Proof That We have Loved

"How can we say that God has cheated us, 

when this crush of grief is proof that we have loved?”

—Steve Bell We Believe in Love

Part of me wants to just leave it at this lyric and not say anything. Isn't that enough? 

But the other part of me, the part that cries until I'm sick, wants to work it out in all the words.

____

Dear Aaron,

Today is your birthday. 

Why do we say someone "would have been" a certain age if they have passed from this life into the next? Perhaps people quit counting in the 'normal' way because years don't matter or add up or work at all in the Eternal Kingdom? Still, you were born in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and you will go on forever in His Kingdom, so you are thirty-four today from where I stand. 

Today I'm tried... Tired from being up late and early while visiting Kasey the last few days and tired from travel. But I'm 'other' tired, too. Tired of the world being broken. Tired of loving and losing. Tired of missing so many people because of distance, physical and metaphysical, emotional and spiritual. 

But I'm not tired of missing you, because missing you means I remember you. Missing you is a habit. It is a daily thing. I've been missing you since before you died; but I've only felt really free to give that feeling full expression since you died. The longing and the grief mingle painfully, even still. The love that I can't seem to send across the veil or through the thin spaces to you feels restless in my heart. It wants out. It wants to go to you. But it's like a bird with a broken wing, thudding back to earth after pitiful attempts to fly. 

Today is your birthday. . . 

. . . But I don't want to be sad. I am thankful you were born. You have taught me so many things, in life and after death. In a way, you connected me with Kasey—with Oxford—with poetry—with music—with myself. Not wholly, but in ways no one else could or did. Thank you! Thank you for being born. For living life. For being my friend. For sending me on a grand adventure. For helping me see I was capable. For giving me the chance to meet my best friend. For being faithful while you could be. For knowing wisdom came from outside of us when we were both confused about life. For introducing me to your sweet family (though I really wish you would have done that differently...). For ringing bells—not in steeples, but inside of me. For being you... Aaron E Hennig. 

Today is your birthday, and the crush of grief is still there, the proof of love. 

God has not cheated you nor me, He gave us gifts: friendship, camaraderie, hope, love. And through you, He has given me so many more of those gifts in other people. Some other days my heart will spill open in grief for some of them, too. I pray those days are so far away I can't imagine how far they are. But I know I can't outrun grief, because I can't outrun love. And I don't want to. 

Today is your birthday, my friend, and you are basking in the Father's love. The love that you can't outrun, even by death. So, I'm sending my love for you to Him...along with a bear hug.

Love always,

Johanna

I Shall but Love Thee Better after Death. . .

Dear Aaron,

Why do I still write to you? The last note I received from you was seven years ago next month. Seven. Years. And of those seven years, you have been gone two years, four months, and two days. 

I suppose I write for the reason I always did. . .you are my beloved friend. Reading your letters has taught me much, both then and now as I re-read them. And I always felt like writing to you in particular brought my thoughts together in ways that didn't happen with anyone else. Oh, I wasn't brilliant or particularly deep, but when I put pen to paper for you, it was like all the synapses snapped, all the thoughts aligned, all the pieces came together into a full picture. Writing to you made my world bigger, my thoughts clearer...it made me a deeper, richer person than I was. That has never happened in such a way with any other correspondent-friend. 

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

Perhaps it sounds a little selfish, but I think the heart of Miss Browning's above lines is this: you are such an inspiring person that those who are given the gift of truly knowing you can't help but become better because of you. 

She's right, you know. So many times I have mourned the loss of your friendship, and then the loss of your life—and in that, I've mourned the loss of part of myself. Some part of myself was diminished when you shut me out of your life—and that part of me died with you, Aaron. I grieve that the world is a poorer place without you, you generous soul. I grieve that your family keenly feels your absence. And I grieve the loss of beauty, cheer, and depth I once had when we were so regularly in touch. 

There have been persons in my life who seemed to call out the worst in me; I did not like myself when I was around them. My family and friends didn't like who I was when such persons were in my life. But you weren't like that. You called my mind and heart to soar upward; to look toward God's Beauty, reflected in nature and poetry and music. You inspired (breathed life into) me to want to read more, think more, live more, experience more. I love the part of me that you brought out. I mourn that part of myself, now buried with you. And I eagerly await the renewal and resurrection of that part of me in the New Kingdom. It will be refined and redeemed... To know you again, not as we did, but in a much fuller way, will bring out a facet in me (and you!) that we only had a glimpse of during the years we were friends.

I can only pray that my own friendship, such as it was, inspired you and made your life somehow better, friend. And I pray that in the New Kingdom we will continually draw out the good in one another, calling one another "Further up, and further in!"

As I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's gentle lines again, I realised why I still write to you, Aaron. I still write to you because I still love you. I will always love you. I love who you were. I love who you inspired and encouraged me to be. And I can't wait to get to learn to love you anew in the Kingdom Coming. It will be a different love there—a love pure and untainted by selfishness or any fallen thing. Loving you in the Kingdom will be something glorious that our earthly friendship could only catch a glimmer of.

I love you, friend. I love much of what you love. I love your sincerity and earnestness. I love your love for Beauty. I love your silliness and exuberance (from ringing bells to quoting poetry on tables and playing guitar until people hollered at you). I love your generosity. I love your unquenchable thirst for wonder and for knowledge. I just love YOU. And I miss you. Oh, friend, I miss you. So. Much.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Longest Lent

Lent began six months ago today.

Six months ago I was in a cool, dark sanctuary, listening to my vicar say "You are going to die." I didn't know how accurate that statement would be for this year. We rose, row by row. Ashes were traced across my forehead, I returned to my seat. We rose, row by row, again going forward—this time to receive the bread, the wine. In darkness we stepped into February chill. Ash Wednesday was the only evening Lenten service I got to attend in person this year. Not a single evening of Holy week was spent in that dark church sanctuary with fellow believers. We weren't present together in the darkness of Easter morning that bursts into light and noise and exuberant alleluias.

Oh, yes, I "attended" Holy Week services and Easter morning on-line. But that isn't the same—not even close. I haven't worshipped, truly worshipped, physically together with other believers for six months. It feels like the longest Lent in the history of the church calendar. It feels like Easter was an anticlimax or like it didn't even happen... Like it was swallowed up in the darkness, buried in the ashes of burned hopes, dreams, plans, businesses, cities, and people.

This weekend we will gather to remember our friend Mike Adams, who took his life in this season of darkness. He is a standout to me, because he is someone I know. . . But he is one among many. The number of suicides this year are, in some demographics, outpacing the number of virus deaths. Don't tell me this virus is killing people—I know it is—but the power plays surrounding the virus are killing more people in other ways, whether physically through suicide or because of division that makes one citizen stab another for not wearing a mask; or internally, spiritually, emotionally isolating us from one another. . . Keeping us apart at home, six feet away, cancelling events, or putting masks between our faces, stifling our expressions of vulnerability, kindness, concern, and even anger or fear. If no one can see our expressions of pain, how can they reach out to us? And are they afraid to hug us? If I can't see the look of loss on someone's face, how will I know "You too? I thought I alone knew that grief. . ." and be able to wrap them in love?

How do we invite others into our pain, into our sorrow, into our deep joys, into a place of hope, if we cannot be close, see the human expressions of these things across each other's faces? To be isolated while six feet away from someone—to be denied physical affection and warm greetings—is worse than being alone at home. It is the extreme loneliness of being alone in a crowded room. It is like the searing pain of being close to your lover, but being just unable to reach them, to touch them.

This season feels like birth pangs gone wrong, come too late. It feels like something is terribly wrong with the baby, it isn't moving. . . The thing we've been looking toward, the hope at the end of the morning sickness, the joy at the end of labour, the person to join our family has been snatched away, and we are left to bury our dead in isolated grief—with no hugs and no real place for grief or anger to go.

It feels like the longest Lent. But in the normal Lenten season we are together in our lament. We gather together to acknowledge that something isn't right. We encourage one another to take heart that the King is coming. We hope for one another, when someone can't hope for themselves. But this is isolation—not the solitude or quiet reflection of Lent—and it is the work of the enemy of our souls. Dividing, separating in every possible way.

Where is the hope? Where is the empty tomb of this season that has killed us in more than body? Where is the Easter morning coming out of this mourning? Where is the light in this darkness? Where is the King?

Maybe this horrible, longest Lent is in some way our taste of what the disciples felt when Jesus died. See, we know the end of that story, but they didn't. We know on Good Friday that Easter is coming. They didn't. And maybe this interminable Lent is our true unknown Good Friday and Holy Saturday. It is our season where we can't see what is happening in the spiritual realm. We can't see the Easter about to come.

Maybe we will die before we understand what it was all about, but we must know that Jesus will never be held down by death. Jesus will never be defeated by the enemy of our souls. Death and satan will one day be undone. The Kingdom will come in its fullness. And that won't be an anticlimactic Easter in the time of covid. It will be the greatest celebration of life and love and sacred community. . . It will be seeing face-to-face and still living.

Easter is coming. . .

What If. . . ?

What if I weep for you?
You, who can weep no longer,
your eyes fixed on the Author
and Finisher of our faith,
not upon the mounded grave. . .

What if I ache for you?
The ache of separation you don't feel,
you, who are with the Father,
who are here no longer,
yet who dwell in thin places. . .

What if I rejoice for you?
You, who have stepped off
this mortal coil into the Kingdom
coming, to meet in the Kingdom
to come, under Spirit, Father, and Son. . .

What if I reach for you?
Reach out my hand, to empty air
for you, whom I can't touch
until the Kingdom comes, fully
and wholly, Heaven and Earth, together. . .

What if I miss you?
You, who have my heart, still,
though I didn't know it until
too late, when you passed the gate
between here and where I can't be yet. . .

What if I say your name?
Will you come back again,
my dear poet-friend, whom I miss so
fiercely? Will you teach me to see,
show me the ways of the Kingdom coming. . .

What if I love you?
You, bell-ringer, song-singer,
hope-bringer, who quietly gave
all of yourself away—all of your mind
away—all of your life away,
                                             what if. . . ?



I do. . .
              and I will.

Invisible Friend

Raw tears
run to clenched jaws
and angry fears...

'This is your own fault,
your foolish choice'
whispers that
nagging voice

'You chose to care,
chose to listen,
now you'll tear.'

Tear into pieces
by unreasonable
expectation,
unseasonable...

Why does it never 
align? My desires
left severed

Just a friend again,
just someone to spill
your thoughts on—
invisible still

You know, I'm so
dissatisfied in the role
of come and go

Tired of being unloved
and unseen,
yet feeling small
and mean

Wishing gladness
to any friend
is not sadness

Or it shouldn't be.
Who have I become?
To be ungenerous
to anyone?

Dry eyes,
turned down, ashamed
of my lies

I've lied to myself,
that I am okay
when I'm not,
not today

And not any other,
without beholding
my Lover

Who may not appear
by my side,
but He will be
my faithful Guide

Truth will not
staunch the blood,
it spills hot

Healing could arrive
in this life,
but I may have to bide
until the Kingdom

I choose to love,
choose to care,
with Help from above

If that makes me
a lonely fool,
choosing to rejoice
rather than being cruel

Then let it be,
my only prayer:
Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He.

I miss him in the weeping of the rain

Dear Aaron,

It rained today. Spicy pine-scent lingers about my porch. . .can you smell pines in the Kingdom? A few days ago (and for the first time in weeks) I went hiking away from my little valley. I saw wildflowers, dark clouds, and green, green fens. I breathed deep, sniffed in the sweet scent of the douglas pine. I heard the breeze fluttering through the aspen trees—could you hear it too? Today I saw, really saw for what felt like the first time in weeks. The lowering sky, dark, with one hill all crested, crusted with tawny light spilling over it. Everything else was in shadow but that one, golden place. What are sunsets and summer storms like in the Kingdom? The Big Dipper is hanging close enough to touch, just off my porch; each star bright, crisp, and close. What are the constellations like in the Kingdom?

It's coming up on a year. Sometimes I can talk about you without crying. Sometimes I'm a little too far removed, too numb. And sometimes the tears well up in my eyes when I hear a song, or when I realise how long and fast this year has been. Today it was kindness that caught me off guard. Just a kind word of thanks and encouragement from a stranger. . .and it made me think of your memorial, where people I didn't know came up to me and comforted me like I was family. The kindness is unbearable, because in that place I can't be numb—the feelings come, and in them there is sorrow, there is pain.

A whole year. . . Grief swells and ebbs, it doesn't go away. It is etched on the inside of who I am—even when others forget, I remember. I remember your smile and your voice. I remember that I forgot to tell you how thankful I was for your friendship when I had it. I remember that miserable day in the airport in Anchorage, feeling like the person I knew had died—like our friendship had died. And I ached, feeling abandoned, feeling unwanted. These last eleven-ish months have dug up those buried feelings, only to wound me afresh. To kill the tiny, internal flame that still burned—the hope that one day, somehow, we would be friends again. That somehow the medicine would help you become you again, and you would remember that I was your friend. But that day didn't come. A different day came instead. A day that I didn't expect to wound me so deeply. A day that cut my heart open in a way that nothing else has in all my life.

Sometimes I think of life being divided before and after 9/11 (nearly half my life ago this year). And sometimes I think of my life as pre and post Summit, or Semester, or Oxford. There are several lines of demarcation in my brief existence. But now there is life before and after 9/3. Few others will recognise that date as a timeline. As an arrow lodged in my heart, and in the hearts of your parents and your sister, and the few others who were part of your tribe.

Did you know that I almost called you? Either last summer or the one before. I found out something. . . Something kind and generous about you. And even though I had no reason to believe you would speak to me, I almost called. I still wish I had. Even if you wouldn't talk to me. I wish I had said thank you when I could. I wish I could have talked with you one last time. But then 3 September came and there is no two-way phone line to the Kingdom. Not for non-Incarnate mortals to one another. And that's good. . .I suppose. I know I can talk any time to the Incarnate Mortal who lived and died and stood death on its head. I know He speaks to me.

Maybe I've been too busy, too pulled in every direction to really feel much this summer. But the wind whispers your music in between the aspen leaves. The stars in the sky reflect the laughter and fun in your eyes. The warm sunlight takes me back to a hayride on a different Monday that was also the third of September. I have wondered what it will be like to go back to Pagosa after 9/3... I haven't been there since... For a while I couldn't sing the Doxology at church without ending up in tears. It made me think of meals at the lodge. But now it feels like a friend taking my hand and walking me through the pain. Will going to the lodge again be like that? But more than the going back to a place where I remember you is the going to a place where you should be and aren't. Briarwood Ave. The woods at Fort Barton. Sunset hill. Your room. . .your roof. Your memory (in some way) is there—even though I never saw you in those places, you wrote or talked about some of them. But you aren't there. Now comes a different hard. What about your sister's home? What about when your parents move? What about all of those places where you never will be? What about my own home and town, where I hoped to show you my bookshelves and my friendly walking paths and all my favourite things? You should have been in those places, too, but you never came. . .


Time does not bring relief, you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear To go—so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, remembering him!

—Edna St Vincent Millay

He Makes My Griefs to Sing

Wounded I sing, tormented I indite, Thrown down I fall into a bed, and rest: Sorrow hath chang’d its note: such is his will, Who changeth all things, as him pleaseth best. . . . . .I live to shew his power, who once did bring My joyes to weep, and now my griefs to sing. — George Herbert

“...Songs, like trees, bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.”  

—Treebeard (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

And so it is with people. Sometimes they are withered untimely. 

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

Nine months have gone by, and still the fallout of your untimely withering haunts me and hurts me. I saw who you could be. The poet you were...the poet you could have been, the world will never know. You died untimely, Aaron. I feel the tension of who you were and who you became—and who you could have become if...if 'how it is' and 'how it should be' somehow were different. What if how it is were changed to how it should be? You would still be here. We would still be friends. 

Or would that be how it should be? 

No one is ever told what would have been... And who can say how it should be, except the Maker Himself? You would still be here, I believe—but perhaps we would still be separated. Friendships grow, but they can also change and they can wither, too. I know that is okay, but sometimes I really hate it. I don't want to not be friends. I don't want you to be gone. I don't want to bear this perpetually bleeding wound... Because I want you to still be you. I want you to still be alive and 'normal.' I want to still be friends. I want that to be how it should be. But I don't get to be in control.


Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna go?

Salvation is here

"Where can you run to escape from yourself?" If only I knew. I think you wanted to know, too. To escape from the torn, tortured part of your mind. And honestly, I want to run from the ugly, mean, revolting me that I too often am. I want to escape the things and the people who overwhelm and suffocate me. And I think you did, too. I evade and hedge and hide... You took a more drastic route to escape from yourself. I think I understand, a very little bit. I am trying to forgive you for leaving me...for leaving your family...for leaving a broken world that needed your songs. 

Only God's forgiveness to me in my brokenness fuels my love, my ability to forgive. And I know His forgiveness inspired you. Do you remember penning this: "Unmerited favour is my only remedy"? You did...and it rings in my memory like a clear bell-cry. Unmerited favour is my only remedy! Indeed. 

When Redemption is fully perfected in the Kingdom-coming, I want to hear its stories. I want to hear redemption in your story...to see how it threads through and plays out. Will you tell me the story? Will you teach me the language of the Kingdom? Will you help my tongue and heart live the words and ways of the Kingdom? 


When it feels like surgery And it burns like third degree And you wonder what is it worth? When your inside's breaking in And you feel that ache again And you wonder What's giving birth?

If you could let the pain of the past go Of your soul None of this is in your control If you could only let your guard down You could learn to trust me somehow I swear, that I won't let you go If you could only let go your doubts If you could just believe in me now I swear, that I won't let you go

Nine months later and this song still makes me cry.

Jon Foreman said this about I Won't Let You Go: "If the Author of time and space, the one who breathed my soul into existence, were to sing me a song about trust, it might go something like this, 'I love you and I won’t let you go.' I believe that where you put your trust begins to define you."

Where you put your trust begins to define you. I've put my trust in myself, in my friends, in my family. I've had friends leave me, annoy me, and/or smother me. A friend recently asked if I got tired of them... My response was honest, "I get tired of myself and can't get away from me. So yeah, I get tired of everyone I know at some point. The only exception is God. I don't get tired of Him." I've put my trust in people (myself included) who let me down, who don't satisfy, who don't know what to do or what I need. For a season of my life, I even put some of my trust in you, Aaron. I trusted that you were a first-friend—someone who understood gloaming and poetry, who had seen the grey-green wave in the sunrise, who would be my friend in rough times. In many ways, you were and you did.

But my ultimate trust can't be in any creature or creation. As wonderful as people are, as much as mountains and pine trees and rivers are 'home,' they will fail me, even hurt me. It isn't that we shouldn't trust others or not revel in creation. If we first trust God to love us and to not let us go—even when we want to let go and are tired of ourselves—then we can trust others and love them and creation. But if we don't truly trust God first, how can we trust or love anyone or anything else?

There ain't no darkness strong enough
that could tear you out from my heart There ain't no strength that's strong enough
that could tear this love apart Never gonna let you go

It's still true. Though Treebeard also says, "Never is too long a word, even for me" I dare to say it, with God's help. Because eternity is both now and to come. And for eternity I will hold on to the love and friendship you gave to me. Not in a grasping, hoarding way, but as a handhold on the face of the mountain as I climb toward the Lord. I will hold on for dear life—because life is dear. Your love, your generosity, the beauty and wonder of your soul are supports for me on this path. I could not proceed—I would not be where I am today—without those holds you provided. Your friendship has changed me, deepened me, strengthened me...made me more like Christ. Thank you, Aaron. I love you and I miss you, friend.

~ Me

Ashes

The sky is the colour of ashes—

       White and grey;

The eaves drip icicle tears

       falling away

My life is filled with ashes,

       my mood is fey;

Death upon death finds my heart

       falling away

Across my forehead a cross

      —charcoal dust—

Reminds me that my frame

       will soon rust

Over the shadow of death

       a Cross

Reminds me that life

       can flame from loss

The kernel of wheat

       must die,

Roots of the tree lie buried far

       from the sky

Are these ashen flakes

       the soil

Not of death alone, but of

       figs and oil?

Are these ashes the fertile

       land, unseen,

Until I have God's eyes

       to see the green?

Is this ashy, narrow place

       a birth canal?

Is this dark smothering earth

       life somehow?

Does the thriving tree begin

       as a cross,

Planted in ashes, in death,

       in loss?

From that hollow hole

       comes Tov—

Roots mingled with ashes, whose

       fruit is love

From the hollow grave

       rises Love—

Preparing Earth, through us, for

       the Kingdom above.


______

Photo by Tobias Stonjeck on Unsplash