worry and the waste.

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"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  ...And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life ...or a single cubit to his stature?” Matthew 6:25-27

Falling in and out of several dreams does not make for restful sleep.  Somehow in the flash of dreams and characters and unfitting scenes, all of the fabricated and half truths melted into one shifting timeline moments before my alarm sounded.  A house never visited nestled in country quiet, dark and bare... a crumbling staircase, the first starting nine feet off the ground... the new tattoo on my arm, a symbol and reminder of hope and perseverance, skin tattered and worn... a cousin with a different face, a friend familiar I’ve never known, a plot undiscoverable, I’m just running somewhere either to or from, chasing or escaping, but definitely running.  I’m breathing heavy, eyes closed, in another world where things may be more actual than when I wake eyes opened.  I woke tired.  And worried.

There’s plenty in life that does not make complete sense to me in the current.  Much to leave to worry and thieving nights.  Distance, that is what we worry about.  Where our feet stand and where we should be or want to be or need to be, that is the distance.  The money we have and the money we need gives room for more worry about our job and our future and our family and our happiness, our goals and expectations.  And then worry really opens the box.

What about us, who we really are?  Am I enough?  The weight and value of my existence, do they matter?  Do I matter?

Worry is a descending staircase unending into the darkness of doubt.  The more worry, the less faith.  Moments wasted.  Worry the culprit.  We, the worrier, not the lifeless activity of worrying, but our engagement and giving in to it.  In worry we waste minutes, hours, whole days and weeks.  All moments given us to live and discover, to succeed and fail and succeed, to make a path and leave a mark on the years and patch of earth we dwell.

With ease we run in circles carving deeper lines of worry about everything and anything, our faith diminishing while life keeps a straight line.

Life is filled with unresolve, unfigurable, breaks and pauses and yet to be determined occasions.  There is so much to worry about especially when we must wait, cannot see or even imagine an outcome better than worse.  But there is faith and trust and living with eyes closed.

Morning begins me already sunk deep in worry.  How are the kids, really?  Will we be happy finally?  Will I get from here to there and set my feet literal in dreams hanging still?  All answers ringing maybe.  None more valuable than the life added in moments and occasions.  Detached from the answers or resolve is hope full in each day dark and light, heavy and whole.  Make no mistake, each day a gift given to be opened and lived.  The next another gift all of its own to be opened and lived after in the moment given.

And so with this new day, I let go of yesterday clinging stinking of both what is and what is no more and I clinch what is given.  As many times necessary, I repeat this action.  In my life, it happens to be necessary very much and often.

exactly where I put it.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] Endings.  Life all about endings and completion in the form of accomplishment and achievement.  Hours yielded to those and things not owning our lives, but we give it, our lives and how we live it, to that which is fleeting and temporal.  No end in sight, but a brighter, happier horizon told to be somewhere out there if we just keep giving to that which can never give back lasting or missed moments or happiness.  Then you wake up one day a stranger in your own life, unknown to those and that which is lasting and forever.

Pictures must be evidence of life lived and moments shared connecting not merely observed.  The form and shape and life filling every frame, I want to know them, give to it and forever be connected, not simply associated.  It matters.  Life is passing and will not stop but we control flow and speed of time moving.

I work in a very corporate world which is good and not evil, but will take as much and sometimes more than you give.  A friend offered me a job a while back.  In every way better, but one which I didn’t notice initially.  Pay was substantial.  Potential was unreal.  “In ten years, if everything works like I’m planning, I’ll be set financially.”  That sounded amazing.  Who doesn’t want promising potential that is very real such as what my friend is banking on?!  But.  There is always a cost.  No shortcuts lead rightly to happiness and fulfillment.  The but, the hours and commitment required.  Longer hours.  Much, much longer than the day burns bright and warm.  Always available.  The but and true cost to the potential of great reward and a set future which is never really set no matter how hard we try or how much our brow pours out, time.  It would have owned me as I gave for what I affirmed as the greater good.  An ending and glowing completion in the form of accomplishment and achievement, status and success.

So where does the time go?

Lost in shuffling feet and looking eyes searching for brighter day, time is given and discarded.  The beauty of aging in my daughters’ eyes, the sound of unhinged laughter disconnected from circumstance, their unknowing still and needing always, the intimacy of being wanting to be held still, sleepy mornings rushing for school, ballet, basketball, the park, bicycles, hiking, crayon drawings, family cook night, date nights ...all, and so much more, given for what doesn’t love back and only leaves.  There is one ending trumping all and for me, it will be three in the form of hands holding, open to receive and give love.  Time never meant to be master, but we bow.  Time to us given as a gift to make beauty lasting in the space allowed us.

‘Wake up today,’ ringing in my ears.  ‘Be alive right here,’ beating in my heart.

One day you will wake up and notice life grown and mature all around you.  On that morning, may our hearts be full and time a friend and may memories of days behind lived as fully as we could in the time allowed warm us.  I want to know my daughters and them know me better.  My biggest regret would be for time to distance us because I gave too much room for what never really mattered in the first place.

So where does the time go? Exactly where I put it.

surrender.

[gallery link="file" columns="5"] No matter how well you put it together.  The height of the work of your hands, the weight, significance and value, the pride of day and sweat of your brow... accomplishment, possession, power... nothing is as meaningful as opening your hands.  Letting go of what you cherish.  Feeling the wind move through fingers once clinched in defiance and desperation holding white knuckled strong to rust and rot.  It all goes away.  I mistake moments and memories as forever.  I hold tight and run in circles chasing moments fleeing.  The moments don’t matter.

Sunlight turns the page of a new day.  Its warmth wakes the day, ushers in change as beams of light flood and fill, search and kill the silence and cool of night when memories are awake and moments live forever.  I feel asleep in yesterday.  The ease of then invites sleep.  Some days I do not make it past morning.  Waking to a new day is just too uncomfortable.  I go back to bed before noon just going through the rest of my day in motions.  I am indifferent.  I am defiant.  In protest.  I want today and long for tomorrow but I put a heavy foot in yesterday because it’s easier and I know who I am or who I was then.  Rotting.  Rusting.  I don’t want to be there.  Knowing where else to be, now, is foreign.

Foreign.  Free.  It comes at a cost.  Yesterday.

Bury your broken heart into the dirt of today.  Every day.  Surrender.  Lose to the current swiftly running foaming grace and mercy and finding.  Let go of breaking branches.  Sink deeply into love today while adoring the beauty behind.

Little eyes are waiting, watching and wanting.

Today’s heaviness relents to the reminder of surrender and the release of all my hands try to hold onto.


'...
but joy comes with the morning.' Psalm 30:5, ESV

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

healing me.

Open my eyes and let them see over and beyond fear and finality, insecurity and insignificance, loneliness and the letting go.

My heart must trust if it will go on.  I have to be able to be strongly weak, trusting that God is still God and that he is indeed good and aware.  The recoil of loss has been the posture of strength and holding it all together.  Into the eyes of my daughters drifting and grabbing for a solid something to hold them in the stormiest of emotions and the most frightful of dreams, I look with strength.  And they find solidness.  And they hold.  That strength is not my own though I have owned it.  It is Godly and it is given.  No man no matter the training, experience or fortitude can survive the pain of death present and grief of loss not leaving in the absence of God’s good grace and mercy.  It is just not possible.  Whether we see it or not or believe it or not, God is active always.  The smile of a friend, the compassion of a co-worker, the kindness of a stranger, the sun warm on a cool day, details just working out, all God’s handiwork and allowance of grace and strength in our lives.  We somehow make it through.  That somehow has a name.

I AM, it is.   God enough.   God always.   God forever.

It is indeed in this exactly and only that my healing is held.  Trust is the way to that healing always.  My prayer simple: open my eyes that I might see you through all and trust again despite the deepest wound and the fragility remaining.

I have seen the dawn.  Now I must hold the light.

Trust.   Healing.   Whole.  

Wanting tomorrow is not nearly enough to get me there.  Desiring God’s goodness is great, but short of having it.  Hoping to heal is only a start.  Writing about healing in my own heart has put my foot to the path, but only my foot to the path.  Trust is the activity of walking and the reality of wholeness in my life.  Not trusting leaves me as an observer standing still on the path, knowing but not doing, wanting but not having the wholeness needed to be fully alive again and compatible with the new day.

For me, to trust is to quiet the fears at rage inside.  To find home in the shelter that God is.  Anchor points that hold and remind me.

Psalm 23:6 “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life...” Goodness and mercy will follow me as I trust and move forward.  I will find these as I am moving not standing still waiting for them.

Psalm 91:1 “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” I find home in God and his words that give life and direction.  His shadow casts a magnificent terror upon all fears haunting and threatening me.

the beholder.

“If we shield the canyons from the wind, the beauty of a new creation may never be gained.” Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

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Grief never goes away.  To be repetitively honest, I hate writing about it.  Pull the covers back waking to a day supposedly new but eerily much of the same.  Grief wears deep ruts into life and moments lived.   Sunken parts of life pushed in by the weightiness of loss and maybe more so, what is scattered and disjointed remaining hold water stagnating and aged.  Like a rut on a path pushed lower than leveled earth and dirt leading through day and life.  An old friend’s words, dust soft on window blinds, the quiet of night, the hustle of day.  Grief, the most consistently sensed thing in life.  Present though I rudely ignore.  It doesn’t matter.  It didn’t ask for permission.  It doesn’t knock when entering my house.  Grief dwells.  And in day and in night, I repeat.  Words, explanations, descriptions.  I whine and complain and struggle to be free, to be like I used to be.  It’s hard not being who you used to be or reaching for it.  Vacillating between you then and you now.  Memories and familiarity and tomorrow and foreign swing me back and forth.

Then and now. I am both.  I am neither. I am lost and I am found at the same time.

Grief will not go.  It demands attention and forces emotion provoking ugly and inviting the gross, inexpressible parts of me.  In places raw and undefined we must walk revisiting ground not yet completely grown together loose like a dirt filled hole.  Some days are strewn together like a string of lights hanging freely in the air glowing carefree and hopeful.  I look over my shoulder and think, “Wow, I really am standing a long way away from that darkest day!  I have indeed somehow moved quite far!”  With courage taller and stouter and braver then, even the night lights up lively.  I see it, full and changing but better and inviting.  Puzzle pieces troubling and unfit, joining rough edges together.  Miraculous.  Grace.  Happiness.  A bulb goes out in random order.  It’s untelling and unanticipating.  The air lit excited dims and cools.  And I remember the wound still agape.  The memories burn seeping out.  Life is more vacant leaving space for thoughts to roam.  It is here I realize grief never leaves.  Watching us move through each day spying for the moment, waiting for its turn to interact.  And I wonder if grief will ever leave or has it fused into our DNA so closely knit into the fabric of who we are, I am, indistinguishable from happiness and joyfulness forever filtering life?  I don’t know.  It is here now and looks to be fairly stationary and set.

I am neither convinced this is good or bad.  Maybe indifferent, in reality-ful and meaningful ways ...good ways that feel bad like a vaccine conditioning your body to adapting infections.

It leaves me weaker but strengthens me. I feel like a babbling fool unable to shut up about losing, the loser complaining about the conditions keeping him from the win.  But in my babbling, I learn new words that are not my own.  They’re hopeful and deeper than any disturbance rustling around inside.  So this is who I am unshielded from the wind drying death, carving deep lines into my heart.  A new beauty growing.  Creation of something, someone very much like me but a life and death difference of a person.

The new must come.  It will no matter.  We are forced in life to be newly growing and stretching into the unknown, the untrodden or newly withering drooping closer to the dirt that will one day cover us.  Life and death are always roads traveled.  One can be alive, while not fully, but dying in memories and regrets and mistakes.  And so it is as simple as this: push forward into the unknown or die slowly in the dirt familiar.

Life belongs to the beholder, the traveler, the one who does not let go of mercy’s long reach.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most Hight will abide in shadow of the Almighty.  (Amen) Psalm 91:1