I woke up late and while I was doing the mindless morning scroll I saw this post on a friend's status.
I was instantly transported back 5 years when I too was planning a wedding and teaching school. And I was also more scatterbrained and dependent on caffeine than I have ever been in my life.
The wedding I planned never even happened. Covid and closed down airports happened instead. Months later a much smaller and possibly even more joy-filled one did tho.
The town I fell in love with and thought would be my forever home turned into mass chaos. The suitcases full of bridal shower gifts I took to my beloved yellow house are either hopefully being used by someone else or else possibly being eaten by mice. I don't even know what happened to my cat or my favorite beach chairs. The same dear people who put on the bridal shower welcomed me back to my old home when I came with only a backpack and soon to be born baby; and they bought as another set of kettles and spatulas and odds and ends so we could start over in our little white house furnished from Facebook marketplace findings.
And here we are.
"at our heels is death. that sounds morbid. but really, death is so close."
I had my first experience with death when I was 11. We got the call during church. The ushers came and got our family one by one and led them to the back. My uncle and aunt had been killed in a car accident, leaving two little children behind.
The night before, we had all been to their house for supper. When we went into the silent, dark house, the party mess was not even quite cleaned up. The Sunday night before, they had sung a duet.... "We Have This Moment."
That was the first of several deaths in our family, happening every year like clockwork. My mom is only 54 now, but all of her immediate family except one brother is waiting in heaven already.
Possibly due to this close relationship to grief, I had some strange beliefs as a teenager, like secretly believing God was playing games with us, trying to see just how much we could handle for some strange reason. I would laugh and shrug my shoulders and say I was a bad luck person. My hidden roots of bitterness robbed me of a lot of joy.
"im tired of young people dying. and then i feel reproved saying that. because am i saying i am tired of young people leaving this fragile earth and going to where all is complete? im tired or hearts ripping apart. but then again, hearts are being made whole when death happens...
Yes. Yes. I said all of this when my childhood-neighbor-girl-always-there-for-me friend drowned. I said it again and again when my cousin and her little girls came home from Haiti without their daddy. I said it when my husband's coworker suddenly died and we couldn't even leave the USA to go to the funeral.
And now, suddenly everyone my age is having babies. Happy times, right? Turns out there are miscarriages, stillbirths, heart defects, horrific accidents. The list goes on. Sometimes I see another terrifying status, look at my perfect little daughter, and panic. Or the one inside my belly goes to sleep for a few hours, and I'm poking and prodding like a crazy woman, frantic for some sign of life.
‘’How do you make sense out of the death of a young person?’’ the minister asked, and answered his own question by saying next, ‘’you don’t’’. are we okay with the mystery of God?can we trust the secret things belong to God?
I think this is what we all have to learn to do. To accept the fact that God is totally in control, even tho we are terrified of how small it makes us feel. And then, in our most vulnerable times, we have to find courage to trust his loving heart.
No bad luck people. No testing our limits to see when we'll break. Just love, perfect love, in the middle of a fallen world.
A world where young people die, even babies we never got to meet. A world where a single bad decision can have consequences for innocent people. A world where relationships are fragile, and we are just a string of misunderstandings away from hurting the ones we love the most.
"i don't understand any of this. and that's ok."
Yes. It's OK. It's OK to not understand.
"rain clouds make this life all the more richer. tears spill often. there is just hard stuff happening. and this thing of how life being so joy filled as it is hard - I just will never ever get over that concept. it's real. and yet you would think that is not how it should be. and yet truly the more I let myself feel the ache of the world, the more brighter the joy flares. it sums up to be a God thing."
Yes. It is a God thing. At our heels is death. And many times, right in front of our eyes is pure joy. Are we looking behind, running from the scary, monster of death, changing plans, and broken dreams, or can we open our eyes to the sheer beauty of life?
Why is it that understanding how close death is can either make you shut your heart up tight in bitterness, or, if you choose to keep your heart open to God's love, even if it's just a crack, you will someday be filled with even more light than you thought possible? It's a God thing, truly. Maybe those moments of stunning light are to help us understand what heaven will be like, so we will do anything not to miss it. Maybe the dark times of this broken world brings are to help us understand how hopeless life would be without Him.
Mary Oliver said, "It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world."
The engine in our car has died forever, but we have family next door with cars we can use in a pinch. We can all 3 hop on the red Honda moto and zip down back roads to the park at dusk. It almost feels like Haiti again, windblown hair, holding a completely relaxed toddler than doesn't even feel a need to hold on. When we get there, she babbles about climbing a mountain as she goes up the steps to slide over and over again. I laugh and ask Zèzè, "Will we all still fit on here when the baby comes?" And then I tell him I want to go to American church like this just once, tie down streaming out behind me, just to see what all the "blan" will say.
My pregnant lady feet completely gave out yesterday after putting on a baby shower, but my mom brought over pizza bread and peanut butter bars for supper, and this morning I am feeling quite alright again.
In the fall, the voices in my head that tell me of the Things That Need to be Done seem to be quieter. I am much more likely to spend a day piddling, which is what happened today. Ava and I went on a bike ride because the wind was blowing and the air smelled of distant rain. Except the rain turned out to be less distant than I thought and we ended up screaming and peddling furiously for home thru a downpour. Home for new clothes, warmed up coffee with maple syrup from the baby shower, and stories on the chair. And I smiled because I had truly felt the power and the abundance of the rain, just like the little cabbage plants in my garden.
I walked into Ava's room this morning and Zèzè was doing his morning scroll also, watching a video from a friend. A very sleepy Ava was squinting at the screen, looking confused. I thought, "This right here in front of me is all I need to be happy."
"the happy. the hard. the holy. all hanging out in the heart, together. and answered prayers woven among it all."
Thanks for the reminder. That was a God thing too.
Lord, do not let us waste these last days.
She is talking here of Raising Hope Ranch, and how in a few weeks, the ranch as we know it will be over. So many of us have a treasure box full of memories tied up in the beautiful log house with yellow door, boots parked in a row beside it. When you reach that yellow door, you're just a step away from a special kind of safety and love that we all need in our lives. Maybe now we will have to look at the ranch as just an outward symbol of things that happened inside our hearts. I've left a good amount of baggage there over the past 9 years. Not any certain dramatic experience really, just feeling better every time I'm there... burdens falling from my heart as I galloped a little dun horse until I was breathless. Just the clean, newly washed feeling your heart has after you've belly laughed until tears are streaming down your face. Just tidbits of wisdom from essays shared around the big wooden table at breakfast time on Saturday.
And now... can we hold the love and security we've always felt there in our hearts? Can we be just as vulnerable and honest in all our other relationships as when we were sitting around the table sharing essays? And can we wait to see what the new beginning will be?
I think there are many times in life where we come to the "last days" and we're not really OK with it. Change is so hard. Kind of like a death. And kind of like a death, it makes us realize how fragile our worlds are. How small and helpless we are compared to God. How we can open our hearts to change and believe that there are still little good surprises packaged up in the same box as big bad surprises? And even sometimes totally amazing surprises packaged up as what at first glance looks like a bad surprise?
I used to be unsettled by the gloom and doom Bible verses all talking about the perilous end times. And then I wondered how those prophets and apostles could feel like they were in the end times 2,000 years ago. It didn't make sense.
And now, I hope, I am learning to treasure the knowledge of the the fragility of life. The uncertainty of the times. It makes us all live a bit differently. Yes, we could become bitter. But I like to think most of us don't want that. We don't want to waste our last days. We want to feel the joy, even though we do realize death is always at our heels. And how does knowing death and change is right there make you feel the little moments of joy more deeply? It really is a God thing.
Lord, do not let us waste these last days.
Amen.
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