By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Lisa Chavers holds onto friendships. She’s still is in touch with her best friend for first grade.
Her 87-year-old mother says that Chavers, who turns 57 on July 4th, I “the most relational” person she knows.
That’s not just because Chavers keeps in touch with people, but also because she thinks deeply about those relationships, what sustains them and how they shift over time, and sometimes how to discard them.
The retired Bowling Green State University administrator has put those thoughts into a book “The Rhythm of Relationships.” She’ll have a reception and book signing for the book Saturday, July 9, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Grounds for Thought, 174 S. Main St., Bowling Green.
“Over time, relationships can develop their own rhythm, pace, cadence, and unique sound,” she writes early in the book, and through its spare 105 pages, she explores how this happens. It’s told through the lens of her own life, growing up in Cleveland, both in the city and often visiting extended family in rural Twinsburg. A major aspect of her life is being a devote Christian. That’s how she was raised. “I know what I am and what I was trained to be from youth, a God-fearing young lady,” she said. Her acceptance of Jesus Christ as her savior in 1978 is so crucial it is in the first sentence of her introduction. She cites the Bible. But, she said, the Bible is a book, the Lord is a living presence.
Still as much as she draws sustenance from her faith, Chavers aims to enlighten those who don’t share it into the importance of relationships and how they change and how that change needs to be addressed.
Support Local Media!As much as the book is the work of a lifetime, she traces its origin though back to a class in mission work at her parish, the Covenant Church in Maumee. She wrote a paper on her experience in Jamaica. On the top, the teacher, whom Chavers held in high esteemed, wrote in red ink: “You should write a book.”
That “somebody of that caliber saw something in my writing, saw potential, it kind of tipped me over,” Chavers said. She began writing. That proved difficult. Others told her she should write a book. Others asked her how the book was coming along.
“I learned you can’t talk forever and not put some action to it,” Chavers said.
About four and half years ago, she started in earnest with two sentences. Someone advised her to just start writing as if in a journal.
Chavers was hung up on her perceived need for a title to bring what she had to express into focus.
About this time tragedy struck for her Indian friend Eva. First her husband died, and then not long after Eva’s oldest daughter was murdered by her husband, who then committed suicide in front of two of their children.
Their close relationship was dramatically changed by the tragedy. “Our laughing, our talking, our taking road trips, our saying ‘I read this. I read that,’ everything changed,” Chavers said.
But Chavers remained in contact. Now “she’s unthawing,” Chavers said of Eva. “She’s starting to call more, to reach out more. … She’s moving beyond her family, that was her safe place.” Recently she visited Chavers and her family in Cleveland, and “she laughed,” something she had thought was impossible.
Her experience living with her friend through this grief helped bring the subject of relationships into focus, and Eva is the one who articulated the theme, that relationships have rhythms. These relationships, Eva said, are “always zigging and zagging.”
“The other thing that kicked me into gear was my mother was turning 87,” Chavers said. “I wanted her to be able to read it. I wanted her to be able to hold it.
“I have watched her life evolve,” she said. “So the way I relate to my mother changes.” Now she wears a hearing aid and has trouble walking. They still travel together, “but I have to think about how many steps there are to climb,” Chavers said. “Her counsel is still as strong as ever. Her wisdom is sharper than ever. But the rhythm of the relationship has changed.”
On Mother’s Day, Chavers presented her mother with a copy of her book.
Retiring in October, 2014 from BGSU Graduate College, where she was a recruiter, focusing on foreign students, also gave her more time, not just for writing but for other activities. She leads “life groups” at Cornerstone Church. She’s a substitute teacher for the Bowling Green schools. She’s a poll worker.
And she works on marketing “The Rhythm of Relationships.” Chavers got the book out through Instant Publisher, and now wants to create an e-book version to sell online, as well as an audio book, “using my own voice.”
She knows she has more books in her, including poetry and a collection of favorite Psalms.
Chavers said as she meets people through events such as the Grounds for Thought signing, she wants to hear their stories, so maybe there’ll be a second part to “The Rhythm of Relationships.”
