Just a little something I wrote...

This is a little something I wrote while we were still living in New Zealand in 2018.  Alex was 17 at the time and I feel like it just gives a glimpse into the very solid soul that he is and the very sloppy job that parenting can be sometimes.  Life is not a point A to point B endeavor, it's paths take us into uncharted territories, up to unbelievable vistas and along many an unmarked trail.  It's been 5 years since I wrote this, but it's just as true today.

She stood at the sink shoulder to shoulder with her son up to her elbows in dish water.  He was trying to help, keeping the mood light and throwing that sharp whit of his around with all the confidence of youth.  She was half listening, half pondering.  This had become a pattern for her, she couldn’t help but turn over and examine carefully the myriad of memories, thoughts and yes, worries that rolled around in her head.  She took another dish from his hands and scrubbed thoughtfully.  How had this boy, her boy, come to be almost grown?  In her mind’s eye she could see him as a happy go lucky 2 year old, loving his train table and constructing with blocks.  She had to stretch to reach the memories of those early days when she actually sat on the floor and played with him, reading him story after story and feeding him endless cheerios.  It was another lifetime, another world and that was just the truth.  She thought about how some families were still living within reach of those early moments of their kids lives.  When they made a pot of coffee in the morning they could look across the kitchen to the same table their now grown children had played playdough on.  But this was not her story.  She had let go of all those things and places, they existed only in her memories and a copious number of photographs.  She was a wanderer.  A gypsy.  What can a gypsy give to her children?

The sound of a question hung in the air and brought her back to the sink and dishes and the tall boy who was no longer a boy standing there.  “Sorry, what did you ask me?”  She knew it sounded lame.  He had been talking about life and how it wasn’t so bad and that his future wasn’t really in jeopardy,... he was a hard worker.  Did she know that he could catch up?  That all the starts and stops of the last few years could be ironed out with hard work?  “Sure, of course I know you’re a hard worker!”  And she did.  It just all looked so very different than she had imagined.  She’d had no choice but to live exposed… heart out there for all to see, no chance to hide the mess away and pretend.  Maybe that was good...maybe it would mean that if a dark night of the soul came for him he would be able to wade through it with courage and hope.  Surely he had seen enough such times throughout the last 7 years.  But what was his take away?  Was he going to apply that black and white leaning brain of his to the murky greys of this life?  Would the inconsistencies and mess make him doubt… push him too far?  She felt it keenly, the mess of their lives, the churn that it had become.  She worried about the toll it exacted from each of them and if in the end it would prove to be too heavy a price.  It was difficult not to feel that if somehow they had held onto those golden, sunny days of life on Suri Trail that all would be well right now...the family would feel intact, safe… far from the edge on which they currently teetered.  Did he remember what it felt like to live in one place for years on end?  To have routines and traditions, the reassuring lullabies of a life at peace…  Why did it bother her so much?  How was it that the loss of the meadowlark’s song in the morning and a little red wagon in the driveway waiting for another adventure could bring her to her knees so easily?  He’s handing her another dish and reassuring her the best he can that is all is well, that New Zealand is such an amazing place to live.  And of course he’s right.  How many women would stand in line to be in her shoes.  Still, it’s not really about a place, is it?  She holds this thought out from her, examining it a bit.  No.  It’s nothing to do with location,   It’s 100% internal.  The heart.  Immediately she knows the truth of it and it resonates deep.  The heart is the well-spring.  It’s either feeding out living water to those gathered at its edges, or it’s gurgling out yuck.  And the truth is suddenly smacking her in the face ugly and bold… she’s been serving up bitterness and anger.  Slapping down the muck of her heart’s contents in front of them all, praying for survival and poisoning them simultaneously.  She drops the dish down into the murky water staring glassy eyed at half hearted soap bubbles and a whole lot of ugly.  She can see it clear now.  There is only one way forward, repent.  Be broken, acknowledge the ugly… don’t pretend… turn it all over to Jesus and ask Him for the impossible.  For a way forward out of the dark into hope.  For a new heart and living water…

He’s still happily chatting...cheery and full of life, doing his best to pull his gloomy mother out of her funk.  She asks if he’ll do a chore for her and he willingly obliges, quoting the Princess Bride at her over his shoulder as he sails out of the kitchen.  She smiles.  He’ll probably never really know how much she loves him and what it feels like at 44 to be broken and messy when the assumption is you’ll have it all together by then.  To be on a crazy journey with your children more than guiding them through while safely on the other side…  But if at the end of the day he knows Who to turn to for the answers, with the brokeness, in spite of the hard while laying down the ugly, then she’ll know he’s gonna be ok.  He will know what it looks like to be vulnerable and real and he won’t take any substitutes… his life will be unwreckable because he’ll know Christ’s love is unstoppable.  He will have seen it firsthand, a front row seat to life lived raw and broken… handed over to the Restorer, never perfect, but held open handed... and hopefully, {please God!} with love.  Because love covers a multitude of sins and heaven knows she needs a whole lot of love to coat this messy life and fill in the gaping holes and pock marks of failure.  She breathes out a prayer, an exhaling of hopes and drains the dish water.

When hard things hit

 Let's be honest.  There isn't a human on the planet who longs for hard things.  There are millions who walk through, deal with, endure and bear up under hard things constantly, but I am very confident there was no longing in their hearts for these circumstances.  None of us wants to sign up for the hard road, we just find ourselves on it.  The last week has been a hard left turn onto a road we would not put on our bucket list of journeys we want to take.  On Thursday Alex was given the news that the 2 lymph nodes they surgically removed a week ago today revealed he has Hodgkins Lymphoma. So that pretty much sucks.  

We're currently in a week of limbo while he waits to see an oncologist this Friday.  And if you know me at all, you know that I've spent quite a bit of time in limbo.  I've done my best to make it cozy here, so hopefully you can find a comfy place to sit, cause that's what we're doing... sitting in limbo. I'm never sure if dead air time like this is a good thing ie. it gives one time to adjust to the news, ponder the meaning of life, straighten out wiggly priorities, give the house a good once over, finally clean that gross fan you've been putting off, plant a few bulbs in very unhealthy soil in hopes of flowers next spring, decide to organize every mislaid paper, purge the closet, etc, etc, etc.  But it also gives room for unhelpful thoughts, the desire to crawl into bed and disappear, eating your feelings, re-living past cancer experiences, lamenting loss, hating hard left turns, discouragement, sadness, and basically all the negative emotions available. Setting the mind on the good is always a challenge, but this?  It feels like a pop quiz. 

So what do I remember from previous hard roads?  

1. Don't borrow tomorrow's trouble, today has enough of it's own.  Just do today.

2. Cry if you need to.  Don't put it off, stuff it down or think it can wait.  If you feel like crying, do it. 

3. Remember that there is no human experience Jesus hasn't walked through himself.  He knows.

4. This unforeseen turn of events for us is by no mean unforeseen by God. (This one can be tricky as it raises all kinds of questions that I'm not even going to touch at the moment.  But I might get back to pondering some of them later.)

5. Give yourself and others leeway, grace, patience and margin.  This is hard.  Everyone responds to hard things differently. It's ok.

 

Dreamtime

Have you ever had a dream so vivid that it felt like reality?  You wake to "reality" and wonder how what you just experienced while sleeping could possibly be a dream.  This is New Zealand to me now.  I am awake in my reality wondering how the years we spent in New Zealand is just a dream now, a very vivid dream. Sometimes I think God allowed me that time in the land of the long white cloud just to bring home to my soul what my current day to day is vs. heaven.  Even though my time in NZ feels like a vivid dream to me now I know for certain that I stood on that dirt, breathed that air, saw that green, tasted those blueberries.  You couldn't convince me otherwise.  I know it in my soul.  The reality of the eternal is like that.  I know it in my soul.  I have tasted bits of eternity throughout my life, joy that exceeds containing, friendship sweeter than anything, hope in the blackest of nights.  You couldn't convince me otherwise.

In my experience God specializes in hands on training and living word pictures.  He goes to great lengths to reveal truth to me and His patience while doing so knows no limitations.  It could easily be that the years spent in that lovely land were to this end only.  Regardless I'm pretty sure I won't know this side of eternity, so for now I will just be thankful for the dream.

Unseen

I've been contemplating the state of being unseen lately. Western culture is full of elbows and jostle as everyone pushes against the crowds wanting to be seen, to be heard and acknowledged. I completely understand this. It's at the core of all of us, the desire to be seen. Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's a God thing at it's root, a hunger he installed meant to be fulfilled by himself, but without God it gets ugly and loud.  Can I be content to be only seen by One?  If I return to dust having never been seen, applauded, acknowledged can I do so satisfied that it was meant to be so?  

I think of generations gone by and how many complex stories, beautiful thoughts, magnificent talents,  and rich lives settled into the dust with only a handful of people ever knowing the wealth of those souls.  They lived in small communities where their names were known but beyond the town limits no one had ever heard of them.  Did they live content in this smallness?  Is it small?  Surely it's no small thing to only touch the lives of a handful of people.  Beauty is beauty whether the human eye beholds it or not.  Character forged in the fires of this life shines for eternity regardless of applause this side of heaven.  And yet it remains a struggle to be faithful in the small stuff when no one sees.  Living before an audience of One, it takes surrender, humility and resolve.

To be continued.

Desk note #1

 A cup of mediocre tea, creamer from a plastic container, 1/2 a square of chocolate.

Where to file all these thoughts.  

Grief is a sneaky beast.  Stalking the soul in silence, lurking.  Routine interrupted by it's pounce.  It only takes one talon to draw blood, rip the whole scab off.  Triage all over again.

There is no way to guard the heart from grief.  It permeates.  Finds a way in.  

They say keep moving.  But I haven't.  I'm frozen in my tracks, eyes locked and I can't look away, can't put my head down and walk past quietly, unobtrusively.  It's already seen me, found me out with my tepid tea and chocolate crumbs.

Catharsis

 Catharsis: "The purification and purgation of emotions through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration." As in: "that was cathartic.

{Somehow, this is cathartic.  Purging out some of the excess words in my head/heart.  I think it's reassuring that it's going out to no one in particular, but there's also the tantalising idea that it could reach someone.}

This morning I've been chewing on how life is made and shaped by so many tiny decisions.  Of course there are big ones... but the devil is in the detail of the minute decisions.  I don't know about you, but I personally can get very stuck in running through the little decisions I've made one by one and examining them from all angles.  Even though what's done is done, I struggle to leave it there.  It's done.  There is absolutely nothing I can do to change it.  The ONLY thing I can change is this little decision that is here right now.  I do not know why this is so very challenging for me.  Why do I go back and touch all those little past decisions?  I'm pretty sure that if changing the past were possible I would have gone back and messed with everything!  Walking the paths of life is an extreme exercise in trust.  I either trust God is writing the story and all those little decisions are things he sees, knows and uses to the outcome of good for me ultimately, or I don't.  On any given day you will find me a solid mix of belief and unbelief.  Hence the cry, "Lord, I believe!  Help my unbelief."

Who knew?

4 years.  Yep.  That's the # between my last blog post here and this one.  2018 might as well have been a lifetime ago and that's the truth.  That's true in my own life and exponentially true for the world at large.  Who knew?  But then again when do we ever know we're on a collision course with trauma?  

Very randomly (no irony to see here), I have felt inspired to blog again.  I know, I know...you're skeptical and well you should be.  But really.  I think I might try.  Cause what's at the end of trying?  Only stupidity, success or failure.  What is there really to lose?  So yeah.  I guess I'm gonna start throwing words out into the ether, cause maybe it's worth something and maybe it's not, but either way I want to try to say a few things.  And if no one is listening and this is just another one of 16 billion blogs and a mind staggering number of words that float around out there, so be it.