“Dad, tell me a story.”
“Dad” sighs and glances past the driver at the mile markers blipping past outside. Still 200 more miles until we’re there. Why don’t the children settle down and go to sleep? We’ve got more than three hours on the road yet.
“Dad, pleeeeeeeeease,” his 6-year-old pleads. “I’m so bored.”
His 10-year-old daughter leans forward to tug at his sleeve. “Yeah, Dad, tell us a story.”
He sighs and clicks off his reading light. He tucks his book into the back pocket of the driver’s seat. “Okay, what about?”
“Tell us a story about when you were little.”
“Yeah, that,” a couple more voices added. “Tell us about the time you got lost in Uncle’s woods and it was getting dark.”
“No!” a small voice said from the booster seat. “Not that one. That one is scary.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The 6-year-old is bouncing on the seat behind him. “Tell that one!”
“Not the scary story.”
“Yeah, tell that one!”
I wonder, he thought, racking the archives of his tired brain, why they always want me to tell stories about when I was young. It’s not like my life was even all that interesting.
****
Why do they?
Because they need it. As long as there have been children, they have wanted to hear their parents’ stories. From children crouched around a flickering fire in a European cave, to children clutching narrow bunks and sea chests as their sailing ship flounders toward the new world, to children sitting by a fireside in a three-sided log cabin in the Ohio wilderness, children have always wanted those stories.
Children will sometimes forgo food for the privilege of listening to the family’s stories. This seems strange at the least. We need food. We don’t need stories . . . or do we?
In the 1990s, researchers from Emory University in Atlanta dug into the question seriously. It all began with a comment from a specialist who works with learning disabilities, made to one of the researchers. She said that she always noticed the children who handled problems the best were the same students who knew the most about their family history.
Is that true? Was it possible? They had to know.
After selecting close to 50 families, they settled down to find out. They devised a set of 20 questions to ask each student about their family history. They called the 20 questions the “Do You Know” scale.
Imagine all those sessions with the researchers sitting across from all those students. The teens, pretending to be bored, the smaller children wide-eyed as they were asked, “What was your parents’ first job? How did your parents meet?” The researchers recorded each student’s answer as a simple yes/no answer. The number of yes responses to the 20 questions determined their score.
Then the researchers compared the family questionnaire results with the children’s previous achievement and mental health test results . . . and they were astounded.
The outcome was clear. The students who knew the most about their family history were the same students who were doing the best on other measures as well.
The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.”[1]
Amazing.
But then the study took a decidedly unexpected turn.
****
In New York City, people on the sidewalks stared open mouthed as an American Airlines 767 aircraft roared low overhead and plowed through the World Trade Center’s North Tower, a giant fireball erupting from the tower’s side.
Minutes later, with millions watching on TV, a second airliner slammed into the South tower, and a shocked America realized, we are under attack. The American homeland had suffered no such attack since Pearl Harbor, or even before, depending on how you figure it.
Many non-Anabaptist children saw it unfolding live on national TV as people leaped from the burning buildings to splatter on the streets far below to avoid being roasted by the inescapable fires beneath them. Quickly, the media stopped showing these most horrific images out of respect to the dead, but in the first unedited shots, they were there. Children watched alongside their parents, and even those who didn’t were emotionally affected by the horror and stress of their parents, a very real and measurable stress.
The researchers, realizing they had a unique though terrible opportunity, went back to the same homes and tested the same children again, this time to find out how these children were handling all this stress and uncertainty.
They found out.
The children were affected, but once again, the children who knew the most about their family history were doing the best, recovering the fastest, weathering the storm with the most resilience. Somehow, someway, the knowledge of their family history acted as a protectant. Almost like an immune system against trauma.
That’s good to know because we can’t protect our children against all the unpleasant things in life, even if we want to. We want our children to be emotionally healthy and well-adjusted. We want what’s best for them, but are we telling them our stories?
The world was amazed when news of this study reached the mainstream media. The article, titled The Stories That Bind Us by Bruce Feiler, appeared in the March 17, 2013, edition of the New York Times. Was it really possible? people wondered. Could it work that well?
As plain people, we shouldn’t be among the surprised. We didn’t need a psychologist to tell us this, did we? Certainly, we should have known this all along, or should be getting the benefits of it even if we didn’t.
****
Seven-year-old Jonathan gripped his father’s calloused hand, the thick Jordan valley dust rising with each footfall.
Dad hasn’t said anything since we left home this morning, Jonathan thought. He knew why. Knew about the debt. Knew about the neighbor who had long wanted their farm. Knew what would happen if their debt couldn’t be paid. Will Dad have to sell me as a bondservant? Make me leave home and be . . . be a slave for someone else? He would never do that . . . would he? But . . . if he doesn’t and they lose the farm, then how would the family eat? Mother, Abigail, little Isaiah, and even baby Josiah. And how would I ever get free? The year of jubilee is not for another 20 years. And I would have to go away. I couldn’t be with Dad and Mom anymore. Couldn’t watch baby Josiah learn to walk.
They trudged along. The dust floated up to cake inside their noses. When he licked his dry lips, his tongue came away coated with dust. The Jordan River, now at full flood stage, roared in their ears. Having risen from a tiny summer river, it now spread out across the Jordan plain far outside its normal banks.
“Father.”
Amos slowly turned his head and nodded down at his son. “Yes, son.”
“Father, what is that pile of rocks over there?”
“Oh, that . . .” Amos paused and wiped the sweat from his face. “Well, now . . . that is the pile of rocks our people took from the bottom of the Jordan River when we crossed on dry ground.”
“Dad, do you remember it?”
“Sure, son. Sure, I remember it. Nobody alive that day will ever forget it.”
Amos stood a moment, staring out across the Jordan, seeing it all replay before his eyes.
He’d only been 6 years old.
****
(forty years before)
“Dad, what are they doing?” Amos clutched his father’s hand, staring at the white-robed priests far ahead. Watching the white hump of the covered ark riding above their heads. “Dad, are they going to walk into the river? Will they be swept away?”
“I don’t know, son,” his father said slowly. “I think they are just obeying Joshua. Doing what God told him.”
“But Dad, won’t they be swept away?”
“Maybe . . .” His father said, the fingers of his free hands entwined in his own beard, his eyes fixed on the white-robed men walking toward the over-flooded river, “Maybe God will part the water like he did for our fathers at the Red Sea. If so, this time you’ll get to see it.”
“They . . . they are going into the river,” Amos said. “Dad, they are wading into the river. Dad. DAD, LOOK! LOOK AT THE WATER. What’s it doing, Dad? What’s it doing?”
****
Amos blinked and swallowed, then swallowed again, remembering. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “It piled up,” he said, still looking away into the mist of time. “It piled up all the way back to the city of Adam.[2] It just . . . just stopped. The water downstream just rushed away, leaving miles of the Jordan River bottom wet but empty. When the trumpet blew, we just walked across. The whole millions of our people walking right through an empty river. That’s how we got into the promised land, son. That’s how we came home.”
He blinked again, his eyes seeming to mist over.
“But . . . but what about the stones, Dad? What about the stones?”
“Oh . . . those.” Amos smiled, his first in weeks. “Well, when we came through the river, there were all these stones lying in the river bottom. Big stones, big as a man could lift, and bigger. Big stones that had been lying at the bottom of that river for . . . who knows . . . maybe centuries. When we crossed, Joshua picked 12 men. One from each of the tribes of Israel. Twelve husky men.” Amos smiled. “Big, strong men. My dad, your grandfather, was one of them. He sent them down into the river to pick out stones. One for each of them to bring out for a memorial.”
“A memorial?”
“A memorial. Something to help us not forget. We,” he nodded, rubbing one hand over the other. “We so quickly forget,” he repeated. “So quickly forget.”
“But . . . father, what about Grandpa?”
Amos blinked and smiled. “Grandpa was a big man,” he stopped and looked his son over a moment. “Probably a lot like you’ll be someday.” He gave his son another studied look, then nodded again. “Well, Grandpa and those other 11 men went down there and each grabbed a stone. They looked tiny down there in the middle of that empty riverbed, the flood towering, well, it must have been 10 cubits or more over their heads and spreading out a mile wide. They each grabbed a stone, and let me tell you,” he chuckled, “they grabbed the biggest one they could carry because nobody wanted to come out with the smallest, with all Israel watching.” He shook his head, smiling. “They lugged them out and piled them up just where Joshua said. That big old pile right there.” He nodded at it.
“But . . . but, why, dad?”
“Because,” Amos smiled, “Joshua said he wanted it there so every time a little boy like you said, ‘Dad, what’s that pile of stones?’ . . . Well then, he said we were to tell you.”
“You mean,” Jonathan said, wide-eyed, “you mean he wanted it built there for me?”
“Yes. You, and little boys like you. As long as there is an Israel and as long as we live in this land, we are to tell it. I’m supposed to tell you. You’re supposed to tell your sons. Your sons are to tell their sons . . . and on and on.” He nodded. “On and on,” he repeated, “so we don’t forget. That was the word of the Lord, son,” he said softly, “the word of the Lord to Joshua. ‘Pile up the stones,’ he said, ‘so they will not forget.’ ”
He stood a long moment, staring over the river until Jonathan, looking up at his father, tentatively pulled his finger again. “Dad. Can we walk over and see them?”
Amos nodded, and they walked to the stone pile. Amos stood a moment there, then, reaching out, ran one work-rough hand over one of the stones. “This is the one,” he said, his voice so soft Jonathan had to lean forward to hear.
“What?”
“This is the one my father carried out of that river on his shoulder.” He smiled and blinked. “He always had such broad shoulders.” Jonathan glanced timidly at his dad, his big, strong dad, and wondered at the way he blinked, blinked, then ran the back of his free hand over his eyes, his right hand still resting on the stone. Slowly, Jonathan reached out to lay his own hand on the sun-warmed rock beside his father’s, feeling the smooth contours under his fingers. Feeling the warmth of the stone, the warmth of the sun on his shoulders. Hearing the distant rush of the flooded Jordan. Smelling the sweetness of the new green grass, soft underfoot.
It was this rock . . . he thought, this rock that Grandpa carried out of the river with all our people watching. He put this rock here with his own hands. He could almost see it now. His grandpa carrying that stone up the slope. See the flooded Jordan backing up, turbulent, wild. See Joshua directing his father where to put the stone. See it all.
Suddenly he felt the warm roughness of his father’s own hand on top of his and looked up.
“Jonathan, remember . . . remember the problem with the debt?”
Wordlessly, Jonathan nodded. Amos smiled slowly, the corners of his eyes crinkling like they used to. “We don’t have to worry about that.” He smiled again. “I just remembered something, standing here. God promised to take care of us if we trust in Him. Somehow . . . I think I’d forgotten . . . at least in practice. But . . . but now I remember.”
****
But now I remember.
So often we do forget. God knows our tendencies and had even previously warned the Israelites, saying,
“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”[3]
Again, we see the command to remember and to tell. If we need to do better, we may need to erect more stone piles in our lives, write more on the posts of our house. Anyone who takes their Christian walk seriously has, over time, had their Jordan crossings. Too often, though, we forget to put up memorials, the stone piles.
Then, when we face crises later in life, we forget. We forget to tell our children. Those trials and tests of faith we’ve come through might have refined our souls, but they could have been more. They could have been a lesson to our children. And more than that . . . a connection. A connection bridging the generations. A connection from God’s work in our life to God’s work in their life. That they might see us, not just see us as tired middle-aged parents, but also see us as we were, confused, hurting youth, uncertain how to proceed but willing to follow a mighty God. To see, so they might see their own way through their own Jordans. And to see us remember, because sometimes we need it too.
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[1] The Stories That Bind Us by Bruce Feiler, March 15, 2013, The New York Times
[2] There are at least two ways to interpret this. One is that the water was cut off and piled up back to the city of Adam. The other is that the water was cut off at the city of Adam and piled up behind. In either case the water upstream stopped, and the water below that point drained away downstream leaving the riverbed empty.
[3] Deuteronomy 6:6-9
