My Only Remedy

 

 

Dear Aaron,

"Unmerited favor is my only remedy." Do you remember writing that to me a hundred years ago? You spelled "unmerited" with two rs, if that helps.

Four years. . . It's been four years since that September day that you left me behind. Sometimes it feels like forever ago; sometimes it feels like I just found out. I don't wake up immediately thinking that you're gone every day now, but I do think about you every day. Did you know that? Did you know that I still miss you when it rains? And when September rolls around, I close my eyes and go back in time. . . I think about all those years ago when we were prepping the Lodge, meeting everyone for the first time, not knowing we were about to become something altogether bigger than the sum of our parts: family.

This spring I stumbled across some photos from your student session at Summit...it was like finding buried treasure. You looked so happy and alive. I know you're more alive now than you ever were before, but that doesn't fix things on this side. It doesn't stop these tears from flowing. It doesn't make me stop missing you on rainy days. Or every other day that I also miss you.

Sometimes I still wonder. . . What if I had called that summer? I never got to say goodbye, you know. And while I don't think you would have talked to me, I still wish I would have tried. I wish I could have said thank you for all the things you taught me; the generosity you spilled out on me. I didn't say it then, but I can say it now: Thank you, Aaron. Thank you for Oxford, for making my world bigger and sprinkled with beauty, for giving me the chance to meet my best friend, for all those nuggets of wisdom you were always strewing about in your letters. . .for helping me like Switchfoot. 

Every now and then I see you dreaming
Every now and then I see you cry
Every now and then I see you reaching,
Reaching for the other side. . .

What are you aiming for

Out here alone?

[You] said "I'm aiming for home"

You're home. You've reached the other side. And the world is a poorer place for your relocation. I know, because I am a richer person for knowing you, and I feel your departure keenly. 

Most people don't really understand the scars I carry with me because of my love for you, friend. They don't get you—but in all fairness, I spent the majority of our friendship not really "getting" you, either. We shared some similar sadness, loneliness, and loves. But you were and always will be light years ahead of me in perception. 


When it comes down to it, until the Kingdom comes fully, grief leaves us bleeding and broken, with unmerited favour as our only remedy.

❤ always,

Johanna

* "Red Eyes" Switchfoot, Jon Forman 

Name-Friend

Bloody hands drip crimson

with ache and regret,

I broke the very thing

I tried so hard to protect

Flood after salty flood

cannot wash away

this guilt and all my shame,

these shards opening a vein

Dripping drops of love

that should be treasured,

yet now are spattered

about, given unmeasured

But whoever measured love?

Who taught it to go by rule?

Who said it wasn't messy?

No one—no one but a fool

A different fool am I,

who aches for doing right

and crushing joy

in the heart of a broken boy

Tears

The candles are crying waxen tears

        from their unseeing eyes—

Their little frames have 

        no hearts to break

no wound to bleed like mine

My own grief pools red and hot,

        or cools upon my cheek,

my waxen heart cannot feel

        unless it is this emptiness—

My loneliness none dares to break

Candles burn bright and

         candles burn low—

Grief and loneliness don't fill me

         they hollow out my feeling,

stealing life, their appetites grow

What can fill grief and sorrow,

          loneliness and death?

Their hunger growls and I diminish,

          their ache digs deep

to ravage my every breath—

Breath! Spirit of God poured out

           like melting wax—

Unlike water in the wilderness

           the Spirit is not swallowed—

He fills and heals each crack

Cracks in my soul that run

            deep and hungry ache,

He finds the bottom and

            fills the deep wells

making a pool of Beauty—a lake

A lake of salty tears

            that now reflects

the Light, the stars, the silver moon—

            and bathes the travellers' weary feet,

a gift, a healing they did not expect.

Echoes

Sorrow, sorrow everywhere

splattering world headlines with its stare,

making worry-lines on the faces of

those I love, and some I've yet to know;

yet sorrow is the strand that binds us,

find us, weaving us into God's ancient tale

Broken, broken everywhere

within our hearts, or bodies hale;

cancer cells and expectations stale

growing unchecked can usher death—

brokenness devours both body and soul
with all its demands it is never full

Heart ache, heart break everywhere

and many are the ways to cope—

mothers cry, their faces aging,

men grow sober and waste away,

heart-hungry, not for food, but for hope,

dying for want of the Water of Life

Echoes, echoes everywhere

of Eden and of the Fall—being God

is our desire, to have and to control;

to cry out, "I don't love you anymore!"

and have it reverberate in all divorce,

in every act of our damned selfish wills

Bleeding, bleeding everywhere

from hands and brow, feet and side,

from the broken hearts of those betrayed;

death presses on mortal men, they are afraid...

But glory! Blood atones from the Sorrow-Man,

Redemption shouting into God's story

Through the Cracks

Violence cracks our world,
leaves lives black and blue
emptier than when day broke,
leaves lives numb and days grey

Shadows crawl stealthily,
silently blotting the beauty
our eyes can only see
by the sun's bright rays

Darkness is like a shroud,
clothing our dying senses
too poisoned to see value
in life or how gaping death is

Hope seems like a dream
in the inky night, intangible,
unreal, a delusive phantom we're
weary of being told is substance

Faster and swifter, now,
the shadows come, thrusting
our world into the chaos of darkness,
we are unable to feel, unable to heal

Lives are bleeding out,
much faster and swifter, now,
running across thirsty ground,
fracturing families and dividing men

Swifter and faster than
eye can see, light shoots across
the night, like a bullet's flash—
light dispels darkness in an instant

It comes unexpectedly,
like hope revived, alive and
real to hold to, no longer a ghost,
but now an Anchor for battered souls

Light shines in the night,
and the darkness cannot cover it,
cannot understand, cannot hold out,
so the shadows flee, like paper-thin dreams

Slowly, slowly, now,
men begin to understand, to see,
to apprehend truth—they are set free,
and they begin to heal, begin again to feel

Cracks allow the light
to shine through—lives black
and blue are healed, made new,
as Light and Hope overflow thirsty souls