Wasting Away into Glory

I freaked out.
Squealed out loud in the ladies room.

I saw my first gray hair. It is brilliant. It seems to only be half committed to being silver, it is more of a chestnut and silver swirl…so delightful.

With this little aged wonder, come my mixed emotions. Do I pull it out, hide its existence or wear it proudly? So I carefully place it back in it’s home at least until I have had time to show Andrew.

God is so random, minutes ago, on my way to this truth telling mirror, I was thinking about when I would earn the honor and grace of sitting with people in their pain. At times, their anguish is so palpable I want to reach across the room and put it into my lap…but this would not do…my desire to fix them would never heal them.

So I sit.

And I wonder what to do with this tension. Pondering if I will ever be wise enough.

Wise like my Memaw.

In all of her brilliant glory, which is mostly encompassed by her rest with others and even more so herself. She is woman. She is mother. She is friend. She is beauty.

I want to be these things.

She tells me that she worked hard for her crown of wisdom. So today as I stand in my reflection holding onto what might be only a change in hormones, something of genetics, and I smile.

Although I am terrified to stand in this woman called me, as I know daily my body is losing the battle against gravity. I realize it is the only path to beauty. Beauty that when fermented becomes glory.

God, though seemingly unkind in allowing divinity to be cradled in humanity was actually breathe-taking.

Here is to the courage it takes to trust a God who made our physical beauty fade on purpose.



A Tribute to the Bravery in Dying

His respiratory machine and her repeated stories are the background music you hear at my work when you are put on hold.

In the biopsychosocial field of medical care, I spend hours upon hours with people who need assistance. I have done things only mothers would do and I have done things no mother should have to do.

Hygiene. Cleaning. Diagnosis. Toilet Duty. Heart and respiratory monitoring. Exercises. Story-telling. Lifting. Stages. Assisting. Moving. Medications. Changing. Praying. Watching. Listening.

I have listened to memories of strangers that consist of mumbled words with three-to-five minute pauses. In the midst of disease, watched these soldiers struggle to tell their story through memory loss. Fighting the deterioration of the sinews in their brain so one more person might hear about their causes on this earth.

In a few cases, I get to be that person.

It has been an honor. To watch people in need forced to allow me to help them. My job is to offer dignity when there is no dignity to be found. I fight to bring hope when no one else is hoping. Inviting comfort when there is only the accompaniment of pain.

And then after months, maybe a even a year of exhaling life comes the bravery of
death.

Oh death, you silent threat. As if aging were not enough to test a man. You come to demand our humility. I have watched you yet again creep into test tubes and through organs to stare down augustness and demand to be noticed.

It is a confrontation of the soul that few are allowed to witness. It is here that bravery is more present than I have ever seen.

His breath is slowing. The morphine has kicked in again.

Death is near.

Glory, even closer.

Tripping to the rhythm of you

I am watching a 2 year old dancing in only his diaper in the waiting room at the hospital. We are both here to get an immunization, but I am the only one of the two of us, who knows.
I wish I could dance while waiting for my shot.

I love being here. Seattle. I love the city and my friends. I love feeling like I am starting something of my own, and it is good.

I only miss the South on holidays when I know my family and friends are gathered together and I am missing their laughter and the growing moments of their lives.

Other than those moments, I love this new family I have, this husband I now do life with and our tripping over each other in attempt to stand up in Marriage, even for just a few moments at a time.

We make small, gigantic steps and we stop and smile at each other, with the tears still drying on our cheeks. We smile not because we are ahead of few and way behind others, but now there is a “we” and we are.

And a few months into it, it feels like we might learn the dance after all.

Marriage and Jesus have been dancing near us, Andrew and I are just watching, wondering if we will ever be able to look like that when we dance, to move with such grace and rhythm. To laugh and twirl, in the midst of stepping on the others toes.

Marriage turns to us and says, “Just let loose, be free.”

Andrew and I look at each other, wondering if we have ever felt that free on our own, better yet with each other.

Jesus reaches down to help us up and says, “The secret is, Marriage dances with freedom because she knows I will never drop her.”

“I will never drop you.”

Haiti

She is like a foreigner to me. Lying there in the stillness of the morning.

Silence.

Although what I fear, I crave. I want to be silent. To sit here on my 1970’s burnt orange couch and click away on my keyboard, spelling out words that mean less than I would like them to mean.

Haiti.

I feel you.

Torn down by your faulty infrastructures. Maimed by your concrete wreckage. Smothered and murdered by the earth’s trembling.

Haiti.

I am sorry.

How can I know you if I am not with you? And how can I think of you while I am here - it makes me crazy.

To know your breath is being stolen and I cannot find the culprit.

God?
Nature?
Evil?

You, Haiti, have been crying for so long now, maybe the shaking of your country was you yourself finally telling the world they cannot ignore your tragedies any longer.

Maybe you had enough of no one helping your hopelessness, maybe God heard your cry and He demanded the world to finally help His children.

Probably this had nothing to do with nature or some have said punishment, maybe some starving Haitian child cried out and God said; this is enough. You will be heard. You will be helped. I thought by now someone would have come to save you, but no. This time I will demand them to hear your cries.

And the earth quaked with their pleas.

Maybe this time we will listen.

And possibly we might be more aware and convicted to those in need so that God doesn’t have to demand us to extend our wealthy hands.