[gallery link="file" columns="5"] FEAR: The best behind me. FEAR: Life will always be this way, shadowed in loss. FEAR: My daughters always wounded learn to survive, emotionally maimed. FEAR: All goodness is fleeting and happiness constantly reframing. FEAR: Love past will suffice. FEAR: I will not be enough. FEAR: These fears and more will condition me to loss, shrink me to small, shell me.
I am dangerously holding disappearing beneath wave’s surface foaming tossing and beating losing and dreaming eyes that uncover the hand folding the lights bright blinking
I am afraid of the door closing fading in the sound creaking bending and bowing seeping and hoping my hand warm on the knob turning yesterday leaving
Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
The wind no more. The waves still and inanimate reflecting sun as glass. Their feet still soaked. Hearts still pounding. Breaths still drawing deep and out of rhythm. His eyes disturbingly calm as if nothing ever did happen giving little value to the panic of moments before. He’s wet, too. And he gets it, the moment before. His eyes so calm and seemingly disconnected did see waves and squint in howling wind, but they saw something else. Now. Afterward even then.
‘Why are you afraid’ invites us out of wind and wave and panic and dread and finish and into his moment standing now. Afterward even then.
Staring at the day wondering when it will release, waiting for things and people and love to all make sense again. To be well fit for the life so bright just right there at my doorstep, but tripping over toys and clothes and books and dreams while trying to open the door. That is grief. Excusing yesterday and wishing it well. Embracing now and forthcoming holding it so tight and familiar. Wanting so badly for that to be now. But that is not rescue or reason. That is reward.
So what, then? Faith. Have you none still?
These are my fears minus a few howling throughout the day darkening my sight, damning tomorrow in the tumult now. These are the things that must be let go if I am going to do more than write and hope for tomorrow.
There are things now maybe ruined by my hand not letting go of fear my eyes gazing into the storm giving reality to what ifs and hope nots. Fear becomes us when we just cannot, will not let go and when we run around in panic that the settling of how things now will apparently always be. Fear became me and changed me altering words and sight. The disease of losing is fear not loss. Loss is the lasting reality left in the wake of fear.
Grief is faith. It is releasing what can no longer be had and opening to newness in time. To trust his eyes standing there right in front of me. He’s wet, too, dripping with the moment we are both in together. And all of him, the eyes calm, him stained constant with the moment whispers comfortably, ‘Why are you afraid?’
FEAR is a thief with pockets full of surrender. ASSURANCE: II Tim 1:7; Mark 4:40