Comfort to Spare (XII)

Aunt Gertie was a teacher. She'd graduated from Sheboygan County Normal School, where she'd likely attended for a year or so before taking a job at one of the country schools around the county. In my mind, even though I've never seen any record of prowess, Gertie Dirkse, an aunt I never knew, was a perfectly splendid teacher. 

But a new school movement was a'brewing in the neighborhood. In Oostburg, where she lived, some began to discuss the possibility of creating a "Christian" school. Those who weren't advocates thought even the sound of it was a redundancy since virtually all of the teachers in local schools were church member. No board would never hire atheists. Oostburg children, some claimed, were already getting a "Christian" education. 

Somewhere in The Treasury of David, Charles Spurgeon identifies a particular pain only Christian believers ever suffer, a pain almost beyond measure because believers bank on the promise that the world belongs to God, that He is a sovereign like none other. They look to God as a fortress, a shelter in the time of storm, one who has promised to look after his people. 

What's more, losing a child despoils the intended plan of our lives, disrupts time itself. No one expects to bury his or her child, even in war. Few of us anticipate it, but all of us foresee, someday, standing at the gravesite of our parents. 

When a child dies, no matter whether it's crib death or a freakish car accident, life goes upside down. We don't know where to turn. That's true of all of us, those who put their faith in Jesus, as well as those who invest elsewhere. We all suffer.

But, Spurgeon says, only Christians suffer the agony of severance from God, a pain known only to those who truly believe in that God. Consider this: in September of 1947, the Oostburg Christian School opened its doors. Aunt Gertie had left a teaching job in a country school and was among the Christian school's very first faculty. 

I was born during the first year of the school's existence. I know little or nothing about the conversations--and arguments--that went on in the years immediately following the war. 

But I know something of the trials involved when people want badly to establish a Christian school. A town's school and its associated activities provides the greatest measure of community identity. Those who live in area burgs take great pride in their own schools. People who, by choice, send their kids to a school other than "ours," can be seen as ingrates who lack a species of patriotism small towns love to feel. People who want a "Christian" school may seem sickeningly self-righteous, "holier than thou."

In a small town like Oostburg, the movement to establish a Christian school had to have been difficult and divisive. To go forward, Christian school supporters would have had to legitimize their desire for a separate education. The only way to do that was by, time and time again, playing the God card--"a Christian school is something God wants us to do," etc., etc.

My grandparents, including Rev. Schaap--and his son and daughter, my parents, were all in on Christian education, deeply consecrated "Christian school people." I wouldn't doubt they gave up friendships with the brick-and-mortar they invested in a Christian school. They may well have suffered more than their share of derision for being separatists, for siding with Christian school people some called Post Toasties, who think of themselves as "just a little bit better."

It's difficult not to think that Grandpa and Grandma Dirkse--and my own parents and Grandpa Schaap-- all committed proponents of the new school, were not suffering when what they believed was God's righteous hand, for no understandable reason, had plucked Gertie Dirkse out from this world--and her Christian school classroom. Grandpa and Grandma Dirkse lost our daughter, a sweet and devout Christian school teacher.

Where was God in the fog? Whatever was he thinking that night, when he pulled our little girl out of the back seat and tossed her like a rag doll out of the car?

Her Christian school teaching was finished. She was dead. And why?

I don't know how or when the pastor and his wife, the Piersmas, gave my grandparents Comfort To Spare, but it couldn't have been more than a month after the night they were awakened and went to the door to meet a pair of cops who delivered the horrible news.