Elijah has gone to Little Gym for most of his life. Toward the end of each session, they have “Show Week.” I couldn’t make it to this one, but Tyla took a bunch of video and I edited it together. The older man who is a teacher is the founder of the whole corporation. It’s pretty neat to have him as one of Elijah’s teachers!
Talking About Death With A Four Year Old
“How is Elijah doing?” is a common question that I’ve received after the death of Tyla’s mom. People wonder how we explain that she’s not here anymore or how we tiptoe around the topic of death. Hospice gave us a 20-30 sheets of paper about talking about death with a child. I tossed that in the trash and reached for the Bible instead.
Elijah understands that Nancy is dead and that we will never see her again on earth. But he also understands that Nancy believed that Jesus died for her sins, so when she died, God welcomed her into heaven. He knows that we’ll see her again when we die too.
Elijah has been a big comfort through all of this. When Pastor came over a day or two before Nancy died, we all had a devotion together. Elijah saw one of us crying pretty hard and he quietly got up, walked over, put his hand on their knee and said, “Don’t be sad. She’s going to heaven to be with Jesus!”
I think the hardest part of this for Elijah has been seeing people cry. He knows that heaven is a wonderful place and he knows that believers will go there so he doesn’t understand why we are crying. How true! He has been a model for us all to look up to.
Matthew 18:2-4 (NIV)
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Bike Ride With Elijah
A year or two ago, we got Elijah the smallest helmet we could find. I put a GoPro mount on it because I thought it would be fun to see what he was looking at, but that didn’t work too well because his neck wasn’t strong enough to support the extra weight of the GoPro. A few days ago, we gave it another shot. As you can tell from the video, he was pretty excited about it. This video is 18 minutes long and we just ride around the block, but I figured I’d still post it because it makes me chuckle as I flip through parts of the video.
Nancy’s Funeral
As many of you know from Facebook, Tyla’s mom passed away early Sunday morning and her funeral is today, but I know that many of you cannot attend so here is the obituary that will be in the bulletin.
Nancy Marie Brandt
May 25, 1956– July 2, 2017
In Memoriam
Born on May 25, 1956 in Lake City, Minnesota, Nancy Brandt was the youngest of two children of Jess and Marlys Dose. She was received into the Lord’s family through the washing of holy baptism at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota. Later, she confirmed her faith in the same church. She attended St. John’s Lutheran School and went on to Lincoln High school, graduating in 1974 to attend Dr. Martin Luther College. Nancy married Don Brandt on October 28, 1978 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota.
Nancy worked with special needs children at Lincoln Elementary as a teachers’ aide until she moved to Kirkland, Washington in 1991. She was a stay at home Mom until returning to work in 1997. Nancy worked as a preschool teacher at Calvary Lutheran Preschool and Kindergarten in Bellevue, Washington from 1997 to 2003. From 2003 to 2009 she cooked and served lunches in the public school system. In 2010, Nancy began working for Evergreen Speech and Hearing Clinic transporting records as a courier and organizing the archival of patient charts. In 2014, she was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Nancy stopped working in 2017 when her declining health prevented her from continuing.
Nancy Brandt is survived by her husband, Don, and their three children, Logan Brandt of Redmond, Washington; Tyla (Ben) Martens of Woodinville, Washington; and Megan Brandt of Kirkland, Washington; as well as her one grandchild, Elijah Martens. She is also mourned by her sister, Gloria Burmester. She was preceded in death by her father and father-in-law.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be directed to Calvary Lutheran Church toward the roof replacement project. The church address is 16231 NE 6th St, Bellevue, WA, 98008. Alternatively, gifts can be directed to Evergreen Hospice Care. evergreenhealthfoundation.com/support-hospice
Cape Disappointment State Park
Last weekend, we headed down to Cape Disappointment State Park in the very southwest corner of the state. Don, Nancy and Megan had a campsite for their trailer and Logan, Tyla, Elijah and I stayed a short walk away in a tent site.
This was only Elijah’s second camping trip in the tent and he did great! He went to bed around 9:30 every day (about 1.5 hours later than normal) and slept solidly all night until pretty far into the morning. It definitely gave me confidence to do some more trips with him.
The park itself was really nice. The beach was huge, sandy and perfectly positioned for beautiful sunsets. There are a lot of other parks nearby and we went across the bridge into Oregon to check out the 1906 shipwreck at Fort Stevens State Park.
The only major bummer of the trip was traffic. We left at 2pm on Friday for the 3.5 hour drive. It took us 5.5 hours (plus 30 minutes of stops) to get there. We only hit an extra 30 minutes of traffic on the way back but it all came in one big messy accident backup.
I was very impressed with the camera on our Galaxy S7’s. All of the pictures you see below were taken on our phones except for the shipwreck. It’s gotten to the point where I feel less and less of a need to lug the big dSLR around with us. It still has its uses, but I don’t feel nearly as bad as I used to if I forget to bring it along.
A huge thanks goes out to Don for doing all the heavy lifting when it came to meal times!
Laser Cut Decorations
If you talk to Elijah, the first thing you’ll probably hear is that he is four now. For his birthday, Tyla came up with the idea of a Winnie the Pooh theme because that’s pretty much the only thing that Elijah watches or listens to these days. He had a Tigger shirt, a cake with all the characters on it and decorations around the house. Thanks to Tyla for putting that all together!
She also had the idea of having him hold a large 4 and posing for some pictures. Instead of buying one, I decided to cut it out on the laser. I did two of them with the top one also having his name cut out. I painted the top piece yellow, painted the bottom piece black, and then glued them together. The hardest part of the idea was getting a four year old to smile and look at the camera!
Happy Birthday Elijah
Discovery Bay
For Memorial Day weekend, we packed up the car and headed west with Tyla’s family to stay in a condo on Discovery Bay. It was great to get away for a while and we had a couple fun day trips to Fort Worden State Park and Hurricane Ridge. In the evenings we filled our time with board games, including our first attempts at 7 Wonders which quickly jumped near the top of my favorites list. The weather was beautiful for the entire trip!
Aviation Day 5K
Tyla, Megan and Logan decided to run a 5K together and they picked the Aviation Day 5k. Logan finished in just over 25 minutes (his first ever 5k!) and all three had a good time. I went along to snap pictures and join them for the aviation display after. There were a bunch of planes on display as well as some historic planes that took to the air throughout the day.
I feel silly at events like this because I love to snap photos but i know there are plenty of better photos available online of the same planes. Oh well, it’s still fun to try and get a great shot.
Heaven
Who knows what really goes on in the mind of a four year old, but he seems to be taking this all in stride. For the past couple months, I’ve been preparing Elijah for the death of his grandma. He knew she was sick and we talked about how some day she wouldn’t be around anymore. That was hard for him to understand, but what he did understand that she was going to join Jesus in heaven. There have been a number of times when he has walked over to a crying family member, stood there quietly and said, “It’s ok. She’s with Jesus now.” Oh the faith of a child!
We are all comforted knowing that Nancy is in heaven right now. There are still a lot of tears as we come to grips with the fact that we’re not going to see her again here on earth, but the separation is temporary because we’ll be reunited in heaven. Nancy knew that she was a sinner and deserved only God’s wrath and punishment. But when Jesus died on that cross 2000 years ago, he paid for her sins and she believed that. The Bible says that anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. It really is just that simple. Heaven is our free gift and requires zero effort on our part (thank goodness because I know I’d screw it up if any of it depended on me!) Reject that message and the result is much different.
If you’re in the area, you’re welcome to attend the funeral on Friday at 3pm at Calvary. Don’t expect to hear how Nancy was “a great person” or other common funeral quotes. Instead, you’ll hear something like what I wrote above: Nancy was a sinner like all of us, but when she died and stood before the judgement seat, God declared her not guilty, not because of anything she had done, but because Jesus had already paid the debt for her sins and she believed that.