You don't text...

This morning I woke with a start and grabbed my phone. It was after 7am and you hadn't texted to tell me you had arrived at work safely. My mind raced to the text I was about to type, "Hey, where are you? Get there safe? I love you." Then the emergency brake in my mind activated and I realized: You aren't going to text. You aren't safe at work. You'll never text me from work again.

No, we hadn't had our morning kisses good-bye.  Our tradition - if I'm in bed you kiss me, but then I run to the stairs to kiss you again - or sometimes you want me to rest, so you just come back.  Or when I'm downstairs and we kiss at the door, you walk to the edge of the porch, I say, "Wait..." I meet you as you step down a step so our height is more equal and we kiss again, you lightly pulling my lip in. I watch you walk to the car and tell you , "Drive safe." You either say, "Yes, dear" or "I'm going to drive recklessly, ha ha."  33 years of this - even when we were mad about something, you still always kissed me and returned to kiss me again.

I don't know why I hadn't been hit hard by the no at-work-now text until today. Maybe it is because I slept almost 8 hours. Oh, I did wake up in the middle of the night, feet cold, stress tensing my body, but I beat it back and fell back asleep and dreamed. I dreamed that I had a book published. You always wanted me to do that. You told me again and again that I was the best writer you knew and that I needed to write a book, to write children's books, to write anything because you knew whatever I wrote would be great. The book I started is on the computer that broke - I'll get the stuff from the hard drive off soon and I'll finish it...and you will be in it. Lots of things about you.

Timing...

"When the stars line up
And you catch a break
People think you're lucky
But you know its grace

It can happen so fast
Or a little bit late
Timing is everything

You know I've had close calls
When it could've been me
I was young when I learned just how fragile life can be
I lost friends of mine
I guess it wasn't my time
Timing is everything

And I could've been the child that God took home,
And I would've been one more unfinished song
And when it seems a rhyme is hard to find
That's when one comes along
Just in time"
from Timing is Everything (Natalie Hemby, Troy Jones)

It is really comforting to know that "Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." ~Psalm 139:16 Things that seem like coincidences or happenstance, well, they aren't - it is GRACE. Often we just don't recognize it because we don't understand it. That undeserved favor may appear as an inconvenience or even as a tragedy, but there is something afoot that God understands that we just don't. Occasionally we get blessed by getting to see how the pieces of this puzzle of life all fit together; sometimes we're still waiting for that.

I decided not to cry yesterday, but to be happy. I realized that some days I need to let myself weep and other days I need to let myself feel joy. To be able to "feel" - really, really *feel* is a blessing that I think we take for granted. Sure, we like to feel joy but it is nice, but I think that feeling pain, though unpleasant, also testifies to our life, to our love, to our depth of care and there is a loveliness to the ache as long as we don't let it overcome us. "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." ~Ecclesiastes 3:11

A spoonful of medicine...

Proverbs 17:22
A merry heart does good, like medicine,
But a broken spirit dries the bones.

Today I choose to be happy. Today I choose to laugh, to smile and to find fun in the ordinary.

One month...

One month has passed since you went to be with Jesus and left us all behind. One month of learning to be lonely. A month that feels like it was yesterday and that it has been forever all at the same time.

I've cried. Buckets. Rivers. Oceans.
I've screamed. Punched things - YOUR things.
I've cursed in ways that would make a sailor tell me to wash my mouth out.
I sleep in your shirts, surrounded by the dogs who try to keep me close.

After the initial tearing up things looking for important stuff that you forgot to put back where it belonged, I've left it all a disaster. Your stuff. Everywhere. Heaps of it. I yell at it and I punch it some more when I'm angry at you for going.

I'm mystified by the things you kept, the things you accumulated - and I'm overwhelmed because they make me hurt to see and yet it will hurt to not see them.

I know I told you this would happen for years as I begged, nagged & pleaded for you to take care of yourself the right way- I know this is the worst "I told you so" of my life. I didn't want to be right. I scream that, I cry that - the walls of this house will probably hold those cries forever. I wanted you to listen or to prove me wrong or simply just not die - not at 55. I thought there was time. Don't we always think there is time?

I'm mad at you for leaving, but I'm not mad at God. I won't be mad at God. I mourn for me, for our daughters, for our grandchildren. But God, oh my Father in Heaven, He made sure that this wouldn't be permanent. Way back in 1984 you chose Him and even though this hurts so badly, so painfully, so violently - He called you by name and you are His. So in spite of my grief you are more than okay, you are changed. You're seeing HIM. I know that God doesn't love us less because He took you away.

1 John 3:1-2 "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is."

The ride of my life...

Daring drops, steep ascensions, corkscrew turns...and all I wanted to ride was the lazy river.  I remember thinking a few months ago that life had been peaceful. I was wary because in my experience peaceful periods have been followed by a variety of stress-makers, anything from annoyances to tragedies. Sometimes it has been a season of things that can break breaking, ordeals with health, with children, with work, and other times it has been one death after another.

"A click clacking my heart keeps making an ominous sound

That chain keeps dragging me up just to drop me back down

I think I'm over the hump enough to see the other side

That's when another thought of you runs through my mind" ~Eric Church

When I was a child my family vacationed in Montreal and went to the remnants of the Expo ’67 World’s Fair. (Boy, do I have stories about this vacation such as staying at a Lithuanian monastery instead of a hotel). On that trip my brother and I chose to take a turn on a seemingly exciting but we thought mild ride called “The Turbo.” Once we were strapped in and it started moving, it didn’t seem like such a terrific idea anymore.  We were buckled – and I use that term loosely, like the buckles were – into an ovoid container with a cage like front. This was perched on a twisting arm which was connected to another twisting arm. The passenger vessel rotated, the arms rotated, and you, the silly person to get on this contraption, rotated up, down, sideways, over, in a diversity of motion that was enough to make you sick. Now that’s the point of most rides, right? To terrify you and make you feel ill but possibly exhilarated. However, this ride had a problem - the cage was not staying shut, the iron buckle bar was not holding us in. Every time it pitched us face forward to the ground from dizzying heights, it became more and more clear that we were about to die. We screamed, “Let us off! Let us off!” The maniacal carnie behind the controls smoked his cigarette and paid us no heed. Our parents demanded the ride by stopped. Nope. It continued. And continued. And continued. The sadistic operator probably enjoyed his power over two scared kids. Eventually, the ride ended – and with it any derring-do I may have had.

"Pain points his gun and I hold my hands up high

Off the edge I go

On this roller coaster ride" ~Eric Church

Oh, well. Today is a "Buck up, Buttercup" kind of day, in a buck up sort of week. I’ve walked my dogs and visited Pat’s grave daily. I filled out two tax forms where I had to check “single.” The first time I got all teary-eyed, the second time I handled it. I turned in my next-to-last assignments for my Master’s Degree and am finishing the benchmark – my degree is complete in 6 days with a 4.0 GPA. I scheduled my part of a field trip for my class, got my school logon, did some room organization, and some planning – and am so excited about meeting my students. I accepted a fitness instructor position at a really nice local gym – so for the next three Tuesday evenings I’ll be teaching a Power Yoga class and then in September I’ll have my own classes including a Kids Yoga class. I got my hair trimmed. I resigned as a substitute at most of my districts.  I played with grandkids, read stories in a tent, and chased Pokémon with one daughter, shopped with another. I’m about to get busy on the “thank you” notes that are waiting to be written. Step by step, I’ve propelled myself forward...although I strongly suspect it has been God carrying me along.

Job 17:9 says “The righteous keep moving forward, and those with clean hands become stronger and stronger.”

But I don't want to go to adventuring...

Texting with a friend this morning led me to a realization:  I'm a Hobbit and unfortunately, more in the Bilbo sense than in the Frodo. Gandalf approaches him with, "I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone."  "I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures," replies Bilbo. "Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!"  An unnamed writer says this, "And I can't say I much disagree! You have to be a little bit cracked to want to go on an adventure. Think about it. If you had the choice between a comfortable life where you have all the jammy muffins and frosted scones you could wish for, a warm home filled with creature comforts, a strong community--and sleeping outside on the rocky ground in the cold rain eating what sour berries you come across (and perhaps a mangy squirrel if you're lucky), risking life, limb, and happiness to accomplish some goal you think is for the greater good, which would you choose?" So I agree with Bilbo, "Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning!"

Experiencing this sudden change of life - the death of my companion of 34 years - is like being scooped up from a nice hobbit-life and dropped into the middle of an adventure in loneliness and survival that you did not sign up for. One minute, you're in the Shire with little Shire problems to overcome and the next, you're on your way to on some crazy adventure and you don't even know what its purpose is.  Now Frodo, he had a purpose and he steeled himself to destroy that ring because the fate of the world depended upon it. So this definitely isn't a case of being Frodo - and Frodo also had Sam, Merry and Pippin risking life and limb with him for the cause. Conviction dragged them out of their warm hobbit holes and into the wild. It's very different for me - I feel I'm just a standard Hobbit and by some crazy mistake got sent down a road to fight dragons and encounter goblins without exactly understanding the purpose. And somehow, someway I'm supposed to be viewing it as an adventure and not a trial.  I get occasional glimpses of something Tookish awakening inside me, wondering what is out in the Wild...but I'm still longing for the safety of my hobbit-hole and quiet hobbit life.

Gandalf makes this clear: “There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.”  Fun? Really? Leaving the Shire to head to Lonely Mountain doesn't seem like such a joyous journey at the present though I suspect its going to be very character building.

Proverbs 20:24 "The LORD directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?"
Jeremiah 10:23 "I know, LORD, that our lives are not our own. We are not able to plan our own course."

Grief as it staggers in stages

Grief is not a tame animal. It doesn't wax and wane with any predictability. It can consume and it can lurk. When it consumes me, I'm all-out crying or yelling. Sometimes, however, it lurks - I'll be having a moment that I'm "in" and it seems like grief is not on the agenda, then I'll feel its eyes on me, slowly the stealthy fingers tremble their way up my spine until I'm overtaken by shudders and tears. Whether it seizes me or not at that moment is not predictable; it's a capricious being.  There are, however, some sure behaviors that I know will unleash the flood of sorrow. There is "that look" - the one that people give you when they ask "How are you doing?" These are the people who know you well or have been through this themselves - a empathetic wavelength gets established and you cannot free yourself as "the look" pierces to your soul and you're caught. All masks are off and any calm facade is flung away.