Loss in the Face of Eternity

I think I get it. A secret of life. It bears writing down if only for the aged. I presume it is linked to the way Americans handle time. We more or less live in the future and everything in the present is a sort of waiting period for the future where my "can't waits" live. But when we are old we wake up and discover it is not like that all. Life is about change and loss.  Change happens anytime the Cloud moves. But sitting in camp, day after day, makes you think that the Cloud has forgotten it is on a journey. We get up, do our daily but tedious duties and wonder if we will ever make it to the Promise Land—you know that place of milk and honey.  I might say that while we are in camp, we are fitful and discomforted. Things are not perfect in camp, they are makeshift at best. But then suddenly, the tedious becomes the past and the Cloud has moved and you are scrambling to catch up. We are never ready for change.

For example, we got a ghastly diagnosis in December 2009. The life we called the "Abbey Experience" ended, a sort of death if you will. Seven years of fellowship, preaching, teaching, praying, children growing up, cleaning and sorted ended in a twinkling of an eye.  The tedium of planning schedules, printing the bulletins and finding nuggets of gold to share became both its charm and a source of loss. Then came fourteen months of nothing but pure rest. Hans writing, me reading, eating out, endless appointments at the oncologist office. For the majority of the time he was in good health. However, the undercurrent of the unknown was always present with us even though our daily life was pleasant,  our only responsibility was getting to the doctor on time. But everyday there was a "waiting." Everyday death was with us. Yet everyday we had each other and everyday we said, "When will we return to normal? When will we return to the life we had once known?"  Those days of "resting" ended on April 25, 2011, 14 months later. The "quiet" we  lived out everyday was over. Like a seed, he was buried in the ground, hallowing the Mesilla Valley.

And a new life began for those of us left behind. A year of waiting for a return to something we call normal. And then it came. A year of life under the sun and heat, sleeping late, homework, shopping,, cooking and visits to the grave. We lived in a cocoon after Hans' death, each one carrying his or her grief in an unspoken way.  Then school started and that idyllic life ended. An entire life died...and new people came into our lives, Katie, Timothy and Gilbert. Pressures came in, expectations and late night homework projects and a broken heart—basketball games and field trips were part of the adventure.

Then the cloud moved and Gilbert and Julianne decided to give their marriage another try, having found friendship in the last seven years of separation. And looking for a new house became the new normal. Gilbert became a daily presence in our house. And a new center for their lives was forged. I had gotten used to the sounds of footsteps in the kitchen, the spoon making noise in the kitchen late at night as a bowl of cereal was eaten, and Emmie running into the bedroom to see if I was still alive. I had gotten used to the late night chats with Julianne over this or that, or endless episodes of cutting out magazine pictures on a scattered dining room table. Today they close on their new home and this life that I have known for almost three years, is over. They will never live here again. I will face my aloneness once and for all.. They will not come "home" anymore and their lives will spin off somewhere else—fertile vines in the fields of the Lord.

The point is that patterns develop, we get used to certain emotional comforts and we live in them, not dealing with the fact that they are temporary and that we should give thanks. But it's kind of like a child giving thanks over dinner and thanking God for the silverware. They are the mundane things of life we taken for granted. But then they are gone. Kind of like the cat that you bend over to feed for the umpteenth time, wishing he or she would stop their incessant meowing,  then suddenly they don't come home, gone, missing and never to return. You would give anything now to reach down and feed that cat again.

I think the list could go on and on and perhaps this IS the wisdom of aging. I remember moving into my first house with Hans and the exhilaration of that event is indelibly impressed upon heart. The thrill of  moving into my dream house with my dream man, how can I deny that thrill to my children as they grow and move into their own destinies. Yet these things are temporal, they fade away, they end. We ourselves are also moving on..to our end...and for us it is another new beginning, an eternal now in which things shall never end. The end of all loss and grief...a perpetual rest for the people of God. Compare that to hell which is endless remorse and regret.

So what do we do in the meantime,while the Cloud stands still? How do we live in the camp in the "unfinished moment?" I think I am beginning to see that a large part of it has to do with undoing the complexity of American life with all of "its dreams" so that the moment can be fully lived and revered. Please see the blog http://theurbanabbess.blogspot.com/view/classic where I try to solve the riddle of   shalom in the American experience. But a lot of it is the reality of "old things passing away" and the "new" which Jesus has wrought coming into being. We are positioned in the "way" of old and new and this tension fills our creaturely part with dread and fear. We long for an established world—this one having been subjected to futility. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.