Won't You Stay with Me?

Dear Aaron,

Once I asked a friend who lost her sister to cancer, "Does it ever get easier?" Her gentle answer was that grief changes, sometimes mellowing, sometimes roaring up at you. I've found that grief is only "easier" if you ignore it and dive into something else...to the exclusion of deep soul reflection.

Perhaps it's only natural that I miss you extra in December and January... The end of Semester and around your birthday. The end of Semester was so traumatising—losing our community to go back to people who didn't understand how much we had all changed... Going back to greyness—both in external and internal landscape—where there was nothing in particular to work towards or hope for. You, Reese, Chelsea, and to a degree Stephen were my lights in dark places when all other lights had gone out. In each of you was the light of the Messiah, spilling out onto anyone in your paths. I'm so thankful for that Light in the greyness; for your steady friendship those handful of years.

As we descend into the darkness of the Advent season, and the physical darkness of Winter, I can't help thinking of the Christmas you visited me in Indiana. It was exhausting, you were a bit flighty at times, and it is one of the sweetest memories I have. When you read Tolkien to me while sitting on the floor in my old room. You, lounging on the woodpile and reading. Walking in the frigid cold and trying to sort out our sore souls, our loves, our hopes... Both of our hopes were dashed, and somehow I missed what could have grown into more with you. Now that I'm married, I don't grieve that loss so strongly, but I wonder what course our lives would have taken if things had been different. They aren't different, though...and so, I miss you.

One day this autumn the song below came across my playlist. Without warning, grief spilled out of my heart and eyes. All I could think of was you...

Medicate, meditate, swear your soul to Jesus

Throw a punch, fall in love, give yourself a reason

Don't wanna drive another mile wonderin' if you're breathin'

So, won't you stay, won't you stay, won't you stay with me?

It seems like there just weren't enough reasons left... You had fallen in love once, if not twice, and that didn't work out. Maybe you threw some punches. You spent time meditating on Scripture and music and good books...you even had medication. And I know that your soul was and is sworn to Jesus. Jesus is enough to make all wrongs right in His time.

So, the words I wish I could have told you and had you really hear are these:

Oh, you're spiralin' again

The moment right before it ends, 

you're most afraid of

But, don't you cancel any plans

'Cause I won't let you get the chance 

to never make them. . . 

 

Don't let this darkness fool you 

All lights turned off can be turned on

I'll drive, I'll drive all night

I'll call your mom

Oh, dear, don't be discouraged

I've been exactly where you are

I'll drive, I'll drive all night

I'll call your mom

I have called your mom—many times—and it has been a help to us both. But I just. miss. you. You were the one who had changed because of Semester. You are the one I shared life experiences and memories with. And I wish I could see who you could have become. You could have filled books with poems and the air with songs. For now, they reverberate, hanging in the air...invisible, just unheard. So close, but impossibly far—the curtain of death hanging between us. 

Oh friend... The darkness may have fooled you for a moment, but the light turned off can be turned on. The Light of Jesus never goes out...and it spilled out of you into dark places. The Light goes on and on, lighting up lives you never knew—but one day you will.

In many ways you have and will always stay with me. For that, I'm deeply grateful. <3

Call Your Mom — Songwriters: Todd Sherman Clark / Noah Kahan

Wedding!

 For a long time I didn't expect to get married... 

...But on Hobbit Day, I married the man I love. 💕    

           

               

         

So many friends and family travelled from all over to celebrate with us (and help with all those last minute things)... It went so fast! But it was beautiful.

 

 

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow

Praise Him all creatures here below

Praise Him above ye Heavenly Host

Praise, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

Come, Dance in Joy and Sit with Sorrow

How is it September? In just two weeks I get to marry my sweet man! 2024 has been a full year—for me, a mostly happy year. A quiet year on my blog and in my journal. I'm often too busy or tired to reflect. . .or too happy to write from the depths of my soul. Too happy? Shouldn't our great joys be just as deep as (or deeper than) our great pain?

Recently I've thought that perhaps there are so many sad songs because sorrow is achingly personal. Sadness is so raw that we must process it in writing, in poetry, in song. And our happiness is much more 'in the moment'—to be lived here and now. The immediacy of our delight and wonder is what makes it (in part) so wonderful. It's not something we sit around pondering, it's something we live. It's what makes all those memories we treasure and ponder over when we've lost something or someone. 

But the truth remains that I resonate with sad songs much more than with happy ones. In fact, I prefer sad songs and minor chords. One of my friends once told me they had experienced too much trauma and sadness to listen to sad songs... And my response was, I've experienced enough loss, sorrow, and abandonment to know how deeply I need sad songs. 

You don't write the blues because you've lived a cheery life. Writing, playing, or just listening to music is one of the best ways to process our emotions. Swelling joy, patriotism, sadness, regret, nostalgia, longing, and even the hope of good to come can be felt in music. We feel it in sweeping scores in films. We find a camaraderie with others when we share a love for the same musician. Sometimes we are the closest to our truest selves late at night, listening through a stream of songs alone, absorbing the music and lyrics.  

After reflecting, I find that I write more, feel more deeply, slow down, and am quieter when I'm sad. And when I'm happy, my blog and my journal stare at me as I cuddle up with Nick for a movie night or head out the door to spend time with friends... As I live the life I've been given and make the memories that are so precious to me. 

I have felt guilty for not writing more, because writing does truly help me process both the good and the sorrowful. The happy and the horrific. And let's be real, we live in a very broken, fallen world that is full of tragic news, of fear, of deep pain. I want to remain present to myself and my emotions, both glad and hard. There is so much life to be lived, experienced, pondered... And lately I find myself doing that pondering aloud with Nick or Kasey or my family a lot more than with my journal. I process the pain aloud in prayer in my kitchen or on my porch or on a walk... And in the arms of this man who is not afraid to cry in front of me, to cry with me, and maybe even to cry for me. 

Sorrow Will Remain Faithful to Itself

Dear Aaron,

I often find that someone else has said (or sung) much better what my heart wants to express but I can't tame into words... You are ever in my heart, my friend.

__

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;

And though this loss has wounded others too,

No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.


____

“For Grief” by John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (Doubleday, 2008).

Granola, Roots, Reality, and Creeds

I jokingly asked my sister how she felt about me becoming 'granola'—washing my scalp with honey and making my own toothpaste with four simple (safe) ingredients. The more I hear about what ends up in our food (even in the flesh of produce, which should be 'clean' but is poisoned), the more granola I become. My sister's reply was that she was fine with my granola-ism, as long as I wasn't becoming [politically] liberal. 

My working hypothesis is that everyone who loves and serves God should be both conservative and liberal...not in the realm of politics, but in many areas of life: 

Be a liberal giver of time and money and love. 

Conserve water and electricity and land. 

Liberally feed your neighbour—feast in times of joy, and in times when joy seems too far away to recall. 

I'd like to say we should be conservative when it comes to how often we give our opinions and complain... But the thing is, while it's fine to have varying opinions, absolute truth still exists and should be our standard—and the Bible talks about doing everything without arguing or complaining.

Something I've been thinking about in recent months is discerning truth from lies, knowing a genuine, untainted product from something cheap, imitation, or poisoned. It seems harder and harder to find candles, clothes, toys, furniture, textiles, or even food made from sturdy, real things—things untainted by plastics, poison, heavy metal, toxins, etc. I can't just go to a different store to find clothes made out of real fibres—woven, pieced, and stitched by someone who was not forced into labour as a child or as a religious/political slave. Even if I could somehow sew my own clothes (trust me, no one wants to see how that disaster would go), where is the fabric coming from? It feels impossible to find solid, real things in our ever-shifting world.

The same goes for those in governments, agencies, big tech, big pharma, media, education, etc. It seems that their native tongue too often is lies—to the point that they can't stop themselves from believing their own deception. Who can we trust? Are the people we trust in giving us the whole truth, or just the portion of information they want us to see to paint a certain image of a person or our world? It all feels surreal.

So I find myself coming back to what I know is true and real and beautiful: Jesus the Messiah is King and Lord. Of all of creation itself. Of individuals. Of His Kingdom in Heaven which is breaking into Earth... Jesus is real—the Son of God the Father, co-equal in power and majesty with Him and with the Holy Spirit. When we say the Nicene Creed at church every week it is a moment of time that transcends clock time, rooting me and those all around me into reality. There is real wood. Real earth. Real flesh. Real blood. Real Truth. Realest of real Life. 

It's been a long while since I've practised the spiritual disciplines, and my soul feels it. I need solitude. I need simplicity. I need quiet. I need prayer. I need to meditate on Scripture—to savour it, not just to hear it and have it snatched away by the cares of each day.

Ephesians tells us to dig our roots down deep into the soil of God's love, being filled with the fullness of the Father:

"...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19 ESV)

Let us be rooted and built up in Truth. To rest in the Real. To cultivate depth. Let us meditate on God and who He is...

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, 

Maker of Heaven and Earth, 

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, 

the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,  

begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.

Through Him all things were made.

Who for us men, and for our salvation He came down from Heaven,

And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary,

And was made man.

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; 

He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 

He will come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead, 

and His kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, 

Who proceeds from the Father and the Son. 

Who with the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.  

—Amen.

This Dark Night

"My God, my God. . .

Why have you loosened Me from You?

Why are You far from yeshua-ing [saving] Me?

Do You not hear the words of My roaring?"

The man of God sings the ancient words

In that moment the cup is drunk

and slammed down,

outer garments stripped,

the table turned. . .

. . .darkness descends. 

A child's inconsolable cry goes up

in fear, sobs shaking breath—

The whip cracks and the cry intensifies,

The nails pound through our ears:

Clank! Clank! Clink!

It is all happening so fast

I can't think—

And still the child weeps,

his tears run down my cheeks. . .

. . . I, too, am a child this dark night.

Of Pictures and Pieces

Gloaming is blue and ethereal, with fine flakes of winter shrouding my valley in quiet. The windowpanes in my little cottage are frosted 'round the edges, as I've been simmering a lentil stew and braising some cabbage for dinner later. 

Today has been rather quiet, stillness only broken by the scraping of the snow plough and some shovelling...and the occasional tramp of boots on the stone stairs outside my cosy home. I'm grateful for the quiet space to reflect and pray (and sleep in, after a week of late nights). I'm thankful for my cup of Himalayan Bouquet tea with wildflower honey as I cuddle up in my softest, long grey sweater to watch the snow fall. 

I'm grateful for the foggy, snowy weather, which calms and quiets my soul so that I can come to the Lord in prayer and meditation. And I am so very thankful that the Lord hears me when I cry out to Him. He hears my recent confusion, my aches, my joys, my fears, my hopes. He hears my confessions, my uncertainties, my desires—the ones that so often pull against one another, tearing me to pieces. 

My whole life feels like it's been one series after another of deep desires that pull me in contradictory directions. I thought everyone felt this way, but it turns out, they don't. At least, not all the time or maybe even most of the time. This constant struggle being unique to me and people like me was revealed when I learned my mindstyle: being equally task-oriented and people-oriented. Most people tend to be more one or the other, but not me. It makes work a challenge at times—especially working with other people. And when I'm with people, I can multitask (do the dishes, play games, etc.), but I can't both work on a project with them and also give them my undivided attention. The reality is that what I want most is to sit side-by-side and listen deeply, to share intimately.

While it was immensely frustrating to discover these equal and opposite mindstyles were at war within me, it made sense of many situations and seasons in life—and explained why I get burnt out on work or people. It's been four or five years since this revelation and I feel like I'm still not good at figuring out my balance, at walking with both the left foot (people) and the right foot (tasks), one after the other in rhythm.

The issue is further complicated with God. I love learning about the bigger picture of the Bible and the themes God has woven into His world and His works from the beginning of time. I love it when I finally make a big picture connection myself. But I find myself doing one thing or the other, not both at once: I either read Scripture slowly and methodically, gleaning details or I don't read it at all and listen to others who help me see the big picture. I've done the detail-gleaning most of my growing up life, even into my twenties. I've only begun the big picture learning since entering my thirties.  

In hindsight, I wish these processes had been reversed. I wish I'd known the big picture of God and His story when I was little, filling in the details as I grew and matured. Because when you've been digging up little artefacts for your formative years and you don't know where they go or how they fit together, you do some weird cobbling together of those pieces. You may make a beautiful mosaic or a grotesque image of God, but you will have to take it all apart to put things together in the way they are supposed to go, not how you decided they should go. And how do we (I) do that if we don't know the nature, character, and love of God?

No one person can see God, His world, or everything in Scripture rightly and thoroughly at once. That is one of the many reasons God put us together in a body, in community—both with Himself and with others. This is why we need to read Scripture communally, but also individually (where we can read and absorb at our own speed). 

I've been in a rather long season now of studying the Word in community (both at church and in Bible studies), but now comes the point where I need to jump back in to also reading daily to re-familiarise myself with the words, phrases, and details. They go hand-in-hand. While I love both the details and the big picture, I need a lot of help from intuitive and perceiving people to see the big picture. I don't naturally have that vision. I see the trees, not the forest. And that has SO many positive outlets and uses, but I need to see the forest, too. Just like I need to learn to balance tasks and developing relationships, not at the exclusion of one or the other.

It's easier to learn photography basics in black and white, learning about shadows, shapes, and composition. But when you add colour, it's a whole new field. Both mediums are beautiful. But you can use either and fail in composition, clarity, or depth. You can fail to tell a story—you have to have an informed, intuitive eye for that.

Dichotomies are hard for me. I understand black, I understand white. Where gradations and colours fit in is where I need God and other people to help me imagine. To see truly. When I can't see beyond my own confusions, conclusions, and projected outcomes there is God, holding out truth, light for the path, and hope. Colours. Stories. Pieces of the whole...and the whole story, too.

We Were Meant to Live

 Dear Aaron,

It's a new year, a new Church season (Epiphany). It's a new season of life for me, as I'm about to get married. And there is a new recording of Switchfoot's Meant to Live that I wish you could hear. I've known this song for twenty years, but this recording breaks my heart almost every time I hear it. It makes me think of you. It makes me miss you. And it makes me cry. 

We were meant to live for so much more, my friend. There's no going back in time to tell you, to remind you, to help you believe that you were meant to live life abundantly. In those last years there was no way for me to help you live inside. I can't imagine what 'inside of you' was like for you... All I can do is sit in the gloaming listening to this song soar inside of me. Somewhere inside of me a little piece of you lives. Your life glows like an ember in my own heart. You touched me and it changed who I was—who I am. Your friendship shaped my life in so many ways... You made my world bigger. Did you know that you did that? That you could do that?

Fumbling his confidence and wondering

Why the world has passed him by

Hoping that he's bent for more than arguments

And failed attempts to fly

This was what the world might have seen from the outside... A shy and quiet chap who lacked confidence and direction. I happen to know you felt like the world had passed you by, like you were a failure of sorts. But you just didn't fit into the world's mold... You wanted 'more than this world has to offer' while 'everything inside screamed for second life.' You saw the world with different eyes. The problem was that you felt the opposite tug of what society dictated you should do and who you were—what you were truly made for: to show your corner of the world beauty and light and hope through new eyes. 

We were meant to live for so much more, 

have we lost ourselves?

Somewhere we live inside...

That tug inside of you pulled you into a place you weren't made for. You remained yourself in that space, but I think the strain became too much. At some point, something snapped and you lost yourself. I don't think you ever lost your True Anchor, but you did lose your true self enough that you quit living at all. 

How do I reconcile this, my friend? How do any of us cope with your absence? It's been five years, four months, and three days since you stopped living inside and out. But I stop to remind myself that you are now more alive than I am. You are with Life Himself. With the Author of all Hope, all Life. And in other ways you are still living on in the lives you touched, mine included. You being with Jesus (and not here) doesn't stop me from loving you and missing you and wishing things were different. 

We were meant to live for so much more.     You...     Me...    Anyone reading this. 

We were made in the glorious image of the incomparable, multifaceted, life-giving, imaginative God of the universe. We were made for a purpose. For life. For love. For relationship. We were made for so much more than the crumbs this world has to offer. Let us prepare a sumptuous feast for those around us with our words, actions, and lives. And let us feast on the Word of Life Himself, who gave Himself for us that we might live eternally.

* Meant To Live (Jon Bellion Version) — Switchfoot, Jon Bellion

The Beautiful Letdown (Our Version) [Deluxe Edition] © 2023

Seriously, if you haven't listened to this version, do yourself a favour and go somewhere by yourself with a good speaker... Play it as loud as you dare.