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.

With me.

I fell asleep last night with a smile on my lips.
I am so happy inside, happy like I laugh when no one is watching and sometimes I dance a little while I am smiling…and I even yell out sporadically in my car with pure glee.

He loves me.
Andrew loves me.
He picked me to be his wife.

I carry his invitation around in my pocket like a little secret. A promise wrapped in white gold around my finger.

He asked me.

To grow old with him and turn all wrinkly together.
To hike waterfalls, cook dinner, buy a house, jump out planes, race go-carts and sleep in hammocks in the afternoon…he wants to do all the little things and the gigantic things…with me.

And that makes me happy.

Dreamers who Overcome

I am excited to write this entry, sit back because you are in for a long one. It’s a bit of a story, an update, it is a little window into my everyday for the last couple of days, the last few weeks, the past months….9 months to be exact. That is when she called to tell me they were pregnant. I was getting on a plane to Africa for the summer so I was safe to tell. We had been praying for over two years for them to get pregnant….she wasn’t even sure if she would carry the baby through but she wanted me to know.

A lot can happen in 9 months, for me in the matter of these 9 months many things in my life changed – new dreams appeared, I graduated through stages, life and death occurred, my heart soared and fractured – but throughout all of this, a baby was growing inside of her….life was growing.

In a turn of events, my location moved from the East Coast to a house that when the blinds are open I can see the silhouette of my cousin’s belly as she walks through her own house across the street. These days have been priceless.

Many a morning I have sat with her and a cup of tea, as she cried over the baby’s stalling. I stare at her swollen belly as she swears to me it will never come….I think to myself, well where else is it going to go, it has to come.

It is similar in my life, in all of our lives, God’s promises, they seem to be swollen in my own belly as I scream at God and tell Him they will never come.

Labor began at home, with family all gathered and my cousin never looked more regal as we took turns holding her through contractions. Hours passed as I watched her coach her body to breathe through each pain. It mirrors to me our struggle, we are each birthing a story, and the only way it can be born is through pain.

Acelyn Nicole was born after 72 hours of labor.

Acelyn means Dreamer. Nicole means Overcomer.

I held her in my arms as she slept last night, thinking about the weight of her name. In each of our stories, through the pain of birthing greatness, we need more dreamers who overcome.

seeing him again

The first miracle might have been the snow we drove through…I mean snow in Texas!? I was delighted yet my delight paled in the thought of seeing him. I was so nervous. After three outfits, the only certainty was my favorite red coat that I wrapped tightly around my frame. Would he like it on me? Would he still think I was beautiful? Had he found another to love him better? It’s the feeling you have deep in your stomach when you know that you are about to see an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend after a couple of years. The insecurities run rampant in your mind. The difference here is that I still talk to him all the time, but the last three years have mostly been in anger and pain, little love. I was so nervous.

I walked into the dimly lit auditorium; I lost my breath….so scared to see Him. I remember the night so well, leaving him, with his kiss still on my lips. My mind spun…What if He doesn’t even come to see me? What if He is with someone else, a better lover? My fears were lost in a moment, before I could see His face, I was in His arms. His embrace brought tears and He held me, and never let go. There were no words, no songs, we just stayed there. I in His arms. Tears ran down both of our faces. He held me, the one who had hurt Him so much, who wounded His heart, who has been so cruel, yet His love fell on me like tears, not of pain, but of longing. Why hadn’t He found someone else after all this time? Why had He waited for my broken, lacking love? I had chosen other lovers. This whole time, He was still hoping for me.

There are no arms like those of a true lover.

The worship surrounded us and as I raised my eyes to Him, His longing found my shame. He kissed my forehead, there was no reason for shame. This was perfect love. When the tears ended, I saw His name on the screen. I don’t know how, but as I stayed in His arms, I knew He was holding each broken soul: holding the defeated man, the cutter, the motherless wife, the starving woman, the unfaithful lover….He held them, just like me. See He had been waiting, waiting for each of us to let Him love us.

The only words I was able to sing that night…..“hope which was lost now stands renewed…”