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

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).

We Are Once In a Lifetime

Dear Aaron,

Did you think I forgot? Because I didn't. I called your mom on 3 September. Last weekend I hiked around the area where I carved your name into a fallen tree five years ago. The Switchfoot playlist that gave words to my aching has been on repeat all month. Tears have definitely rimmed my eyes on repeat, too.

I was re-reading some of your thoughts/poems earlier this month... You had good thoughts, friend. You had good taste in lyrics. In poetry. And goodness knows you had more patience for certain literature than I do. 

You know that dark blue plaid shirt of yours? It is ringed with holes now... I sleep with it every night I'm not travelling. There is something comforting in its tangibility—like there is with your letters. I just like seeing them, holding them, reading them. 

You left an indelible mark on me, Aaron Eugene Hennig. The mark of friendship. The mark of one who has known a similar sorrow and tried to walk with me through my own, even when you didn't always know how, and I didn't always recognise your efforts. 

You know what I do recognise? You were once in a lifetime. My ticket to Oxford and Alaska and Rhode Island. My ticket to a land of imagination and Beauty, reminding me there is Hope—and He is the Anchor for our souls. 

Do you have any idea how mad I am that you went ahead of me? Or how much it hurt to have you leave, both five years ago and all those years ago after I came to Alaska? You walked out of our friendship because I was me and not someone else. Or maybe because that 'someone else' was taking up too much space inside of you. 

Do you remember writing about how some people take up more space inside than you wanted to give them? I remember, not only because I've re-read your letters so much in the past handful of years, but because I understand that feeling from the inside. Some people want to take up more space than you have to give...and some people that you have vast treasures of storeroom for don't want to take up much (or any) space inside of you. We can't always choose these things.

What are you waiting for?

The day is gone. . .

I said, I'm waiting for dawn

...

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*

Your reached it, friend. Aslan's own country. The other side from here. The end (which was only the beginning!) of your dreams. You found the womb of the dawn you were waiting for. The mental clarity you were reaching for with fingers wiggling, straining to reach just a little more.

May all of your days shine brightly

And your nights be blessed with peace

Wherever you lay down to sleep

And all things are made good

For those who believe

May you grow from a seed

Into a strong, fruitful tree**

___

Aaron, you are a tree, my friend. 

Not "you were"—somehow, you still are.

. . .

*Switchfoot "Red Eyes"

**Josh Garrels "Benediction"

Irrational August

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
—Madeleine L'Engle

It is no secret that I despise the month of August. The heat, the weight of work, the physical and emotional exhaustion, it all feels crushing... But this August has been especially hard to bear. In the span of a week, two of my oldest Summit connections were dealt death blows in their families: one lost their 17-year-old daughter, the other his 88-year-old wife just 12 days before their 66th wedding anniversary.

Now in the same span of time, I will attend two funeral services... One for a vibrant girl who was just about to begin adulthood, the other for a gentle soul full of humour and grace—both loved Jesus, and both loved people. It is no easier to go to one service or the other. Death is the great thief, thrusting itself into our safe worlds and snatching away those we love; snatching our security from under us. 

Death happens to other people. . .until it doesn't. 

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

—John Donne

As I pulled on my swishy black dress today, I reached for the right necklace to wear with it—the necklace with winter-bare branches etched in silver, my 'Aaron necklace'. It seemed the right thing to wear to Elsie's funeral. Elsie was a toddler when Aaron and I met. I've watched three families from that Semester lose loved ones too young. Stephen's brother was 27. Aaron was 30. And Elsie was 17. 

 Alice Noebel was also too young. Yes, she would have been 90 next year, but that's too young, because death isn't how it's supposed to be. And I know that Jesus turned death on its head, making it the gateway to the New Kingdom for those who believe... But it wasn't supposed to be part of this world. Not until one of God's image-bearers reached out her hand to take; to make the choice between tov and ra for herself. 

That is what we all do... In big or small moments, we decide for ourselves what good or evil are. And sometimes we choose evil, saying it is good—while eschewing the good, experiencing it as evil. Our stubborn choices bring various kinds of death and destruction. In relationships. In creation. In ourselves. Knowing the real difference between tov (good) and ra (evil/bad) is nuanced and complicated, and I for one don't have enough information about the future to know which thing is which. That's why we are supposed to depend on the Creator of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to help us discern. 

August is irrational, this one full of death and wounding grief beyond words. Perhaps the irrational part is that it also holds the bloom of love, bright and wild. Even in my own grief, I also know a love I've never known before. It is bright, illuminating. It is wild. It is both stable and hard to predict. And I experience this love as a sweet gift. On the surface it appears tov...  I pray for the wisdom from the Creator to know tov from ra, to open my hand to what He will place there in His time. It is so hard not to reach out and pluck what looks good and right. YHWH, give me wisdom and patience to wait on You. Help me to choose life, not death. Help me to see rightly what is tov. 

The Price of Loving Fiercely

“I’d believed—fool that I was—that because I knew this end was coming, I was prepared, that I would not grieve as hard. As if one can pre-grieve and get it out of the way. It’s not true. Grief is the price I paid for loving fiercely, and that was okay, because there was no other choice but to love fiercely and fully.”

― Patti Callahan, Once Upon a Wardrobe 

Dear Aaron,

The fog of a freezing frost is settling in my valley this evening, friend. I hope to wake to a glittering world of beauty and delight—a sort of Eden splashed over all I can see. Sometimes I think other people want that for grief. . . For some joy to splash over one's world and cover over the grief, leaving only shimmering Beauty where once there was pain. But like hoarfrost, those moments are just that: moments. The pain leaks back through like mud beneath the snow. The ever-present stain of grief is the price paid for loving fiercely and fully.

A while back I had someone whom I consider a close friend tell me that perhaps there was something wrong with me for still grieving you stepping out of life—not just out of mine, but out of your life. To this day that comment still rankles in my soul, because the loss of you will not go away while I'm still living. You will always be gone now. Oh, one day I will cross the Great Gulf and join you in the Kingdom, but who can say when? And until then, we are separated. That doesn't quit or stop or go away. Just like your birthday is always your birthday, even if you're not here to celebrate it. It's your birthday just the same. . .the day before mine, every year. 

It was a full day with an appointment, work, small group, and exhaustion. But I thought of you, of course I did. Each time I had to write the date on every page of the chiropractor forms. When I was running a mailing and setting the stamp date. When I texted your parents and sister. Of course I knew it was your day. And of course I missed you, even if I spent the evening with dear friends. None of them were you.

I miss getting to know you. I have pieces of your thoughts and heart penned in about twenty letters spanning about five years. I have three months (plus a week) of shaky memories of the time we spent in the same place, often together. But I've forgotten too much of those weeks, days, and hours. My mind and my life are full, always edging out memory unless I sit with it, stoke it, tend to it. And yet... There is a hole where you should be. Where I should still be able to write or receive a letter, where we should still be able to talk on the phone or visit one another. We should still be getting to know each other. And we aren't. I miss what we had; but perhaps even more, I miss what we never got to have. 

Lately the pain has been something like a branch beneath the hoarfrost of dating someone I truly love. He's very different from you, but also he reminds me of you in some ways. But even the wonder of a sweet relationship doesn't cover the pain of loss forever. Perhaps the mud seeps through the snow a little less often right now, but I still think about you every day. I still miss writing real letters to you—letters I can drop in the mail and have you receive at the other end of the line. I still raised a mug of tea (caramel-coconut-sesame) in a toast to you on your birthday. And I still believe that if the Lord allows you to see through the veil—to know the love of those who miss you—then you know that already.

Here's to the twilight
Here's to the memories
These are my souvenirs
My mental pictures of everything
Here's to the late nights
Here's to the firelight
These are my souvenirs
My souvenirs

I close my eyes and go back in time
I can see you're smiling, you're so alive
We were so young, we had no fear
We were so young, we had no idea
That life was just happening
Life was just happening

Here's to your bright eyes
Shining like fireflies
These are my souvenirs
The memory of a lifetime. . .

—Switchfoot, Souvenirs 

Though I'm a little later than the day of, happy birthday, friend. I miss you. The mud and blood beneath the snow still surface. But one day the glittering frost will melt into Spring and I will see you again. We can get to know each other more then, my friend. Until the Kingdom comes, I will pay the price of loving fiercely and fully. Until then, here's hail! to the rest of the road.

Love,
Johanna

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 

When You Lose Somebody You Love

 “One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn is how to lose someone,” sings Scottish musician Nina Nesbitt. Her official music video for “When You Lose Someone” debuted on March 1, 2022 and has been viewed over a million times. The video is replete with heartfelt sorrow and simple images of her holding on to a shadow-person who eventually splinters into starlight.

In a YouTube live chat, Nesbitt says the song is about her specific loss, yet she hopes that her listeners will relate to the lyrics in the many kinds of loss they, too, experience: a loved one passing away, a divorce or breakup, being separated from a loved one by mental illness, or other forms of ambiguous loss. 

Psychologist Pauline Boss “coined the term ‘ambiguous loss’ and invented a new field within psychology to name the reality that every loss does not hold a promise of anything like resolution.” (FN1) We experience this type of loss when our loved one is still with us physically, but dementia or mental illness has taken them away from their minds and from us. We see it in having to co-parent after divorce or in breaking up with someone we still love but can’t marry for whatever reason. Perhaps one of the deepest places we observe or experience this ambiguous loss is in fathers who are physically or emotionally absent from their children’s lives. 

Whether grief stems from an ambiguous or a concrete loss, it shapes us. We can choose to hide either in or from our grief. We can ignore it, we can feel asphyxiated by it, or we can choose to walk alongside it as a companion. Seeing grief as a companion is not easy, nor is it the conventional first step after a loss. As Nesbitt asserts, initial grief often goes

from feeling numb to feeling everything at once

And I don’t know if I wanna cry—

One of the the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn

is how to lose someone

In a sense, the image of holding hands with grief—walking with it rather than fighting it or ignoring it—is an image of us holding the hand of Jesus. He is acquainted with sorrow (Isaiah 53:3-4). He walks with us through loss, mourning with us over what is broken (John 11:32-36). Grief should be our response to disconnection, because it is God’s response to death and disintegration.

The separation that comes from death or ambiguous loss is still something to be reckoned with, even though Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead (I Corinthians 15:20-27) and ultimate reconciliation. When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, relationships fractured in every direction: with other people (Genesis 3:7), with God (Genesis 3:8), with the creation (Genesis 3:17-19), and with ourselves. This sheering apart is not the way it’s supposed to be. The severing caused by death is not how God made his good world to exist. When we experience loss it is the catastrophic consequence of sin (James 1:14-15). 

What about those who don’t know God or understand that death and separation are an outworking of the Fall? For most of our culture, loss is something bad that we don’t want to experience. We want to outrun the ache of grief, the pain of loss. We want to be distracted from pain or become numb to it. But the reality is that our minds and bodies hold the scars of the Fall, whether we know that it happened or not. Surprisingly, Nesbitt acknowledges the continuance of loss:

[It] changes you forever in the blink of an eye

and it’s not something that just fades overnight

it’s something that stays for the rest of your life

when you lose somebody you love

We don’t just “move on” from a breakup or a death. While we shouldn’t stay stuck in the past or stop living the life God has gifted us, there is no such thing as closure when it comes to love. Pauline Boss continues, “‘closure’ is a terrible word in human relationships. Once you’ve become attached to somebody, love them, care about them—when they’re lost, you still care about them. . . .Somehow, in our society, we’ve decided, once someone is dead, you have to close the door. But we now know that people live with grief. They don’t have to get over it.”(FN2) She clarifies that this doesn’t mean obsessing over our lost loved one, but rather living with grief is choosing to remember them, even though remembering might hurt sometimes. 

And that is where the world stops. There is no hope beyond saying “It’s okay to live with grief. It’s okay to miss someone. It’s okay to feel the loss you’ve experienced.” There is no hope of seeing a loved one again. Maybe they disappear into the stars, as in Nesbitt’s music video; maybe they are reincarnated, as some Eastern cultures believe, but you can’t really know your lost loved one again as you did. There is no true hope in those ideas. 

Even Christians sometimes get lured into the world’s idea that “death is simply part of life.” But let's be clear, while death is a reality, it is not part of life in God’s creation. Death is a result of the Fall—it is the great enemy to be finally and fully defeated (1 Corinthians 15:20-26).Thanks be to God that by the Resurrection of Jesus, death is already being worked backwards until it one day is no more (Revelation 21:1-6). As Orthodox theologian and priest Alexander Schmemann expressed it: 

Christianity is not reconciliation with death. It is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it [Christianity] is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. And only if Christ is Life is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely the enemy to be destroyed, and not a "mystery" to be explained. Religion and secularism, by explaining death, give it a "status," a rationale, make it "normal." Only Christianity proclaims it to be abnormal and, therefore, truly horrible. At the grave of Lazarus Christ wept, and when His own hour to die approached, "he began to be sore amazed and very heavy. . . It is when Life weeps at the grave of the friend, when it contemplates the horror of death, that the victory over death begins.”(FN3)

We know that Life himself, Jesus, wept over death (John 11:33-36). We know that he has gained victory over death and he offers that victory—eternal life—to all who will believe in him, turning away from sin and toward him (1 John 5:11-13 TLB). But we also know that not everyone chooses to receive beauty for ashes, eternal resurrected life instead of eternal death. Just as Jesus bore the scars of death in his resurrected body, we too bear the scars of separation and loss dealt by the Fall. Grief shapes us. As the consummation of the Kingdom of God draws ever closer, we must acknowledge that some grief extends to eternal death and some grief ends in the hope of eternal life. Right now we live between these eternal and temporal griefs, holding both sorrow and resurrection-hope by the hands as our companions. Perhaps Nesbitt explains it best: One of the hardest things we ever have to learn is how to lose someone.

_____

Footnotes:

1. Navigating Loss Without Closure —OnBeing Podcast with Pauline Boss and Krista Tippett

2. ibid

3. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 99-100. 

* All Scripture quoted is from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

Originally posted for Reflect at Summit Ministries

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

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.

Staying. . .

He shuffled and looked down at his feet, "You're not going to like what I have to say." I was standing in my office with a sinking feeling in my heart. How many times had I stood in this exact place with someone standing there, telling me they were moving on to something else? A dozen times? Twenty? One year ten people left the place I work. Another year six people were let go due to budget cuts. Here and there people have retired or moved on to pursue this or that wonderful thing and I'm left standing in the basement. This week I had this conversation with not one but two people. The second one hit harder, as I wasn't expecting it at all. It was suddenly the last day I'd see someone. Someone I've seen almost daily for four or five years. 

So, here I am again, standing in my office grieving in hot, fast tears.

Don't get me wrong, I like my job. I especially like my coworkers. I like staying. . .

But I also hate staying.

Staying means that everyone else leaves. And I am tired of being left. 

Left at work while everyone else "moves on," as if to imply that working here isn't worth my time and loyalty. Left to myself while my friends get married and have children. Left on this side of eternity while people I love step into the Kingdom. 

Sometimes I think it's not worth it to care about people, they just leave you, leaving a hole where they were. Sure, sometimes you keep up with someone in spite of not being at the same job, the same church, the same neighbourhood. And sometimes it's just fine to move on and make new friends. 

And let's be honest: I've done my share of leaving. Not returning calls, texts, or emails. I don't have the time or the emotional space to keep up with everyone I've ever been friends with. I've left people who were emotionally draining. I've left jobs or churches and never looked back. Sometimes to move forward we have to leave some things, even some relationships, to memory. 

The truth is, I'm tired. I'm tired of caring, of building friendships only to lose them. Tired of acquaintances hanging on when I'm ready to move forward. . .and conversely, tired of friends leaving when I still want to grow together. Being left, yet again, is wounding. It makes me feel like there isn't any virtue in staying. Being faithful just ends up hurting. The thought of learning yet another new person at work, of befriending them and making sure they feel seen and cared for sounds exhausting right now. I don't have the heart for it. I will. . .but not today. Today I'm just sad. 

From the places you've been torn. . .

"There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve—even in pain—the authentic relationship. 

Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

______

Emptiness. I have felt its greed in my heart and in my body. There is a permanent hole in my heart while I walk on this side of the Kingdom coming, and God Himself does not fill that emptiness. He is leaving that slow-bleeding hollow right where it is. It is that absence that somehow makes me feel your presence more sharply, Aaron. 

For years there was an Aaron-shaped empty-space where you should have been in my life. You didn't just drift away, as so many friends do when life carries us along. You were sharply cut away from me one winter's day in Alaska. You became a stranger to me over the course of time, and in a particular instant you saw me as a stranger to you from then on. No one understood the ache I carried inside of me from that encounter. I didn't even understand it really. I didn't know how deep the wound went until that parting shaft was ripped out one September day, the barb leaving a gaping hole in its reverse exit. 

No words could fill that hole. No friendship on earth could patch up that wound. But when I read Bonhoeffer's above quotation, it resonated all the way down the path of that still-bleeding laceration. "It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness." He leaves the torn up place to allow us in that empty, painful ache to connect with the one we've lost: "For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled, one remains connected to the other person through it."

How strange. In those five years where even my closest Semester friendships began to wane, I felt a deep connection with you—the friend who had abandoned me. When you ended your precious life, the pain was unbearable precisely because you had already left an empty place, unfilled all those years, where my connection to you was strong. It remains strong. That emptiness makes me curl up in a ball and ache sometimes, because absolutely nothing can fill it except you. And nothing I can do will get me to you. Only God can do that, and this isn't the right time yet. 

"Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation." I have forgotten so many details, moments, jokes, and sayings of our time together at Semester... Certainly I have forgotten more than the ones I can and do remember. But I treasure what I remember. I treasure your letters. You taught me things while we corresponded, but you have taught me much more through those same words years and years later. And the more I understand what you were saying, the more deeply I value your mind and heart, your self. Thus, the more difficult the separation. The assuaging answer isn't to forget or to stop reading your letters. Though there is intense pain in the separation, there is profound healing in remembering, especially in remembering together with your family or our friends.

For years I have felt that all I had to offer God was emptiness. Empty hands. An empty heart. Empty desires. Empty relationships. Empty arms. An empty shell. The times I've been the wisest (though they felt the most foolish) were the ones where all I had was emptiness to offer on the altar to God. Now I begin to learn that the very empty places are the ones where I find connection to the person or dream or thing that is missing. It's not the connection I would choose. The ache can be debilitating sometimes. I would give much to reach out and wrap you in a hug once again, my arms full rather than empty.

Until the Kingdom comes in its fullness and we run to the Supper of the Lamb together, I will try to remember that God isn't filling the hole, He isn't fixing the ache, and He isn't covering over the emptiness...so that I am still able to feel connected to you. Not in an idealised or idolised way, but in a  way that beckons me "Further up and further in! "

Love always,
Johanna

_____

Title: 

This is the hole

Where most of your soul

Comes ripping out

From the places you've been torn

(From"Always" by Switchfoot)

Kindness Makes Me Cry

What a month it has been. . . In the last 30 days I have flown on 2 airplanes, been in 1 wedding, attended a second wedding, eaten Chipotle during 2 wedding weekends, danced for at least 2 hours, hand-written 25+ pages (double-sided), talked on the phone for 33 hours, worked more hours that I want to count, welcomed 1 new baby into our community, and lost 1 friend to death.

Two weeks ago I experienced one of the hardest weeks of the year. In the span of seven days I was asked to resign as an editor over a difference of opinions, had to kill a suffering mouse with a rock, offered a listening ear to an upset friend, found out a different friend ended their life, and had to have a hard personal conversation with yet another friend. I called it the week from Hell, because so much of that week was shot through with death in one form or another, and that is the work of Hell.

But this past week was balm to my soul. I didn't work overtime. My sweet neighbour came over for dinner and a walk. My Scripture circle met under a double rainbow, sharing some things I've been chewing on this week—or more accurately, things that have been chewing on me. I wrote my heart out. I got to spend three precious hours with one of my best friends. A couple of friends and my family were so kind to pray for me and check in on me often. My sister sent me a box of sunshine. The friend who needed a listener sent me cheese, chocolate, and flowers in the form of a totally unexpected gift-card. The CEO of our company wrote me a kind note and gave me a gift-card for my ten year anniversary at work. And today, my boss got married. 

Just like the Hell-week had redemptive moments and hours, this balm-week had its dark moments and its bitter tears. But there were so many good conversations in both weeks. So many walks and cups of tea and scudding clouds across the moon. There were invitations into sorrow and invitations into deep joy. There were things that scared me, but I did them. There were things that wounded me and others, but we are walking with one another into healing.

This evening, in the midst of deep joy and fun on the dance floor, without warning, familiar notes washed over the room. I've never seen so many people scatter for exits so quickly when there was no emergency. . . The DJ couldn't have known that playing "Don't Stop Believin" would be incredibly painful for nearly a dozen people. He couldn't have known that a few days ago we found out our friend, Mike, was dead. "Don't Stop Believin" was Mike's theme song. If I heard it blasted from the classroom once a summer, I heard it half a dozen times a summer. I like that song, but tonight it made me sad. Yet, in a way, it was like Mike was there in spirit. Like maybe he was dancing, too. 

This week so many beautiful, good, kind, and joy-filled things happened. It doesn't fill the maw of Hell-week. No. In some ways, it stuffs goodness down the throat of the aching blackness and still overflows everywhere. And in some ways, that gaping emptiness of Hell-week carves a pit in the many of us it touched. The wound of death does not heal here, not fully. I will always bleed a little of my heart out for the friend I lost nearly two years ago. Our world will always bleed a little for the loss of Mike. Goodness doesn't fix the not good. 

Sorrow and grief over many things still clench my heart and make me cry. But the kindness of family and friends also makes me cry. The deep gift of love, the deep joy of watching my friends get married makes me cry. I cried hearing my friends exchange their wedding vows and hearing their people toast them. And I cried tears of loss watching the father-daughter dance, because I want to get that experience and I don't know that I ever will. And simultaneously, I cried tears of anger and hurt that a person who might have given me that chance declined to even try. And I cried the achingly sweet tears that come when you hear grown men say "My life is what it is partly because of you, and I love you" to another man in front of a whole crowd of people. 

Hell-week wasn't all bad. And balm-week wasn't all good. Even something so beautiful and deeply good as a wedding brought all kinds of mixed emotions—joy, pain, sweetness, grief, and hope... Hope of these friends birthing light in the darkness our world is falling into. And lest it all sounds like this hope or joy or kindness springs from my friends, it doesn't. Its source is God the Father, showering His deep affection on us (often through other people) where we are—whether that is a place of pain or gladness, or a mix of sorrow, joy, sadness, loss, hurt, and hope all co-mingled. And let's be honest, we're often an amalgamation of emotions, not feeling one at once, but many (even conflicting) emotions at once. That is the agony and the beauty of being human.

Grief makes me weep. Sorrow makes my heart bleed. But alongside these, kindness makes me cry.