!! However, she had to undergo a hysterectomy soon after the birth of my youngest brother. She was only 29 at the time).

Because she loved and served God, she loved and honoured her husband, and rarely allowed the sadness that she may have suffered, because of some attitudes and actions, turn into grudges or bitterness. She never called my attention to the imperfections of my father, even when she sensed my lack of appreciation for the way she was and could have tried to compensate by showing me the faults that he also had. Instead of this, I believe she was able to rejoice in the fact that I was able to complement him in aspects him that she could not. How many of us, women, are capable of such an unselfish love?

Let me make an aside here—The person that helped me to better appreciate that my mom had special qualities was my mother-in-law, after they spent some days together during our honeymoon. Despite certain difficulties in communication, Mamãe (Portela) went back to Brazil very impressed with the virtues of Ma (Zekveld). I started to see her with new eyes and, despite the distance between us, to make greater effort to value her opinions.

My mother’s faithfulness was what helped her to develop an extremely precious habit that lasted while we were children. At night, after supper was over, she would sit down with a children’s Bible storybook in Dutch (written by a gentleman named W.G. van de Hulst). The way he told the story of redemption in that volume reflected a beautiful biblical worldview, presenting God’s plan to save a people right from the start. Through this reading and by means of her parallel conversations with me, I understood from the time that I was very small that I was a sinner and that Jesus had suffered and died for people (and children) like me. (I wrote more about this in my post—Meditation upon taking the Lord’s Supper )

This was also the beginning of my comprehension of the sequence of biblical personages and history, starting with Adam, Noah and the patriarchs, going through kings, prophets, disciples and apostles. When I grew a little older and knew how to read well, I was promoted to reading one chapter a day of a less childish version, while she would read to my younger brothers and sister. I still remember how difficult it was to stop with the daily reading because the author knew how to create suspense between one chapter and the next. (That first book accompanied me to Brazil. I still have it and my children, when small, also heard the story of redemption in the same way that I did)

2. It was in the Children’s Department of the Sunday School that the chronology and the details (both the essential and the trivial ones) of the Bible stories were reinforced. I know them very well. I only regret a curious inheritance from Dutch customs. Instead of Bible verses, I memorized, week after week and year after year, almost all the verses of the hymns in our hymnbook—The Psalter Hymnal. From the Bible, I only memorized some more familiar passages, such as the Ten Commandments (they were read from the pulpit every Sunday) and the Lord’s Prayer… Strangely enough, I memorized more Scripture in the CGIT (Canadian Girls in Training) meetings in the United Church near our home (that my parents allowed me to attend for a while) than in my own denomination (that held a much higher view of Scripture.) In between games and crafts and closing with “Day is done, gone the sun” while holding hands and then saying “Thanks for the evening, Christians” (was that only in Janetville? I can’t find that on the Internet but it’s how I remember it now), I learned Psalm 23, the Beatitudes, 1 Corinthians 13 and scriptures about Christmas, prayer and good works.

Only much later did I comprehend the reasoning behind this practice. It was that, in Holland, the people of our denomination only sang the Psalms and a few hymns—gezangen (most were based on Bible texts, such as the “Song of Mary”). So, when Dutch children memorized what they sang in church, they were learning rhymed sections of Scripture. In Canada, they perpetuated this practice, but they included almost 200 hymns.

For me, in retrospect, it would have been much better to have learned portions of the Bible itself. This is a lack that I feel until this day. (My children ended up having a much better inheritance than I, in this respect, since they had to learn verses both for Sunday School and for the Christian school they attended). Add to this situation the fact that I have gone through at least two versions of the Bible in each of the three languages with which I have lived (Dutch, English and Portuguese). Thus it may be easier to understand why, normally, I have to go to the Bible to know what are the exact words of the text that I want to refer to, rather than reciting them from memory as do many fellow believers that are my age. I regret this and find it hard to remedy now because my memorization skills are not at all what they used to be…

You might say, however—but you learned the content of the Psalms! Yes, that is true. But, on the other hand, most of them were rarely sung in our church because neither the melodies nor the words were very accessible. Thus, when I went to live and study far from home, I never sang them anymore in the churches that I attended and the words vanished from my memory. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that parts of the reactions and reflections of the Psalmists have remained in my subconscious and continue there as a foundation for further learning.

3. The Heidelberg Catechism. When I reached the age of twelve, I spent four years having weekly classes under our pastor. Throughout this period, I memorized the 119 questions and answers of the catechism and started comprehending, more and more, the doctrines of the faith in which I had been baptized. It was during this period that I understood, and marvelled at, the need for the “substitutionary atonement” of Christ.  Until then, I had secretly questioned why God had not simply resolved to forgive human sin and thus avoid the death of His Son. But I now understood that God was both just and merciful, and that his justice had to be satisfied. Therefore, although I cannot point to an actual date for my conversion (for I perceive how the Holy Spirit was working and contributing to this from the beginning of my life), it was at this point of time that I understood the plan of salvation in which I already believed. Yes, I believed. And now I understood. But I still had no assurance that I was saved. Is that possible?! Yes, it is! There were other people in my denomination and in my family just like that—especially amongst the older people. There was still something missing…

God then used my future husband to help me obtain the assurance that I craved. But that’s another story. For now, I will stop here, thanking God for my parents and for the legacy they left me as examples of what faithfulness looks and sounds like. Until the next time, Betty

Este artigo foi publicado em 24 de outubro, 2008. Está arquivado sob Blog, English. Você pode acompanhar os comentários a este artigo através do feed RSS 2.0. Você pode deixar um comentário, ou fazer um trackback do seu próprio site.