After unavoidably hitting a truck that didn’t wait at its stop, I experienced looking at a car in which there is no logical reason why myself and the others inside should be so…untouched…so fine.  It is an odd feeling, realizing that you and the ones you love should be mangled, but you walk away laughing together.

The biggest danger is the what-ifs that bring tears to the eyes.  The only moment of near emotional breakdown was when I imagined in my head what I could have…SHOULD have rather…turned and seen in the seat next to me.  Visions of a mangled and bloody boyfriend can shake you.  But the thing is…that didn’t happen.  So it causes a person to be more thankful then they ever have been before.  Thank you, Jesus.  It really shows that…He’s there…and His hands are kind.  Death was cheated on our accounts.  My heart was filled with such overwhelming thankfulness for a moment.  Then I realized something…

That should be my attitude every day.

Because, every day death is cheated on my account, death of an even worse kind.  An eternal one.  An even more torturous one.  But I am free with barely a scrape, and so is my man.  We have been given life where death should have been certain.

How easily we forget the degree of what we’ve been given.  Change my heart, oh God.

“Ah, Psyche, have I made you so little happy as that?”

“No, no, no,” she said.  “You don’t understand.  Not that kind of longing.  It was when I was happiest that I longed most.  It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine…where you couldn’t see Glome or the palace.  Do you remember?  The colour and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance?  And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing.  Somewhere else there must be more of it.  Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche, come!  But I coulodn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to.  It almost hurt me.  I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home…

…..The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing—to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from—my country, the place where I ought to have been born.  Do you think it all to meant nothing, all the longing?  The longing for home?  For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.  All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me.  Oh, look up once at least before the end and wish me joy.  I am going to my lover.  Do you see now—?”

Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

And I will dwell as Yours for all of my days

You are trying to figure things out again.  Knock it off.  I love you!

Yours truly,

Your All Sufficient One

A Vow

A Callous

Another Chance

What Now?

Nearly every day of the past week I have found myself thinking “there is something significant about this day.”  I knew that at least some day in the 20′s of this month meant something to me.  It drove me nuts, because I knew it had to do with someone I loved.  Perhaps a birthday.   Something important no doubt.  But I could not figure it out, so I passed myself off as crazy.

How I despise myself for not remembering what it was.

Today, it is your birthday. Two years ago you started your real life. True life. Beautiful, beautiful life.  How could I forget?

I’m sorry.

It must be no accident that I wore your pretty pink cowboy boots today.  Everyone here loves the shoes you gave me.  They tell me how “SHNAZZY” my grandma must have been.  I just smile and tell them “I know.”

I’ve thought about you a lot the last few months.  Once you think you’ve grieved it all, the smallest thing will set you off.  Pinwheel cookies, Betty Boop (I never understood why you liked her!), wigs, scratchy voices…  You know it is amazing to me that after nearly months of not being able to cry, the one thing that released it was watching a movie about cancer and lying on my roomie’s bed thinking of you, your suffering…and how I left grandpa.  Its just so hard to be there with someone else.  She took out your chair, but I wouldn’t let them throw it away.  She is wonderful and never tries to replace you…but she is so nothing like you, I just miss your sweet…littleness.

Littleness…thank you for the genes.  Every time people look at me in wonder and say “HOW are you so small?!” I say with pride “my grandma! She was small to the day she died.”  I don’t always tell them just how small though, my sweet little grandma in her Hospice bed, wasting away to 60…50…maybe even 40 pounds.  And yet you used ever breath to make sure we were turning all those other hopeless people into Christians…and turning those boys down the street’s parties from beer parties to Holy Spirit parties.

I’m sorry I failed you.  I didn’t even act on that dying wish.

Again.  Grandma how do you do this to me?  So many things I want to cry over, but almost nothing does it to me but this.

Thank you for letting me sleep on the window seat by your bed.  Thank you for letting me feed you ice chips, its the only way I knew how to show you my love; it was probably more for me than you.  I think I inherited your tendency to have the hardest time telling people you REALLY care about just how much you truly love them.  But don’t worry Grandma…I know you loved me.  I still remember the first time you said it to me.  You softened so much when Judah got sick.  Thank you for letting me read you Psalms and kiss your forehead.  Thank you for telling me I smelled good when I used that ocean scented shampoo in the tiny Hospice shower.  I still think of you every time I see ocean scented shampoo.

Sometimes people say that people you love have little windows in Heaven where they can look down on you.  I thought that was ridiculous, but who can understand until they’ve had someone go there?  A few days ago I had a moment when I felt something.  If it is true…if somehow you can look down on me…I know that you did then.  And I know that you were proud of me somehow.  I don’t even remember what I was doing, something here at Dibor with Jesus in it.  Did you smile on me?

I miss laying on your floor, next to the wood stove…eating icecream or cheezits or stale saltines…watching The God’s Must Be Crazy or Gone Fishin’.  Don’t worry Grandma, you showed your love.

They say that sometimes your thoughts or emotions will react to things even when you don’t consciously remember them.  I wish it was more but suddenly I think…no wonder I was singing “You Make Me Feel So Young” yesterday.  I taught it to one of my roomies.  Maybe I was trying to think of you and be close to you without even knowing it.

I love you Grandma.  You are so beautiful.  You did good.  I miss you.  I’m sorry I didn’t get closer to you.  Who knew it could feel this deep?  I’ll see you soon.

Sincerely, Tab

~

Of course as I type this a perfect song comes on.

“It’s difficult to say goodbye after only one life”

This song used to my connection to the world of emo.  I gave it up long ago because I would sit for hours listening to it and weeping.  But now I have hope.  So why is it haunting me again?

Because it is a prayer.

Jesus…

Be my friend

Tell me Your secrets, let me know Your thoughts, let me feel Your heart.  Let’s walk together.  Let me know and be known.  Be the one I run to in big and small things.  Come to me when You break.

Hold me

Be my comfort.  I am losing control, but when I am held TIGHT, I find the only security I need.  Be intimate with me.  Closer than anyone else.  Held against Your chest, timing my breathing with Yours, feeling your heart beat.  Going completely limp and being allowed to be weak.  Be the place where I can break and weep and be calmed by One stronger than I.

Wrap me up

Surround me in Your cloak and protect me from harm.  Keep me untainted from the world that I must be in.

Unfold me

All the things inside me, I’ll let You see them.  I’ll let You in.  It scares me, but I’ll be vulnerable to You.  Bring out the good in me.  The places in me that I have closed up, blocked off…Your strong but gentle hands can unfold, unlock, reveal, heal.  Bring out the bad too; the fears, the insecurities, the bitterness, the hatred, the attitudes, the pride.  Only then can they be replaced.  I see me…in the fetal position on the floor, hiding my chest, holding it all in.  If I bring my knees a little closer, maybe it will all stay inside.  But You come, You open me, and it all comes out.  Like a blooming flower, I unfold.

I am small

You are big.  I am nothing.  You are everything.  I am weak.  May I get lost in Your side?  Against Your big side, so for a moment I can just feel small and it will be okay?  I can do nothing apart from You.  I am truly nothing in comparison to You.  But You are for me.  I have nothing good to offer.  So will You come to me?  Take me on Your shoulder and my smallness will not matter any more.  I don’t mind feeling small if I am under Your arm, against You.

And needy

I cannot go an hour without You; Your refreshing; Your love, at least something to do with You.  I cannot live without You.  I am a wreck when I’m not with You.  I cannot breathe without You, it hurts; life hurts when I don’t feel You.  I want to cling to You, I have to cling to You.  Tell me who I am, tell me that I am beautiful, tell me You love me over and over again.  Only then will I be free.  Then I will smile and live with a heart alive.  I’m obsessed and simply MUST be fed by You.

So warm me up

My heart froze over this winter.  Will You make it melt?  I feel the blood beginning to flow again.  Wrap around me like a winter coat.  Surround me.  Let Your fire be inside, melting all of my soul’s winter that remains.  When I’m alone, when I do not feel…I tremble with the cold.  Warm me in Your everlasting arms; strong and shielding from the winter’s cold.  No longer will it be “always winter and never Christmas.”  Warm me up, and the season will change, and my heart will live in Your warmth.  Light a fire.

And breathe me

I honestly feel likeYou should be saying this line to me…but may my scent be pleasing to You…my life a worthy aroma to rise before You.  As You answer my prayers…as You hold me close, may You enjoy my presence while I enjoy Yours.  I know You love me…so breathe me…

I’m not afraid to write You a love song, Cause I know you won’t let me down.  I know Your love will come through; At the end of it all you’ll have seen me through.  You’re not gonna leave.  There is no room for disappointment here.  You are not a man that you should lie.  There are no broken promises.  All You’ve said, You’ll do even more.  You don’t just keep me around because I flatter you with my talk of forever.  Forever was Your idea.  Sure, that makes me uncomfortable.  I’m out of control, and I don’t know if I can handle that.  I like things to be my idea.

But I’m not afraid to write you a love song.  Because You’re not going to leave.  Its not going to be wasted.  It won’t hurt me later on, because it will last forever, this love.

“I fell in love just trying to understand why You loved me first.”

-Streetlight, Danyew

They say Your messengers are the winds,

Sometimes in a whisper, or loud in a torrent.

~

I’ve felt it now, like never before,

It leaves me ruined for less, aching for more.

~

As I hear from You, something rolls down my cheek;

~

Is it simply the cold kissing my eyes, causing it to flow?

Is it a flake on my face, melting from the falling snow?

~

Or could it be that You have taken me past words to where salt and water speak?