healing me.

Open my eyes and let them see over and beyond fear and finality, insecurity and insignificance, loneliness and the letting go.

My heart must trust if it will go on.  I have to be able to be strongly weak, trusting that God is still God and that he is indeed good and aware.  The recoil of loss has been the posture of strength and holding it all together.  Into the eyes of my daughters drifting and grabbing for a solid something to hold them in the stormiest of emotions and the most frightful of dreams, I look with strength.  And they find solidness.  And they hold.  That strength is not my own though I have owned it.  It is Godly and it is given.  No man no matter the training, experience or fortitude can survive the pain of death present and grief of loss not leaving in the absence of God’s good grace and mercy.  It is just not possible.  Whether we see it or not or believe it or not, God is active always.  The smile of a friend, the compassion of a co-worker, the kindness of a stranger, the sun warm on a cool day, details just working out, all God’s handiwork and allowance of grace and strength in our lives.  We somehow make it through.  That somehow has a name.

I AM, it is.   God enough.   God always.   God forever.

It is indeed in this exactly and only that my healing is held.  Trust is the way to that healing always.  My prayer simple: open my eyes that I might see you through all and trust again despite the deepest wound and the fragility remaining.

I have seen the dawn.  Now I must hold the light.

Trust.   Healing.   Whole.  

Wanting tomorrow is not nearly enough to get me there.  Desiring God’s goodness is great, but short of having it.  Hoping to heal is only a start.  Writing about healing in my own heart has put my foot to the path, but only my foot to the path.  Trust is the activity of walking and the reality of wholeness in my life.  Not trusting leaves me as an observer standing still on the path, knowing but not doing, wanting but not having the wholeness needed to be fully alive again and compatible with the new day.

For me, to trust is to quiet the fears at rage inside.  To find home in the shelter that God is.  Anchor points that hold and remind me.

Psalm 23:6 “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life...” Goodness and mercy will follow me as I trust and move forward.  I will find these as I am moving not standing still waiting for them.

Psalm 91:1 “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” I find home in God and his words that give life and direction.  His shadow casts a magnificent terror upon all fears haunting and threatening me.

the beholder.

“If we shield the canyons from the wind, the beauty of a new creation may never be gained.” Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

[gallery link="file" columns="5"]

Grief never goes away.  To be repetitively honest, I hate writing about it.  Pull the covers back waking to a day supposedly new but eerily much of the same.  Grief wears deep ruts into life and moments lived.   Sunken parts of life pushed in by the weightiness of loss and maybe more so, what is scattered and disjointed remaining hold water stagnating and aged.  Like a rut on a path pushed lower than leveled earth and dirt leading through day and life.  An old friend’s words, dust soft on window blinds, the quiet of night, the hustle of day.  Grief, the most consistently sensed thing in life.  Present though I rudely ignore.  It doesn’t matter.  It didn’t ask for permission.  It doesn’t knock when entering my house.  Grief dwells.  And in day and in night, I repeat.  Words, explanations, descriptions.  I whine and complain and struggle to be free, to be like I used to be.  It’s hard not being who you used to be or reaching for it.  Vacillating between you then and you now.  Memories and familiarity and tomorrow and foreign swing me back and forth.

Then and now. I am both.  I am neither. I am lost and I am found at the same time.

Grief will not go.  It demands attention and forces emotion provoking ugly and inviting the gross, inexpressible parts of me.  In places raw and undefined we must walk revisiting ground not yet completely grown together loose like a dirt filled hole.  Some days are strewn together like a string of lights hanging freely in the air glowing carefree and hopeful.  I look over my shoulder and think, “Wow, I really am standing a long way away from that darkest day!  I have indeed somehow moved quite far!”  With courage taller and stouter and braver then, even the night lights up lively.  I see it, full and changing but better and inviting.  Puzzle pieces troubling and unfit, joining rough edges together.  Miraculous.  Grace.  Happiness.  A bulb goes out in random order.  It’s untelling and unanticipating.  The air lit excited dims and cools.  And I remember the wound still agape.  The memories burn seeping out.  Life is more vacant leaving space for thoughts to roam.  It is here I realize grief never leaves.  Watching us move through each day spying for the moment, waiting for its turn to interact.  And I wonder if grief will ever leave or has it fused into our DNA so closely knit into the fabric of who we are, I am, indistinguishable from happiness and joyfulness forever filtering life?  I don’t know.  It is here now and looks to be fairly stationary and set.

I am neither convinced this is good or bad.  Maybe indifferent, in reality-ful and meaningful ways ...good ways that feel bad like a vaccine conditioning your body to adapting infections.

It leaves me weaker but strengthens me. I feel like a babbling fool unable to shut up about losing, the loser complaining about the conditions keeping him from the win.  But in my babbling, I learn new words that are not my own.  They’re hopeful and deeper than any disturbance rustling around inside.  So this is who I am unshielded from the wind drying death, carving deep lines into my heart.  A new beauty growing.  Creation of something, someone very much like me but a life and death difference of a person.

The new must come.  It will no matter.  We are forced in life to be newly growing and stretching into the unknown, the untrodden or newly withering drooping closer to the dirt that will one day cover us.  Life and death are always roads traveled.  One can be alive, while not fully, but dying in memories and regrets and mistakes.  And so it is as simple as this: push forward into the unknown or die slowly in the dirt familiar.

Life belongs to the beholder, the traveler, the one who does not let go of mercy’s long reach.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most Hight will abide in shadow of the Almighty.  (Amen) Psalm 91:1

empty pockets.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] What of home draws us in but the hope of being, the want of becoming?  Like a steadied dock secure at the edge of waves tossing with random relent whether coming or going or sinking strength abandoned, home is escape from and into all at once.  Home is hope.  Chance to burn clean and chase the lingering, the demons that don’t give way to another day and bones kept together in shadows present hugging the papering walls of a heart deconditioned to the Hand holding.  They don’t quit.  Don’t quiet.  You just get older.  Home is safe ...or it was ...meaning it is.  Home, no matter how disturbed or how sound, always waits for return.  Homecoming.

On this road I learned to run.  Really run, not carefree and roaming, but with direction and time.  “Go!”  Lean into the wind still warm though Fall my breath uneasy and shallow, lines blurring.  Legs on fire as my chest caves and expands in rhythms unnatural.  I cross the line determined as end.  Breath shallow still gasping for something deeper and filling.  I walk back to the beginning lose myself in dreams of being faster than I ever really was.

“How was that?” “Good, man.  Line up.  Let’s do it again.  This time faster.”

It was here on this road adorned with the name, Colby, a warmth in life cooled to thinning memories that I bled.  Where my dad effectively managed time and molded resolve stubborn in my bones still.  The paved black road pushing hard against my feet only skimming and surfacing determined to move with greater speed each time.  It is the fifth or sixth sprint interval.  I’m becoming more of a machine driven by ticking time and endings running to produce earning time as fast as I can.  Typically, I ran to complete ten.  Right in the middle I was best, my fastest.  I loosened enough to move faster and then I weaned.  At ten, I was done completely in the sense of done.  Tired of running and tired of proving.  Done.

If I’m honest and see through, slightly opaque, that street, this one that caught and held my sweat and fears taught me.  I learned how to earn on that street.  I’ve been an earner pretty much ever since.

Acceptance. Time. Success. Progress. Love...

All earned by my attempts at being better.  Where is a heavy hand holding a destructive tool when you need it?  Some things must break to transfigure whole.

I am not patient.  Not for a lack of ease or an aggressive temperament, but a preoccupation with earning my keep and keeping what’s earned.  Proving, pushing, giving up when my empty attempts stack higher than my expectation.  Then I wean.  And I’m done.  Like barely standing straight after ten breathing busy and losing count.

'Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.'

Life is easy and so is home really.  We struggle and kick, moan and wince at days and events bigger and testier than the rest.  We judge life as harder but we are just holding and keeping.  Earning.  Leaving home and that street has been a slow unraveling to grace and ease.  'Come to me...'  when all I want is to recoil and fold ...when the hands of the watch stop with a click and I’m still running to the end.  That’s when.  Stop counting and straining and tangling with time and earning.  Rest and be well in the hope saving opening the door home to be human and honest again and to become an acceptor rather than an ever struggling earner.

home.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] Warm door knob waiting on cold nights.  Waiting.  Wanting.  Welcome.

Walls whisper greetings and memories both enchanting and unnerving.  Home is where the heart is and where treasure buried deep feeds the soil of one's heart, always and forever.  Some run fleeing the scene of life colliding in plain sight of a remembering rear view mirror.  The past on fire burning pain, the smoke rising shamefully.  The smell of soot and ash unwashable and unbearable.  So they run hard and fast for day different than past.  The rush away only thins blood and makes wide the wounds.  They run with covered faces, smiling.  Memories remain, smoldering heap of moments wished to be forgotten, strained to be lost.  Deep it feeds the soil.  The door knob always waiting to be opened.

Here's what the wise know:  Everyone breaks.  Some learn to break well.  The pieces collected buried purposefully and they feed the soil lush with newer life.

Home for me is quiet.  I always know who I am there.  The ground always warm with blood and tears and smiles and fears conquered.  I laid love there in the earth.  Fed the soil, waited for new birth.  A brother once alive taught me to live, swinging the bat through the cool, crisp fall air at countless pitches thrown by the man who made me better but has disappeared, supper ready always on time by the woman who first showed me to love through, a sister lifting my shadow to the size of a hero.  Home.  All of these and more.  Soil in my heart and bones.  Carried to day now.  Present.  Dwarfing tomorrow to a resolving happiness.

This land knows me well.  In ways I will always allow, it owns me.  When we embrace my feet on its ground, I remember well who I am and who I can be.

Pine needles and leaves.  Bruised ground where a wood stack once rotted down.  A chimney leak unsolvable.  Bricks the color of Mexico.  Life staked to an unwavering trust in faith, hope and love.

This is where I live.  The home that made me.

Truly it is good to be home.