GRIEF

2 a : deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement

Someone I love very much is dying and I am sad to see her go.  She was diagnosed with cancer a mere two weeks ago and the girls and I visited last week.  I got a call last night to tell me the bad news - that the cancer is taking over - and as I stood in the kitchen, on the phone and crying, B and K came over, stood beside me and just hugged me.  They didn't know why I was crying.  They only knew their mom was upset, so they offered what they could.  I hung up the phone, explained through tears and accepted more hugs.

A bit later, we sat down at the table for dinner.  As our soup sat cooling, I asked K to pray.  She bowed her head, started to pray and after a few sentences burst into tears.  "I'm just too sad to pray," she sobbed, doubled over with grief.  I knew just what she meant.  Sometimes there are no words.  In the Anglican church, there is a breath prayer that I sometimes use at times like this.  As you inhale, you pray, "Lord, have mercy" and on exhale, "Christ, have mercy."  Even that prayer is hard when your breath comes in gasps from crying.  Like K, I find I am just too sad to pray.

My mind is foggy, unclear.  I've wandered through today in a daze, doing laundry because it seems to be a task I can somewhat manage.  But my heart is heavy.  I keep thinking of the person I love - of her house, her dishes, the things she likes to drink and eat.  My daughters have found me crying more than once and I've just explained that I'm still sad.

I told K last night as she cried that it was good for her to cry.  Her crying meant she loved and was sad.  This is worth our tears, but that doesn't make it any easier to bear.  We live hours away and can't drop by the hospital with a book, a card, flowers.  I am so thankful for our visit last week, for the gift that was to us.  All we can really do now is remember and grieve. 

And somehow that just doesn't seem like enough.

DISTANCE

5 b : capacity to observe dispassionately

We are currently in Wisconsin visiting family.  Our drive here is a long one.  Google maps will tell you it takes 10 hours.  The reality is that it's nearly impossible to make it in 10 hours.  I think in my 20 years of marriage and courtship, J and I have made the drive in under 10 hours only once - and that drive concluded in the wee hours of the morning, taking us through Chicago around 2 AM.  That's just about the only way to get through Chicago quickly - do it when everyone else is asleep.

My children are champion travelers and for this trip I spent some serious prep time doing my best to ensure a stress free drive time.  Each girl got a box packed with markers, pens, colored pencils, a new journal, stickers and a pencil sharpener.  They also got a bag with more sugar than they are normally allowed in a week's time.  Additional travel tools? Library books, Playaways, a few math worksheets, two Pillow Pets and one Snuggie.

One advantage of such a long trip is that there's time to think.  Plenty of it, in fact.  On the drive north on Thursday, I was looking at some of Southern Illinois' fall foliage.  (I know it was Southern Illinois because there aren't (m)any trees in Central or Northern Illinois.)  I saw a gorgeous line of trees from a distance and kept my eye trained on one tree as we got closer.  I noticed something.  The beauty of fall trees is a cumulative thing.  One fall leaf, even one fall tree, is not all that beautiful.  You might find the occasional exception, but fall's beauty is really seen best from a distance.  As I noticed this, I got a flash of a truth much bigger.  I think God sees our lives the way I see the fall trees.

The bible talks about God's ways not being our ways and his thoughts not our thoughts.  I've often fallen back on that when I go through a difficult time or when I see others walk through difficulty, but I've never grasped the concept in such a graphic way.  Those ugly leaves on the tree of my life?  They aren't ugly when seen alongside hundreds of other leaves and the trees representing the lives of others around me.  Or maybe they are still ugly - nothing will change that - but their individual disfigurement ends up being less important when seen alongside everything else.

This was a comfort.  Everywhere I turn lately, I seen pain.  I have friends, family members and acquaintances who are variously watching family members die, walking with those they love through illness, struggling through the loss of a job, recovering from surgery and receiving cancer diagnoses.  Not one of these circumstances is OK with me.  Each and every one hurts my heart.  I long for a day when mothers do not outlive their children, a day when there is no pain that needs management, a day when we all know - not just rationally, but with our whole being - that we are loved not for what we do but for who we are.  I long for a day when we are not faced with saying good-bye to those we love.

I'll be honest: I want to be able to see the beauty now.  I want a distance that I will never have in this lifetime.  I don't know why people I know and love are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.  I don't know why and I don't know how to comfort or console them.  I have no words of wisdom to offer, no scripture references that explain it all away.  Because the truth is that there is pain and there is hurt and there is ugliness in this world of ours.  I don't know why.  I'll probably never know why.  And a glimpse of an idea that momentary troubles (that don't feel momentary at all) are leaves that manage to make something beautiful isn't much to cling to right now.  But it's all that I have, so I'm offering it humbly to you, just in case you're walking through your own valley right now.

ALPHABET

1. the letters of a language in their customary order.

 

When we visited my parents for Thanksgiving, we exchanged Christmas gifts.  One lovely gift that I received and already love is book of Celtic Daily Prayer.   It's beautiful inside and out - gorgeous cover, thoughtful words, meaningful content.  Many things about it resonate with me, but one of today's readings particularly struck me.  It tells the tale of a Jewish farmer who mistakenly is stuck in his field during Sabbath.  When his rabbi admonishes him and asks whether he at least spent the time praying, the farmer says, "Rabbi, I am not a clever man.  I don't know how to pray properly.  What I did was simply to recite the alphabet all day and let God form the words for Himself."

 

This stopped me in my tracks.  I make things so complicated sometimes.  

 

 

 Why not just give God what I have and let him form the words?  

 

Why not give him my small successes (laundry, grocery shopping, home schooling and garlic cheese grits for dinner all in one day), my roller coaster of emotions (content with a quiet morning, thankful for a productive day, excited to have my daughters home, frustrated at their sniping at each other), my good, my bad and especially my ugly.  He knows what words need to be formed from the alphabet of my life, from the alphabet of my heart.

 

 

I'm trying to be intentional about Advent this year.  I figure my girls are old enough to do more than just sing Christmas Carols with me.  They can take turns reading scripture, listen to me read A Little History of the World to better understand what the world was like when Jesus was born, read Monday compline with me.  I'm lighting every candle we have, trying to make our environment beautiful and thoughtful.  I want the letters that comprise my alphabet to be ones that show my great anticipation in this season - for Christmas Eve's traditions, for Christmas morning's celebration, for Christ's return one day.

 

But here's the thing - the farmer didn't even construct words with the alphabet.  He simply offered them, as they were and trusted God would know what to do with them.  Even as I write this post, I'm trying to make my own words instead of just saying the alphabet of me over and over.  I want to be able to let God write my story instead of trying so desperately to wrestle the pen from his hand.  I want to have my alphabet on my lips and nothing more.  Nothing more.