quick to love

last night i sang.

i sing a lot because i have to, but last night it wasn't under those terms. i didn't have to do it well or do it in full. what began with a reluctant pause turned into a prayer of painfully wanting this sound to be different than more recent times, more sincere than someone else's composed words performed in usual manner on my tongue.

and then when those words came up, the song was choked out by some life welling up in long dead eyes. tears never felt so clear, refreshing or welcomed. seldom are they a qualifier, but nonetheless, i could sing no longer. life had come back to me, in small part, carried on three words. "quick to love."

it silenced me because i cannot identify with it. i am quick to pass judgement, to find the holes in you and in everything you think. it silenced me because once i could identify with it, and because once upon a time i could readily accept it. and there it was, quickly coming to me the moment i stopped. honesty is where the preface begins.

trouble is i'm so exhausted
the plot, you see, i think i lost it
i need the grace to find what can't be found

busy being robbed

busy busy busy.
nights are filled with school now, as are weekends until i get some capitol letters at the end of my name. someday.

but i hate the busy, not so much the 'run-around-doing' sort of busy, but the continuing aftermath busy, the lingering and consuming that is never shaken off, until it all begins again in full swing. a night's sleep is the only escape from it, and even that is found affected and wanting. and we're clueless all the while how completely it is robbing us.

there's a list of things i'd tell you about this day. how when i turned on the tv at work it flashed with scenes of rocky coasts and i thought to myself 'that looks like maine' and sure enough, there was the nubble light, it's red roof and bright white wood, the scene i've drawn a hundred times over. i'd tell you all the memories tethered to that coast, the thoughts of my dad that flooded in and crashed upon those rocks i used to jump as a little girl, now covered with death and ashes.

i'd tell you how nice it is to sit on my bed when i get off early enough to curl up in the warm sunshine covering the sheets. and i'm always wishing you could join me. we'd talk about lewis, or shake fists at obama, or nap to iron and wine. mmmm....wine. we'd wake up and drink cold reisling.

there's a lot to be taken in, but you are always so full, gluttoned by the day and its endless buffet of work and phone calls and people and lists. you've always been a sucker for buffets.

but quantity pales to quality.

Beautiful Piece of Heartache

Jesus wept. John 11:35

why did He weep? He knew what was going on. He already revealed that lazarus was dead, that He was going there to raise him up. none of this hit with the blow of surprise upon which most tragedy enters.

i was reading this passage earlier this evening, when the sun was still beating hot upon my bed, slipping me in and out of a drunken kind of sleep. it was a long day.
and it's been an even longer 2 weeks. the connection is distant. the urgency is gone. the sadness i once awoke to each morning has lifted like the morning fog, dissolved into the past. still there, still mindful...just not a fight for hope anymore. the urgency is just gone.

i retrace my steps, trying to get back to where we left off, filling in the details in between, grasping at His interpretation to recent days. then i read john 11.

we just don't get it sometimes. all throughout the chapter, jesus says one thing, his people think it means another, and then he's got to go back and "tell them plainly." see for yourself.

i wonder how i'm misinterpreting my days. my situations. my mary "if you had been here, this wouldn't have happened" moments. through Time He tells me plainly.

maybe jesus wept for us in that moment because we just don't understand. maybe he wept for all our wrong conclusions, all our ache that comes from situations we cannot understand or reckon with, all our tunnel vision, tunnel trust. when the truth is He is there, He is aware, and He's doing something about it.

"what a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be" otr

untitl

this past saturday night i went to a celebration: a 'we-almost-got-divorced-but-didn't' celebration. it was ben and dottie's 11-year anniversary and one worth making memorable. indeed it was.

it was evening. their small backyard was dotted with round white tables and candlelight. they made a stage out of the ben-built gazebo. about 30 of us who walked with them through that rough time rejoiced with them as the sun set, being thanked for the support and watching them declare their love to one another again.

but the best moment wasn't on stage. it was at my table, where their eldest boy of 9 sat watching his parents' night like he was an adult. i remember when ben was a youth pastor he'd tell the story of his son wanting to be just like his dad: first a carpenter, then a youth pastor, then a pastor, in mirror sequence to his father. in those winter months when their family was being broken apart, it was the kids i think we all grieved for the most, especially when remembering that story and the boy.

but there he was, smiling silently in his fancy clothes, watching his dad and mom tell the story of their God's triumph. i wondered how much he grew up in that experience? i wondered how much was beneficial/negative? either way, that night i swear he understood more than most 9-year olds ever have, or ever get the chance to. i could see it in his tightly shut eyes as he sang his heart out to his dad's worship, "Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be Your Name."

Labor Day

had the friends over tonight for homemade tortilla soup and broc-ched (as tom calls it). listening to the fire theft now. there's a candle burning beside me. and two sunflowers from rosa in front of me. i love nights like these, when life feels rich, like a thick, royal robe that wraps 'round the day.

i was reading Job earlier this morning. what's that all about? he's suffering, hating life. his friends think they know what's up, Job wonders what's up, and all along some scheme is being played out that neither camp knows about. after reading two chapters worth, I stopped and thought 'that was pointless.' no great life lesson, no thought to carry me through the day. but then my life was on those pages, all my friends speaking up on what they think (know) is happening in my life, my ponderings of what's happening, and their conclusions on what i must do. all their thoughts, estimations, even accusations, all well-meaning, all because there's just this thing about us that's gotta understand what the hell is going on all the time. it's that very need that drives me to the pages of the book every day and evening. i want to understand. at every twist and turn i need to know what's going on.

but Job doesn't find out for a couple more chapters. things don't change for quite some time. he's just gotta wait it out. i've just gotta wait it out. God is not some inside ticket to the workings of our days. i want Him to be. i've thrown fits for it to be that way. but He doesn't comply. He just comes in the quiet, brushes back the hair clinging to my wet face and stays with me another night. someday i'll understand.

. hindsight is always 20/20.

Lavender Memories

i talked to my older sister yesterday. it's wild the way we see our childhoods so differently, though we lived in the same home, the same circumstances. the human mind--my human mind--always has one up on what i call my 'own' understanding....it's this part of me that calls the shots apart from me, choosing what it wills me to know and when. at times traitor and friend, teacher and pupil.

i bought some lavender down at the market yesterday. i like lavender. it reminds me of home and the big bunch growing by the front step, fuzzy yellow bees embedded in soft purple sprays.

when the long day was done, i went to my lavender lotion i routinely put on before bed. only i went to the wrong bottle, and put on lavender/vanilla---i was instantly removed from my home on the hill in washington and transported to the scary, dirty trailer i lived in with my father after the divorce. i just finished my first year of college, and though having stayed in sketchier places in unfamiliar countries, to be forced to call this dive 'home' was disturbing in too many ways. it was Divorce's daily shout that he won the upper hand and we made his poor subjects. i could never sleep well there. it always smelled of damp, rotting panel board and smoke from the Black & Milds my father newly smoked. i'd put on lavender/vanilla oil my roomie from college gave me, slathering it thick on my hands and sometimes a bit on my nose in the hopes it'd cover up the smell and all it brought with it, lulling me to sleep with the calming scent of lavender, where it grew at my real home once upon a time, by the front step.

lavender--just lavender--reminds me of more recent times, scary and painful, but coming in by the welcoming hand of hope on dark summer nights when everything is crumbling. it's classicly calming.

mint also reminds me of home. home in the summer time, making meadow tea like the mennonites or boiling it on the stovetop, its scent coming in through the open windows and wafting out just the same.

basil reminds me of first summer days with nick in washington, picking it to add to our quesadillas with lime and pepper. though i haven't seen them in over 5 years, i can still smell

fireflies. o, fireflies. i miss these. i once scoped out online if you could buy fireflies or raise them, some way to bring them to the near perfect washington scene. they are sunday summer evenings of volleyball on the zimmerman farm and pizza late at night.

crazy how certain scents can transport us or bring us home, disturb our life or bring comfort to it, making memories near forgotten live for the moment.

"smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.a complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."

and not Evil?

i sat there for nearly an hour listening as we each had our time to tell about work and how it drains us, about boys and how they complicate us, about friends moving, friends grieving, spouses hurting, hopes falling. we all want life to be different in this way or that. though unspoken, we're all shouting 'this is not the way it's supposed to be.'

but maybe it is.

maybe that's just it. this is life, in its complicated, knotted mess, the cat's toy that can't be figured out so just give yourself to the play of it instead.

as we sat there and prayed about all the 'complications' to our 'would've been, could've been, if only' lives, ironically, everything seemed as it should be. life will always be this way, bumping and bruising us as we go... and by it we'll take shape and form. we'll be the beautiful, those faces weathered by tough blows of grace, softened 'round the edges by giving into trust. we'll ride the waves of Your will and let confusion's tide wash up all it may, rolling out again, sure to come to us once more (maybe next time with treasure?). we'll take all these days of life to You. we'll live them with You, just with You, not with You and that agenda we have of securing our safe, good little lives. peace will come each morning we don't lay claim to the 'rights' of a perfect life.

the future tense of that idea reveals my hesitant compliance. but...well, maybe.

"Do not speak as one of the foolish women would speak.
Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" Job 2:10

Peach Roses

it's evening and my room is warm and hazy, the air still lingering with the feel of the sun's strong afternoon glow. and there's that fresh breeze, carrying the smell of peach grandma roses and their unknown message.

i came home to an empty house. it stung every sense, fragile senses that have been on edge since morning opened my eyes. i've tried to steady them, to get a grip, but everything inside is mushy, wobbly, rubber-legged emotions defiant of sound reason.

we all want to be the healthy, the whole, the strong. so when i'm not, i run away from it. and why not? the fragile are one bump away from broken, and who wants to be that? survival is most basic to the human self. so i run from the fragility of me: text that friend, call this one, concoct some kind of arrangement to get me busy and forget, at least for tonight, this heart of mine that i don't understand and the God i want so desperately to. my friends serve as the box and peanuts i can cozy down into and hide for awhile.

but i see You snickering behind the curtain as You watch me on this lonely stage. it reminds me of that lewis quote, "Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness."

i blame You for this lonely night . . .

i thank You for this lonely night, for giving me no place to hide but in the middle of the emptiness. there is a trapping in keeping too much company, in busy company, in company for the sake of hiding. i know, i know, 'we need each other.' i'm an advocate for it, really. but most of all, first of all, we each need You. i need You, tonight. not because i feel lonely, but because You're the only one who really knows me, the only one who can transcend all friends and external comforts and be with me on the inside, where i'm falling to pieces.

so You've stripped me, corralled me, You have me where You want me.

help me understand.

Donald Milton Nichols

i do not like Grief. he scares me. he makes me that little girl again, awkward, crying in the corner, not knowing how to deal (wondering if i'll ever learn to deal).

i hate how he comes barging into my heart, as if he's allowed, bringing with him all those things i don't want to care about anymore, insisting on my attention (not realizing i regard him a stranger).

with all the liberty in the world, he comes and unravels everything i neatly tied up. he goes digging thru and dumping out what i neatly stored away. he rips through me effortlessly and then just as fast--two minutes time--leaves, his mess left for me to deal with (but i've never learned to deal).

my dad is dead. that's just how it is.

in all my ugliness i'll admit that i don't so much miss my dad, but the idea of having a dad. while he was alive, i never had the dad i wanted, that my heart needed, that i felt i should have. but i always had the hope that one day, maybe when we grew older, i'd have that dad. you know, the one who calls you on your birthday and knows your age, the one who hugs you when your sad and hurts for you, the one who tells you he loves you, and on good days, maybe even tells you all the reasons why. i had a friend once whose father sent her a dozen roses on valentines day, every single year. i didn't know dads could do that.

my hope for a father died with my father. and i'm left with neither the form or the idea.

my dad is dead. that's just how it is.

she's pregnant.

i can't figure out what i think, not that what i think so much matters. it's just those words.

those are the words that toss everything into a swirl above your head and you have no control where or how they land, like cards fluttering in play.

it makes me think about the way i handle 'tragedy' (i'm not sold on that being the correct word for the situation). hers is monumental, life altering. mine was wimpy in comparison, a blip on the radar. but she was still very much alive and happy and positive, didn't cry, concerned with others, not all about herself. i'm pathetic. just plain pathetic.

life changes. the statement is not profound.

but when its change touches us, or touches the one we love, and changes them, we realize we are citizens in a world we do not rule, cannot rule. like the afternoon sun, we cannot avoid its touch. though we try to shield its brightness, its heat remains. we will always be the affected.

theres a lot inside me that i can't sort out right now. can't put my finger on: my love for my friends, our toying with destruction, Your incredible kindness we can run to even though its always You we offend the greatest. You are good to us, beyond us, to give us Yourself and to give us each other, to live life together, to fall together, to know happiness together and struggle through tragedy just the same. there's richness, a great wealth, to be found, ironically, in the whole gammit.

ruins

i always look down whenever i hike. i don’t know why…maybe it’s my incessant fear of well, ...everything, but especially of falling. maybe it’s because i always hike in open toe Chacos. i’m always looking at my feet. until i hear Nick say, “look up.” and everytime i do, i’m floored (in the safe way) by all the beauty that surrounds me here in the Pacific Northwest. the cedars looming large, the lichen trapezing all around, the true mountains that scoff at Appalachian hills. fresh meadow air dancing thru cool alpine against God’s blue sky. rainier remains forever in the back drop, bright white with snow.

and it’s for us.

grandeur waits to show herself like a virgin to her lover. we just have to stop our journey for a moment, all our getting to the destination, our constant one foot in front of the other, our progressing turning to forgetting until we’re found at our ‘destination’ unrecognizable to ourselves.

i did this a bit tonight. i stopped. i sat outside. i got the bugbites. i was with the evening as it faded, as the sky settled from blue to lavender and every shade of pink. the soft glow of colors funneled together toward the mountains like the day was calling them home. the sun streaked one last, bright hurrah. an otter floated by lazily. the day was done. and so was i.

it forces me to wonder who i might be if i had done this, been this, last year, last month or even just last week. in all the ‘getting’ i got nothing desired. in all the ‘becoming’ i became my own memory.

regrets are never answered.

but life, like God, proves gracious. each day offering a re-do for the shot you thought you had, but missed terribly.

and we all awake humbled.


Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
~Rumi

Nudging and Gushing

you would love Randi.

she's one of those people who gush love. through silly words (like "dead sea squirrels"), amazing acts (like peeling herself out of bed to surprise me with an americano waaay too early in the morning) or just coming near to squeeze my hand with reassurance, she oozes love all over me.

and it happened again this morning, like being slimed in "You Can't Do That On Television" (which I was never officially allowed to watch). we met to talk about wedding plans, which to me consist of a very large toddy, a few head-in-the-hand hair pullings, mumbles of "i hate money," and a few things jotted on paper (which i'd later find i wrote down three times before).

but Randi, oh Randi. it's like God lending you his best friend for the day.

she came with her smile, a hug and a homemade wedding binder for me, in which she essentially downloaded every wedding thought in my head, filled in the gaps with much essential information of which i was quite clueless, a calendar countdown decorated in true Randi fashion ("N+N=love") and delegated responsibilites. i need her in my life.

driving away from our time together, i smiled thinking about her, wondering what kind of friend am i.

is there anyone who needs me like i need Randi? not in a pathetic or overbearing way, but the "we humans complete each other" way. one of the sweetest times in my life was one of the hardest, a time when i needed certain people close and they needed me just as near. we kept each other alive by sharing our need and allowing our own to be met by each other. i guess that's not profound. it's community, really. but the lack of what once was always has a way of showing itself as new and profound.

Randi reminds me to nudge.

i want to be like my friend, gently nudging that person, showing my care, assurance that if/when there's a need, i'll be there. and not only be there, but gush love on them until they almost can't handle it, believe it.

just like He does.