if YOU ask me...

By Dale Anderson

Everyone has a life story that needs to be told. Tucked away in that story are the gems that lie hidden, waiting to be revealed. Recently, I have heard stories told by people of their family's fascinating life experiences""stories that I could not relate to but found intriguing and remarkable. However, many of these jewels will continue to lie hidden, dormant, and eventually losing their luster and brilliance. Until the day, they return to dust and are forever forgotten. if YOU ask me . . . is written from a brief time in my life when one of those gems was discovered and how it turned into a golden ambition, challenging me with the desire to take a stand, to make a difference. This is a story about my life, kids, and adoption adventure. How I on this journey was confronted with a purpose that only God could have laid out for me. How I caught a brief reflection of the orphan child in His eyes. In that glimpse, I saw a task of colossal magnitude. Little did I know how much that effort would challenge my abilities. This is a story about how my perspective has been challenged but has not weakened. Instead, it has intensified knowing that when God shows you a burden, there could be mystery, sadness, excitement, travel, and new adventure waiting for you. Sounds like it should be an ad for a travel destination. Instead, it is a pearl in the dust under my feet waiting to be discovered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644585931

Book preview

cover.jpg

if YOU ask me...

Dale Anderson

Copyright © 2019 by Dale Anderson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

To my wife Frances who agreed to

join me on this journey.

Acknowledgment

I would like to honor my English teacher, Mrs. Bjella, from years gone by. I was intimidated by the stories of older siblings who sat in her classes. Then it was my turn. However, she inspired me with her creative ability to bring a sentence to life. Under her teaching, things like proper grammar and sentence structure became conquests to achieve, not rules to ponder. I salute this woman of education for sparking in me a can-do attitude.

Next, to my wife Frances who has a very uncanny ability to remember names and dates. As I sweated and contemplated over a detail, slowly getting it to the point where it met my substandard expectation, then printing it off. I would proudly give it to her, my first proofreader. Slowly and methodically, she would scrutinize my efforts. Then with a flourish of rustling paper, she would remind me of occurrences, people, and dates that had to be included. Together we lived this story and continue to live it day by day.

Thanks to Luella Suderman for tracking down pictures and scattered stories of past relatives.

A special huge thank you to Wendy Thorstenson who I call one of my heroes in putting this together. I’m sure she never envisioned what she was getting herself into when I asked for her help. I am speechless in expressing the gratitude I have for her ability in proofreading, correcting all of my grammatical oops, and spelling blunders. Thanks for your words of encouragement.

To My Children

Your Uncle Ian would always say, Only a Suderman can make a long story long. I have come to find out what he meant by that comment as I am also married to a Suderman. I have found it easiest to leave and protect my fragile blood pressure rather than wait for the discussion over what I consider a trivial decision to be made. Multiple aspects have to be drawn in and scrutinized until every segment has been thoroughly crushed and dissected before a simple decision can be made. I chuckle as I think back and remember those words. With a smile on his face and a chuckle in his voice, he would tell this story of his in-laws’ character flaw.

I, on the other hand, learned at a very young age that what I had to say was of limited importance. Therefore, for your benefit, this will be a short story—a story about a brief time in my life and some of the treasures that I have gleaned from that time. I also want to add that many of the comments that are made here are in the first person that is I. Actually, Ann and I made many of these decisions together.

I write this as a letter to you to share a few of the decisions that I, and now we, have made. My intention is to give you a glimpse into why we made the decisions we did, and my hope is that you will come to agree with these choices that have impacted and will continue to influence your lives. My goal is to put something on paper for you to be able to see clearly why these decisions were made. Some of these decisions dramatically affected you and your lives. Some of these decisions will change things for generations to come.

Of course, these decisions were made from my vantage point. How I viewed what was happening in my immediate world at that time. How I sometimes made a list of pros and cons to come to a decision. And at other times, I made decisions on the spur of the moment. From these decisions, a perspective developed. That perspective is how I have come to visualize things.

There have been legends told and passed down from generation to generation as family groups would come together and sit around the fire telling stories about their grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond. All of the people in the group would know where they had come from. There would be a sense of familiarity with their ancestors. Stories would be repeated over and over until everyone knew their personal history. I suspect if you were unclear where Great-Uncle Joe’s second son’s wife’s brother lived, someone would be able to clear it up for you. People knew their heritage. Sometimes, I think we have forgotten the importance of being able to see where we have been. In that past can be a key to give us a clue to our future. I want you, my kids, to know from me where I have been and what motivated me to do some of the things that I did.

I hope I can take you on a journey through these pages with me so that you will be able to see and hear through me some of the things that I have experienced. Not all of them have been a joy, but what an incredible trip it has been. I write this as a letter for you, my kids, in the hope that you can get a glimpse of where my past has led me into the present. Then you will hopefully have a better idea about your future.

If you find yourself reading this and you aren’t one of my children, don’t feel guilty of trespassing. I encourage you to join us on this journey through the chapters ahead. You might be more than merely entertained.

Preface

We live in a world of diverse, varying perspectives pressing at us from all directions. Not all of them will I agree with. In my own life, these perspectives are influenced by many things, including my upbringing, life experiences, memories, religious views, education, and politics, to name just a few. Sometimes, these perspectives collide in our lives, causing the perfect storm. When they do, watch out. They can become one of those phenomenal experiences that I can only describe best as creating a passion. That passion can become a dynamic, driving force in your life—a passion to see a change, to be an influence, and to make a difference. To be perfectly honest, it is awesome.

I had a great-aunt (a sister to my maternal grandmother) who was born on the prairies of Alberta, Canada. Beginning in 1952, this woman lived and worked for twenty-six years as a nurse with the Sudan Interior Mission in Ethiopia, eventually leaving as the Communist government took over.

To me, there was an aura of greatness about her. Her humble spirit was magnified by her kindness. Even though her life was filled with an abundance of nieces and nephews, who produced even more nieces and nephews, she always remembered my name. While she worked in a country that was struggling in so many ways, she learned the hard way to do whatever was needed for the situation she faced. This woman considered it a privilege when, on rare occasions, she got to work with an actual doctor. Most of the time, she was left with only her own talents and abilities to face dire circumstances that screamed for resources far beyond her own.

One of her many jobs was providing medical care to rural areas. She traveled alone on the footpaths that connected the villages, riding a donkey while leading a second donkey loaded with supplies. She was frequently the first white woman many of the village people ever met.

On one of her excursions, she met a villager with a leg injury that had become swollen with infection, the wound oozing angry red, sticky, thick fluid. She knew her options were few and extremely limited. Finding a doctor in this remote area was an impossibility, and the few hospitals were too great a distance for the man to travel.

Yet the villagers looked at her with expectation. So she rose from examining the man and went to find the village carpenter to borrow a saw. She knew that hesitation on her part would seal the fate of this man’s life. She used the limited resources available to her to try, to overcome.

Throughout all her travels, experience, and life situations, she considered herself an average person.

In the Bible, there are lots of average people who stood up and faced an oncoming challenge. One such person was Shamgar.

The Israelites had ended their years of wandering in the dusty desert to enter their new land—a land they had been promised, which should be easy to conquer and make their own. God had said it, and so they should be able to move in and live happily ever after. Guess again! Shortly after their arrival, a new problem arose. A group of people known as the Philistines began tormenting the people of this new nation.

Meet Shamgar (Judges 3:31), a man who walked through the pages of the Old Testament of the Bible. This man, who with the help of an oxgoad, killed a bunch of bullies who were tormenting the people of this new infant nation.

I am guessing about Shamgar, but I strongly suspect he was either a farmer or had a close relationship professionally to that occupation. (So, we know he lived the good life.) I say this because he knew what an oxgoad was and how to use it.

An oxgoad was nothing more than a long, pointed stick used to poke an ox to guide their movement while plowing.

It was eight to ten feet long and used to motivate a slow, plodding ox that would rather be lying under an olive tree chewing his cud than pulling a plow through hard, rocky soil. As the ox would daydream about green meadows and cool running streams, he tended to slow or stop his pace. When applied properly to the north end of this southbound ox, the oxgoad helped to accelerate the momentum by giving the ox a new perspective about plowing.

With the use of his cow poker, Shamgar struck down six hundred Philistines. He made it into the pages of Scripture by stepping out, being available to make a difference.

God moved his heart to the point where he wanted to do something—something that must have stirred deep in Shamgar. He realized he could not look back but move forward. He did not consider failing as an option. Failure is not trying. In God’s eyes, if you are trying, you are succeeding.

This guy named Shamgar stood up for his people. His actions grab your attention as you question the result of his undertaking, which would require multiple undertakers. The fact is that God had already instructed the Israelites to triumph over this land. Now here was this man taking action by himself to do so. He knew what God had told him, and the rest is his story.

Shamgar must have had a strong yearning to take action and do something about this oppression. I’m not telling you to go find a Philistine, but I am telling you to take action toward your own specific and unique dream.

Each one of us has a story in us that needs to be told. Packed into these pages are our own adventures, pitfalls, and decisions. Every story has its own unique twists and turns. It can be a journey. Years ago at my brother-in-law Ian’s funeral, the pastor talked about the date of our birth and the date of our death. However, in-between is a little dash holding those two dates apart. It is in that dash that holds the power of how we lived. In that nondescript mark is a story that needs to unfold and be told.

I had just returned from a long trip across the ocean. I was tired, suffering from jet lag and years of being on what seemed to be an emotional roller coaster. It was good to be home and have the familiarity of personal things surrounding me. Several people had gathered at our home to greet us. An acquaintance of mine, Don, was telling me how much he appreciated our emails—how they were insightful into a world he did not know. He made one of those innocent comments that I have never forgotten. He said, You should write a book.

So, here it goes, my attempt to put into words from a brief moment in my life that has left such a forceful impact.

This is my oxgoad.

The Starfish Story

One day a man was walking along the

beach when he noticed

a boy picking something up and gently

throwing it into the ocean.

Approaching the boy, he asked, What

are you doing?

The youth replied, Throwing starfish

back into the ocean.

The surf is up and the tide is going

out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.

Son, the man said, don’t you realize

there are miles and miles of beach

and hundreds of starfish"

You can’t make a difference!

After listening politely, the boy bent

down, picked up another starfish,

and threw it back into the surf. Then,

smiling at the man, he said

I made a difference for that one.

Adapted from the original story by:

Loren Eisley

1

The legacy to Sheila Walsh from her mother was a sign that read: Yes, Lord.

As her mother would say, I don’t know what I’m saying yes to, but I know who I am saying yes to.

You Have to Begin Somewhere

Have you ever wondered what went through the mind of Michelangelo as he surveyed the ceiling towering above him in the Sistine Chapel that he had been asked to paint? Did he think this would be a cinch as he stood there with a paintbrush in his hand contemplating if he would be home in plenty of time for the six o’clock town crier news? Or did he say, Mama mia, as he envisioned on that ceiling what no one else could?

One thing I am sure that he must have thought is: Where do I begin? Did that hold him back? I am sure that he whipped out his fine-haired brush, and with a spark of enthusiasm and a smile on his face, he got to work and never looked back.

I, on the other hand, can only think of where and how to begin with a sentimental phrase from my own heritage. One that I’m sure Michel never verbalized in his life but one that expresses everything. As I think about where to begin, I can only say, Uff da.

It is said that the average man speaks about five thousand words per day. Women, on the other hand, speak about 7,500 words. I would definitely fit in to the less than average number of daily words. I am sure that my wife will not argue with that. In fact, if I could get away with grunts and gestures, that would be adequate communication for me. I have no problem fully understanding another member of the male species through varying grunts of fluctuating tone accompanied by a few expressive gestures that can communicate so much more than mere dialogue.

However, I don’t live in a cave somewhere throwing stones at passing dinosaur herds. Neither do I live in the tropical forest, hunting and gathering in the neighborhood jungles for dinner. Fortunately, I live in a very communication-oriented world. This communication can come in a variety of means from telephones, cell phones, texting, and e-mail to Facebook and Twitter or in the old-fashioned written word.

I am always surprised at the outcome of conversation with my kids. I am sure all they