The Long Night

Will my heart ever be happy again? The long night is very long. I can't believe it will. Coming in contact with the harsh realities of life is quite earth shaking. Many souls cannot recover from it. I am still a baby, crying out for security—for someone to hold my hand. It is not the grown up me, it is the child within. It is still February, it is still winter. The winds outside remind me that the winter has not yet passed. My beloved is still on journey, or perhaps it is me that is still on pilgrimage, not him. There is a silence in the sunshine, that wavers in and out of the cold winds. A bit of warmth amidst the cold. March is around the corner then April. Then April 25th will come and how will it be? Who will I be? Where will I be? Through the corridors of darkness, my roots have plunged through caliche and it seems the ground has been broken up —new seeds from God may now be planted in my heart. Though through it all I have not seen His face. So quiet, resting, while the earth turns on its axis to bring the summer rains again.

But it is lunch time and I have only a echo to keep me company. The silence has not yet become my companion. This is a grief no one can take away but God.

Valentines Day finally comes!

 Valentines Day came today, Saturday Feb 18th.  I woke up in a state of pure bliss for some reason. My discovery  of the word “perichoresis” (to dance around) may have had a part in this unexpected gift. Perichoresis I quote "...has been called the 'divine dance,' that profound union of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that has gone on since eternity past, goes on now, and will go on forever, except that the dance of eternity will have a select audience—those whom the Father has foreknown, the Son has redeemed, and the Spirit has enlivened and sanctified. Perichoresis is a fellowship of three co-equal beings perfectly embraced in love and harmony and expressing an intimacy that no one can humanly comprehend. The Father loves the Son by means of the Spirit’s procession and the Son loves the Father by the same means. The Spirit loves both the Father and the Son and eternally proceeds from the Father and Son.” 


I was so excited about this divine dance that my heart was skipping like a lamb, joy nearing ecstasy. As I made breakfast for the kids, I asked myself, "Where have you felt like this before?" Surprisingly I discovered that my life has been filled with memories that contained this level of happiness. The earliest memory was traveling on Highway 28 to Old Mesilla on the back of a motorcycle, thanksgiving in a cabin in Cloudcroft,  traveling to Grand Junction with my new bridegroom, traveling through Tucson and the red rocks, camping in Idaho with my new man, going to Pasadena to go to grad school...leaving YWAM for the great unknown, wondering if  life existed outside of YWAM, moving into Oxford. All of them in some degree had this traveling component to them. My missionary heart already being revealed in the mundane. 


My heart was so entwined in my new gift from God, Hans,  that it could be said we were doing the perichoresis dance ourselves. So love starved were we, that we were nearly inseparable for the five years of our married life. And there was my Valentine's Day gift! The memory of a wondrous gift of companionship, equality, and an apostolic call were all part of God's great plan for me. Hans is in such awe inspiring company now—Paul, Thomas, Philip and John, all among the great cloud of witnesses, the communion of the saints. 


But in the last two years, I had forgotten that my life had been filled with such joys.  Perhaps it was the presence of  dark shadows and longings, like a cloud obscuring the sun.  Stay, Oh Sun, stay. Today I am like the disciples on the road to Emmaus who gingerly reached out to the Redeemer saying,  "The day is late, won't you stay with me a while..." 

Isaac's Revelation

As you know I am still processing Hans' passing from this earth. Yesterday at the mini-retreat I had significant insights, which as a thinker I absolutely needed in order to resolve it in my heart—unresolved mysteries which tumble around in my head make for all kinds unrest I cannot find peace or rest until they are resolved.  So what I am about to tell you is unusual, but honestly true. 


One of the troubling factors in settling Hans' account on earth, is that it felt like an event born out of chronological time. We were heading somewhere, divinely appointed and birthed in God and then—out of nowhere, this sudden and abrupt end occurs. I have not been able to make sense of this tragic interruption.

So that is where the Spirit was taking me too on my mini-retreat. The first song the Spirit choose was a sweet and peaceful instrumental. We were supposed to center down and "remember" the Lord, as the Psalmists says, "To magnify Him." As I looked upon my history with the Lord remembering his every incredible kindness to me, I said this prayer: "Words cannot adequately describe the incredible insights you have given me, the favors you have granted, the incomparable passion and love you have bestowed upon me in the past but which now has become so totally irreconcilable with the crushing and breaking asunder of my heart with which you have wounded me in the loss of my husband. It remains the biggest hurdle of my life and Lord, it stands between us." It was the barest moment of my life with God.


My eyes shifted to this picture which was sitting on my desk, as I looked at Hans securely holding my hand, God spoke these words into my heart,  "I gave you this man to guide you, train you, and love you. He will present you to me at the marriage feast and he will be proud of his work in you and of your efforts. Your arrival into maturity (perfection) was his end." I saw in this picture him leading me up the mountain to the throne of God. 


Of course, I was shocked. This meant so many things. Immediately it meant that in some way, my own spiritual life and discipleship was part of Hans' call and a completion of his mission on earth. I believe it means the same thing for all our children. Our maturity in part became the conclusion of his life. It meant that we had all reached a place that God could make a pivotal change in the course of direction and use for each one of us. 


For a moment, I wished that I had stayed immature and insecure so that he would have remained. But then I also understood, that at my completion he too had been perfected. He had reached the end (in love) for which he had been created. I am not talking about works as an end, but a spiritual place where the soul is in a state of compliance and readiness for eternity. I had seen this disposition in Hans toward the end of his life—a sweetness that was nearly unbearable. 


Then I asked God if it had been ok for Hans to die before our Isaac was born? "Isaac" being the seed of the promise? And God simply said, "You were his Isaac." By this I was struck dumb. It is unbearable to think of this when I remember all the fitful ways I behaved while  married. It was not a tame Isaac that Hans carried up Mt. Moriah,  but a rebellious and unformed Isaac. I could not compare with the earthly Isaac's submission to the will of God and trust in the Father that he displayed. 


It also occurred to me that Hans' "Isaac" was different than mine. This explained why we had so many difficulties in describing the vision of our mission. Now I see we were working on different blueprints with different endings.  My "promised son" was much different than his. I could feel my soul relax as I began to let the words sink in. But I was full of questions:


How can another person be someone's else's promise?
Can another person's dream mean the end of someone else?
Did Obi Wan Kenobi die because he knew he would be more useful to Luke as a ghost?
And weren't those Jesus' words too? It is better that I go away, so that the comforter may come to you? 
What did it mean for the bringing forth of my own dream? 


I asked Jesus to not shrink back, but to keep the windows open for me a bit more. I asked in the Spirit if I could touch his wounds, like Thomas did. He said, "You have. Your fingers are inside my wound as you grieve Han's loss. Your sorrow is because I let you into my wound and now it is your wound too." My sorrow will always be there as it is for Jesus too. Somehow the loss I feel is part of God's revelation of Himself to me. I am not alone in this terrible tragic pain I feel nearly all the time. 


This morning I did not feel the heaviness of being alone, abandoned or lost. I mysteriously felt part of a bigger picture, enabled with the designer's grace to live out knowing that somehow I had been incorporated into Hans and the Lord. 

Aah...where is my roaring fire?

I open the door to the backyard to let out the cat and close it quickly. I am not happy with what I see. The yard feels frozen and empty of life. The grass appears to have a thin layer of snow on it and the trees are splintery and colorless. How can anything good come from this? It is a season. That's all, a season of life. Spring reminds me that all things evolve and that time is God's best cultivating tool. Peering out the window, I see that only doves in the trees stay on, all the wasps and bees have disappeared. The wind is cold and uninviting, the tables are opaque with dust and watery from last summer's splashing. How, I wonder, can anyone enjoy themselves outside right now? The Denver storm has brought cold winds to El Paso and we feel blown about in this sunny city, we feel a frosty bite taken out of us. Our winters are pleasant not bold. But it is the chill to the soul that I feel the most...a hurry to close the door to the tomb...and wait for God's most majestic promises to reappear in the land. I forget that the earth below is waiting to spring forth too, that nature groans under the weight of its own longing..as well as I. We are growing even in the dark and soon it will be evident what we once were. My midnight oil burns bright inside the house, my mind running a thousand miles each evening. My portable university follows me everywhere I go and I store up grain to plant in the spring. Virgins congregate at my table every Thursday night and we enjoy a meal of rich bread and wine as we fill our minds with heavenly visions...but other than that, the winter is here for a while....I cannot yet put away my overcoat and boots. Patience...is wearing on the flesh... Aah..where is my roaring fire? Imagination is a wonderous gift of God. If you can think it...it creates another dream and the future remains fraught with interest and intrigue.

A New Heart for Valentine's Day...

You know that this blog is about grief, right? It is about the process of finding life again...and about the journey to a reality you can live with once again. My other blogs urban abbess and desert abbess are about sustaining life in an urban setting (to repair us for the apocalyse) and the desert abbess (to train us for the life of the cross); then there is tALITHA CUM, which is my life of despair moving toward wholeness, I pray. Today describing "how I am doing" I scrambled to find a meaningful metaphor that would keep me from crying but be truthful in the details. I scanned the horizon of my experience these last few months and the only thing I could see was a barren desert with a long winding road down the middle. No landscape, no flowers, no wildlife,just monotony and an endless series of hills that had to be climbed and put behind oneself. Not very exciting. But not stress free either. Because for all of its monochromatic hues, it was scary too. Just being on a road toward a destiny you know not, is scary. I repeatedly turn back looking for my normal life. Then I discover its gone. There is no normal to go back to. I walked into Hans' office this morning with the clear goal of getting him out of his desk chair and going for breakfast someplace, wanting to hear his voice again. But when I walked in, it was my own office I was looking at. I didn't open the closet door where all his clothes still hang and rest. Nope...its a whole new world and I am on this journey alone. How can any of this bring glory to God? I don't know. I only know that it is a desparate dark and lonely road, and I am traveling it with a silent companion who never speaks to me anymore. Just walks along side of me in a quiet softness. I have walked with Him too long to ever think He has abandoned me, but at the same time, it feels like it. My feelings will not however, undermine or erode my faith in Him. I will walk this road, step by step, but I am not happy about it at all. My spiritual mentor asks of me to look for something lovely today, some place that I stopped (in the spirit) and enjoyed myself and was refreshed. These moments are so hard to find. It is a really a stretch to find...there are no desert blooms that I can pick on this God-forsaken road. It occurred to me at some point today, that I am on the cross. There were a few this week. All of them deeply personal but highly revealing. All clearly point to the loss of love that I have experienced in this year. I promised one of my clients that she would get a new heart for Valentine's Day to replace her broken one. I pray that for myself as well.

The Missing Leg

Its still cold outside but even colder inside. I long for days of uninterrupted silence where I can be alone with God. My juices are not flowing this day, will be locked into an embrace of my inner healing posture with a client for several hours which requires an incredible amount of physical fortitude..on the the part of my brain. Tracking people's thoughts is hard work. Often they do not know where they are going either. But we know that ultimately the Spirit will guide them to the right place. Afterwards I can do nothing but eat and rest. In the old days, my honey would take me out for lunch. Today I meet with a group of widows to eat together and complain about the weather. Perhaps its the weather in our inner gardens that we are ultimately grieving...

I met with a man who lost his wife. He said half of his heart died the day she did. He can't get started living anymore, the fuse has been pulled. He is young and has decades ahead of him. I hope and pray that soon God will set him free from the weight of loss upon him. Perhaps by Valentine's day he will have his heart back or grow another one. The wound in my heart is healing, but there is no growth yet to replace what was ripped away. Left is just a cauterized wound, not bleeding as much as before...but now I feel like the guy with the missing leg. He still tries to walk on it, only to fall down and then remember...Oh, it's gone.