a confession.

::I’m not always okay. Days hang without home in the quiet.  Not all days, some.  I drift out with the tide receding, fleeing from shore, the sand on fire.  And all I want to do is float.  Maybe sink a little, too.

It gets lonely not forgetting.

The woman who was my wife, whom I loved fully and forever, died.

I remember what’s been done, how life would not stop, how her body would not heal, how I trusted God only with words while my heart seethed betrayal.  Yes, I remember.

I remember that I’m okay with what’s been done and in days laid in waste and wait, those words trusting bloomed alive.  I know that it is not my doing, but His strength continually coming into its own.

::I do not need to always be okay.

My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. (2 Cor 12:10, The Message)

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3, NIV)

a patient reminder.

Patience is a virtue slowly grinding to dust impulse and taming wild irrational beats of heart and emotion. We hurry, rush to ends, often preferring what’s fast over lasting.  Houses dug into sand dependent on the tide rising and receding.  The poverty of rush is just that.  Lives always shifting.  Mine, a pace bent on sprinting, panting breath and often missing eyes.

Good things come to those who wait because they are slow, deliberate, intentional and patient with life.  They are constant in wait, protected in storm and growing through it all.  The rush of circumstance always in flux do not move them because circumstance is not what owns them.

I’ve written about it many times before, but for the sake of now, I remind myself again.  Wait is action, not static and stagnate.  To wait is to choose a response of pause or steady continue until the right time presents itself.

In each of my passing days, there lies a drive, partly panicked, to run back or rush ahead out of the moment into another.  I want to be somewhere else and have it all figured out, be more established and further down the road in life.  I always envision life to be better there.  It will never magically just be better there.

Life is real now.  And tomorrow is shaped today.

The imagery helping me to slow and trust and dig into today fully is my heart as a garden.  Leave a garden alone in neglect and weeds grow.  Overgrown, it sets unbalanced.  Growth and beauty stunted.  But tended to daily, it has all reasonable chance to flourish and give evidence of life.

The garden is beautiful because of cultivation.  Hands dirty and dig into the soil planting seeds and investing time giving cause for health both now and into tomorrow.

All good things come to those who actively wait now.

A garden is a grand teacher.It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. Gertrude Jekyll

crucifixus.

a splinter finds its way inruptured sky, once barren womb unknown man words land without home a seed in dry soil blood and water will give birth to the greatest mystery ever known and they will know

in the dust settled a bending water cleansing dirtied hands hearts stained, color of pride all run lost every hand helped push deep nails in wood through blood and bone you. me. them.

a bead runs slowly, blood and sweat, man and not racing the speed of love down the earthen beam to kiss the ground swallowing

the darkest dusk, eve of hopeless night they will all know their hearts cover their eyes for tonight death stands over all

et incarnatus est de spiritu sancto

Mark 15:22-25 Matt. 27:51-56 Rom. 5:6-8

there and someday.

“One day is worth a thousand tomorrows.” Benjamin Franklin

Now defines there.

Everyone wants to get there.  There, a place nestled away waiting in a future day.  When troubles have subsided and problems figured out and all that we need, we have.  What a glorious day when future arrives washing all worries aside and displacing every cursed moment!  All counted as well when we cross that line out of this moment grinding relentless and long into the next chapter of our lives.  Ease erases difficult and alleviates pains.  So we think and so we live for there and someday.

I strain through the day now to look ahead missing the details that are steps leading there.  Honestly, I don’t always want to be here now because being here isn’t always easy.

Book deadline, publisher to find, work projects due, blog schedule to keep to, etc., all floating around what truly matters.   I want to be there where things are better and resolved and inviting.

I find myself living this way.  I imagine the same holds true for you as well.

It is quite easy to let go of the day spoiling in familiar problems and nagging issues for something better ahead.

There is now, only matured and measured by days lived behind.  The settled idea of life ahead of us being better is the draw, but the reality comes crushing when days we live without seemingly getting one step closer only seem to pile high.

Two problems with getting to there.

The first and most telling of a person’s likelihood of actually reaching that day brighter in life, “What is there?”  Happiness swings unhinged, tossed always by circumstance and situations, by feeling, not love lasting and an idea of some glorious untouchable refuge waiting ahead.  “My marriage will be better when the kids are a bit older.”  Life will be easier when I get the promotion.”  In the well observed, ringing words of Christopher Wallace, ‘mo money, mo problems’.  If what your hands hold now do not give cause for happiness, lasting joy and satisfaction may very well always escape you, no matter the moment.  Life spinning in the day-to-day from one to the next all feeling the same.  All the while, hoping to get there.  Somewhere better.  A brighter day ambiguously floating in your heart.  That is the way to lose in life.  Living for there undefined.  Hoping to be rescued out of mundane circumstance, sinking today.  You must be working toward something defined.  Life is now.  Only so much can exist in the promise of something better ahead.

Now defines there.  What lies ahead relies much on how you live now.  Waiting will not get you there.  Wanting will not either.  There is found by those who live now walking toward something defined.  In each day, joy exists but often overshadowed by discontentment and wanting.  Many live with the illusion that today is not as worthy of living as tomorrow.  Waiting and wanting; living less, missing it all and never going to get there.  Not one day better is found by not living.  There and someday come to those consistent souls who push on through thick and thin and sinking moments with the sight ahead in view but not as worthy as now.  Life comes to those who live.

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Matthew 6:34, The Message)

fading into the narrative.

“...He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.”Mark 10:17-22

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Eyes slowly open.  Feel around for the snooze button ...again.  Roll out of bed, breathe in deep, sigh, feet on floor, morning.  New day.  From one to the following, every day a new day.  Grace.  The chance to wake to a blank slate, another try.  Restart.

Did you wake embracing grace, ready to start new, unbound to all behind or roll out of bed already tired, still reeling from yesterday or last week, behind pace, day running steps ahead from the start?

All of us continue into each day heavily influenced and shaped by our past.  What we value, our ethos and all that makes us and learned and accepted habits, we hold to them and honor them with how we live.  We find our way and navigate through life maintaining our narrative, recorded in days done and extending ahead.  Your narrative.  Mine.  All of us live in routine.

We nurture what we know, see the world and situations similarly each day as we look into the mirror each morning and see the same person.  Little change, only slight variances, but for the most part, no deviations.  Safely, we maintain what has carried us this far.  But to what end?  The gaze telling, always hinting at more buried in the forming lines on our faces and in our lives.

He looked into future eyes seeing the greatest deviance conspiring against all he held high.  The dry wind blowing between them, all history hanging.  Eternity inviting.  A man of wealth and worth and noble accomplishment, owning more than enough, but belonging to an emptying story lacking life meaningful.  Looking into the mirror, seeing the same man as the day before holding to what he had and all that he held, fading into the narrative, his, owning him.  Jesus’ reply welcoming him to deviate from his story holding, "There's one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me."

The man heavy in heart, fading into the narrative, walked away bound to a path of the past, locked on course always lacking. “He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.”

Your story is not yet complete.  That needs to hold high, defining value in your story unfolding.  Blossoming in each day is the opportunity to write your narrative based upon how you choose to live now.  History behind you supporting, not defining.  Define yourself by the words you write today.

i am not.

I am a mere speck, a glowing flicker, a passing moment.

Make much more out of it and the world gravitates around me.  My hands outstretch with expected readiness to receive all that life somehow and for whatever reason seems to owe me.  Me.  Diminish this truth to an ignorable, insignificant value as if I do not matter in the grander scheme of life unfolding, and no recognizable worth blooms.  Fruitless seed barren.  Miscarried dreams.  Me.  

The truth sets outside, apart from us.

In my life floating, freely successful by my account, God became more of a tame, latent, distantly ambiguous form in days mostly uneventful and unneeding of his activity.  Very simply, much of my life did not demand faith or trust or belief in anything outside of what I could control or withstand.  Each day unfolded compartmentalized and organized into a sort of list defined and measured by goals, expectations, desires, dreams, fears and so on.   Heaven a packaged, rationalized part of my consciousness.  I, the center, shaped my world with moral cues creating boundaries and cause and effect like expectations.

Do this and expect that.  Don’t do that and get this.  

A simplistic conscious driven mental eco-system influenced by Jesus, but mostly led by me.  Smeared footsteps in the mud of life’s decisions, predominantly mine, determined by what seemed right through my filtered, earthen understanding.

I AM. i am not.

I will never grasp the full depth of God’s continually active love for me or the width of grace with which he finds me.  Lying low in dust collecting old on the floor broken, mishandled by my own doing, lost again, a sight of sure pity, a mound of a mess ...again, his grace races deep all the way below me and rises.  Barnstorming straight ahead sure of conquer and success when the day is mine, my spine straightens with pride, eyes glaze confidently, my glass raises hastily, he waits knowing fully that I will need him soon completely ...again.

In his rescuing and reaching and my lifting and lostness, a shift occurred moving me from the center of all, me as the holder of life, to the peripheral of me, the beginning of God.  This is one of the main running themes in the book I am writing: God as the unmovable center faithfully maintaining, always unchanging.  Tragedy awakened me.  Love found me.  Grace did the lifting.  It was the shifting of God out of my life as ‘my god‘ and the re-entry of God into my context as the center and source of life sustainable.

Here is an excerpt from one of the chapters I am writing called, ‘Epilogue’:

If he is merely the god of my life, he is subject to accountability and my judgment.  If he is only my friend, he exists only for my comfort and entertainment.  If he is only ‘he’, then I am much more on my own in this universe left to fate and chance and a cosmic swelling tide than I ever imagined.  However, if he is indeed the God of the universe, if all is subject to his existence as the source and creator and author of life, then I am a piece of the fabric of his cosmic creation.  I am sustained as part of all that he is sustaining.  I am well taken care of no matter the terrors that threaten.

"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you."  John 15:16

merging islands.

No man unto himself or within himself lives completely.

It took a long time for me to know I was okay.  Really okay, not only in moments lifting up, but in days going by and ahead.  Okay meant something simple but deeply telling.  The warmth felt as dawn swallowed the horizon cold and bare.  A new day slipping quietly into familiar calm rather than void.  Broken pieces magnificently laid into place.  Seams torn by tragedy joined fittingly together.  And all I did most of the time was watch in happy, joyful disbelief.  How can one experience happiness ...no ...joy true and pure in days overshadowed by death and loss of one loved?

I remember being lonelier than ever before.  All the same faces, but mine darkened.  I withdrew and stepped inward to make my life smaller.  Most days, I simply did not have the words to hang my heart on.  Some days, I had no idea what was going on inside.  I woke to each day in the same place, going much of the same way except much different.

These words I recently rediscovered turning through pages of my journal in months still young and a heart still reeling.

And so for me, being alone is really about independence rather than reliance.  If I am honest, being alone and independent is really about not being disappointed.  Lonely overprotects my heart from losing again.  It is a barrier that I preserve to keep people at a loving distance, close enough to be in my life, but not too close at the sake of being disappointed.

Nearly two years later after my wife’s death, I am different, my daughters are different.  Our lives are different.  I will always stand astonished in ways beyond the grasp of easy understanding how truly and deeply good the difference is.

Gratefulness births and nurtures joy abundantly in my life.

The sign signaling health and stability and strength anew and different, my heart opening again.  Some days it burst open in tumultuous emotion no longer containable for another second.  Other days I opened my heart purposefully, intent on letting those close see inside.  Whether it was my doing or not, in the mess and rupture of life, every time my heart opened again healing waters rushed in.

No man is an island of itself.  The brightest lights have been those lovingly charitable hearts who counted themselves responsible to the deepest depth of my sinking in clearing their shoulder for me to lean into their lives.  I needed them, to share my weakness and hold to their strength.  Merging islands holding and reaching in the tide pulling.  The greatest weakness is not the horror of tragedy or loss or death and the abiding loneliness, but independence valued greater and sought after more at the cost of relationship and life lived together with those whom your life both intersects and interacts with.

Simply put: you need those around you far more than you often give room to believe.  And they need you.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. -John Donn

Love bears all things, believe all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  1Corinthians 13:7