Death

I write this blog for an incredibly dear dear friend of mine. I believe these are words they need to hear whenever they are ready. I will not presume to know when that time will be, but these words, although not mine, will be waiting for them.
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"How they do live on, those giants of our childhood, and how well they manage to take even death in their stride because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them. Wherever or however else they may have come to life since, it is beyond a doubt that they live still in us. Memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still. The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who, for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us - and through them we come to understand ourselves - in new ways too. Who knows what 'the communion of saints' means, but surely it means more than just that we are all of us haunted by ghosts because they are not ghosts, these people we once knew, not just echoes of voices that have years since ceased to speak, but saints in the sense that through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touches us once long ago, but continues to touch us. They have their own business to get on with now, I assume - 'increasing in knowledge and love of Thee,' says the Book of Common Prayer, and moving 'from strength to strength,' which sounds like business enough for anybody - and one imagines all of us on this shore fading for them as they journey ahead toward whatever new shore may await them; but it is as if they carry something of us on their way as we assuredly carry something of them on ours. That is perhaps why to think of them is a matter not only of remembering them as they used to be but of seeing and hearing them as in some sense they are now. If they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now too, not are they by any means always things we expect or the same things."

Frederick Buechner - The Sacred Journey
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The dearest people we will ever love will die, whether we are there to mourn or we have already been previously mourned for ourselves. In either instance, although death robs us of people we love in perhaps the way we grasp on to the hardest, those people leave us with pieces of them that we continue to carry.

These pieces remain as real as the people we love ever were.

These pieces remind us of the incredible blessing our loves have been and continue to be to us.
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I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

Let Go

A friend of mine wrote a facebook note that scares me to death.

The note reminds me that seasons change. Stages in life come and go. Things shift and move in ways that we have no control over.

The scariest thing to me is this: when things change we become okay with it in time.
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I care about a lot of things, and a lot of people. I have wonderful things in my life right now, and I see wonderful potential in other things that I am constantly pursuing. And just the thought that this is all simply a season of life that will change or fade away and I will be okay with not pursuing these things or not having them in my life anymore is paralyzing.

Literally paralyzing. It makes me want to cry.
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That is why it makes me sad. It makes me think that eventually I might not care about the things that I care about more than anything in the world right now. It makes me think that everything I've created or worked for will become meaningless.

It makes me think that there may come a day where these things don't have a hold on me anymore.
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I am afraid to allow life and God to take me wherever it is that I am going because I don't trust them to know what is best for me.

I fight a daily battle to cling to what matters to me instead of holding those things with an open hand. I am terrified the second I loosen my grip they will be taken from me.

And that absolutely breaks my heart. And it only tightens my grip.
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I talked to my friend about these fears, and she echoed the same thoughts. She is a wonderful thing in my life.

It's nice to know that I'm not alone.
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Peace.

Gifts

I write things on my skin. I write things on my skin that I know have substance. I write things on my skin that deserve to be written somewhere and displayed to me and others because writing those things anywhere else wouldn't do the words justice.

I suppose that's why people get tattoos.
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I wrote "See God's Gifts" on my hand recently. I don't really know why. I think I did it because I'm not thankful. I'm thankful for people and what they do for me a lot of times, but not thankful for things that are consistent or constant.

My downfall, and the downfall of a lot of people I think, is that when we look around us we will too often just accept that everything just "is what it is." This is just how things work and there is no merit in spending effort trying to think about where these things came from or what they are or why we have them.
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When you start to think about that, it is exhausting; I'll admit to that. But it is also rewarding. It is rewarding because we become thankful when we can start to see how different (often times in not so preferable ways) our lives would be.

We become aware of what an impact these constant and consistent things have in our lives. And so we become thankful for them.
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I have come to accept that everything I experience shapes me. Every story I tell or don't tell about myself has had an impact on me in a way that is probably more profound than I can realize. It impacts what I find worthwhile, humorous, detestable, valuable, lovable, enjoyable, and so on.

My struggle becomes recognizing that in the middle of a story I am currently a part of that I am being impacted in ways that will affect me long after this story has come to a close. Whether this is a story with a fairytale ending or a heartbreaking ending, this story will impact me beyond its conclusion.
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When the story I am living right now sucks, as happens from time to time, then I'm normally not a very thankful person. I am not able to see the benefits of the bad times until they are long since over.

Retrospect is what allows me to see the good things that have come out of my life because of the bad times. But there has almost always been a good thing that came out of those bad times. No matter how bad.
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So here is my conclusion:

Seeing God's Gifts is more than just about seeing the little things. It's more than just about seeing the big things. It's about seeing the things that God uses to change us. It's about looking around you, right in the midst of where you are, and becoming aware that God is doing things at this point in your life, right now, that are going to be influential.

It's about knowing that God is working to bring His will to pass in your life, and in this world. It is about being thankful that we are a part of that process.

It is a gift for us to be a part of that process.
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Peace.