FEAR and the sinking.

[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

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.