Holding Summer's Light as the Sky Turns to Grey

Huge rain rushes in from yesterday's ninety-degree heat. A grey storm outside turns the sky green. Hot French Press coffee and an Indie band crooning in multi-part harmony set a reflective tone.

Halfway through this new journal, the stitching threads line the notebook crease, a straight hem through paper. Halfway through the summer, the season's longest day of light on June 21st, with sunlight's last whispers hinting still at ten pm, already nine days ago.

(My mom had called me that night, giggling and determined to outlast the light.

"I worked in my yard, and I can still see!  I'm siting on my front step and some neighbors are out too. I always want to be out here on this longest day of the year, out until the very last light fades."

I had peered outside through the dark and pictured her out there, knees curled in deep twilight.)

Halfway through the summer, and yet I feel like summer has just started. My hopes and Project To Do lists for the summer stretch long, and I sit now, scrawling pen, re-evaluating, and trying to hold summer like pool water in scooped hands.

Two friends of ours crafted Caring Bridge sites this summer as cancer clobbered them. One of them, a young dad and husband, died last week. His funeral is today. The other friend awaits clinical photon light trials to target tumors in his brain, and the rest of us take deep breaths and try to wrap our brains around this hard new story for each of them and their families.

My husband and I, with our youngest, spent this last week at a Bible camp in northern Minnesota as daily seminar leaders. Two hundred high school students played vertical nine square, popping balls over their heads. They paddled boats, pelted each other in water fights, and pulled out wooden benches each day as speakers pulled open God's word. I joined other speakers in teaching and praying for these teens to know how loved they are by God, and to know his great plans and purposes for them. We spoke of the dangers that could harden in their lives, entangling and tripping them up, and we urged them to see the adventures God has for them and the joys of doing life his way, even when life was hard.

My ten year old son stood at his cabin window the first night, hearing high schoolers run and squeal in late-night games.

"Mom, it's still light out. Can I stay up?"

And I knew how the week would stretch out, late nights piling up fast, and how hours in the sun and sand would wipe him out.

"No, it's time to sleep, my boy. Tomorrow's another day. There will be so many fun things to do this week." I kissed him, tousling his summer blonde hair. Tiny curls swept up his forehead.

He slid under his sheet and blanket, pulling a tiny cheetah closer. I pulled curtains shut, the light already fading to grey.


If you are not receiving my posts by email yet, welcome. Simply enter your email address in the box under my bio at the top right of the page. Don't miss a post and be part of any special offers too! 

Our Bold Dares

It's audacious and daring actually. What is it about this bold act that says it'll ever work?

We push fingers into dark soil, scooping out vaults. Then with brazen hands we press small brown bulbs into the earth and claim they'll rise again.

Burying them, covering them, we smooth the ground and walk away, with nary a trace of them left.

It feels like a swindlers trick, a money scam, and yet every few years I peruse bags, choose colors, and plop money down.

On a sunny day this month, I kneeled onto damp green grass. Red leaves swirled and dropped. Yellow maple trees shivered and shook in the breeze. Autumn afternoon sun scattered brilliantly across a shocking blue sky. And the beauty caught me. I stopped and snapped photos.

It relaxes me, this time of plunging hands into earth, smelling the loam and dirt. I scooped and filled, scooped and filled. Planting bulbs in October reminded me of my Dad's death, the one year anniversary of it came and went October 27th.

While heaven's hello is still far off, I know the results of pressing violet, fuchsia, and yellow tulip bulbs into the ground, along with tall bobbing purple alium heads. I've seen them. Can't deny them. I look forward to seeing them each year, and have been bowled over by the gorgeous beauty that springs from them.

Bold, brave, audacious flowers erupt each year from dark empty-looking dirt. I've seen it. I know it to be true.

And so I peruse bags, choose colors, and pick up my dusty trowel. It looks different at the end. The splendorous results are nothing like the simple bulbs I handle now, and I know it to be true. Life will come. This is not the end.

Several days later, my husband and I clear off the kitchen table, and plop heavy pumpkins on it. Six squat orange squash await faces. I pile knives and carving tools around them, and scatter empty bowls around for the seeds and pumpkin pieces that'll follow.

"Mom, when are they here?" Daniel asks impatiently, popping his head in the door.

"Soon, buddy! Want to climb a tree?"

He dashes out, eager for his big brother, sister-in-law, and sister to arrive.

For hours into the night, six of us smiled giddy at our pumpkins, imagining their faces, picturing who they would be. We carved and cut, deliberated and decorated. Deep dish pizza slices dripped juices and oil onto small plates. Tangy lime papaya cubes glistened as we popped them in our mouths.

Pumpkin seeds waited and dried, spread across metal trays. Sometimes the good things are now, sometimes we have to wait.

But the bold dares? The audacious hopes? They seem less daring as the evidence piles up, as each year's experiences and gifts stack before me.

Our God's gifts are constant, tender, daily as the sun. His presence is there. He walks beside us. Some gifts are now. Some gifts we await.

Hi, friend! How are you? If you are not receiving my posts yet by email, welcome! Simply enter your email address in the box under my bio in the top right of the page. Don't miss a post and be part of any special invitations too!

Leaning Close to Speak of Betrayal

Night falls in blue twilight and my neighbor's white blossoms glimmer green in the dusk.

My son's small feet patter back to his room, and a distant car whirs.

The pointer finger on my right hand rubs across a smooth right thumb, but it's all wrong.

I've been betrayed by my body.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Melusina Parkin, Creative Commons cc license

Late last autumn as frost carved up night windows, I had hurried to disconnect hoses and black tubing from the water fountain pump. Sprawled across cold grass in deepening twilight last October, my hands had plunged into icy water. I had swiveled slimy connectors and prayed I was doing it right.

"Which one had Dad said to leave in and which one unscrewed and came out for the winter?" I had mused aloud. Tears fell, and my voice cracked as I had wrestled with the dual truth that he had survived cancer until this cold night, but that it was unlikely he would be there next spring when I re-installed the pump.

That's when it happened! Smashing cold numb fingers in the shed door, my right thumbnail had throbbed and turned red, then plum, and then a bruised purple.

I had raced in to call Dad, proud of myself for remembering how to detangle his subpump from my water fountain, thankful he was still alive after last spring's diagnosis of fast-acting terminal cancer.

Then the gash, the swollen thumb, and the bruise that followed me for months.

That night I had called Dad -- him still alive then-- and we had talked of pumps, and winterizing yards and fountains, and he had stopped because the cancer pain and nausea had crept higher. But his voice was soft and he had told me he loved me, and we ended each conversation that way.

Several weeks later, Dad died.

My blackened bruised thumb throbbed along with my heart. Right forefinger rubbed sore thumb, and the pain felt appropriate. The thumb was a link to my dad and the night I had taken the pump out, the night he was still here when we didn't think he would have been. The thumb was a link to my dad.

Snow fell the night he died, and winter piled on white.

Months passed. My bruised nail lost its hue of mourning, and I resented that. Right forefinger rubbed rugged nail, though, and the invisible gash indicated the gape in me, in all of us, as we moved into life without my dad.

A gouged nail moved up my thumb, marking time, and we counted months without him.

April 27th marked six months without my Dad, and my thumb quit playing. The gouge was gone.

A perfect half moon cuticle and unblemished thumb nail stared back at me. Right forefinger rubs smooth, amnesic nail, and my heart resents it.

And most of the time, my life looks normal too: silly banter around a kitchen table, homework that piles high, college kids, and married kids, and a third grader yank open the fridge and I grin and realize I need to go grocery-shopping again.

But in the moments in between, in the silence that slips in, my finger rubs the thumb nail. My body has betrayed me, and I know that grief stands ready beside me. My God stands there too, though, and his heart can be trusted.


Hi friend. If you are not receiving my posts yet by email, welcome. Simply enter your email address in the box under my bio in the top right of the page. Don't miss a post and be part of any special invitations too! 

The Question that Dangles For Us Who Grieve in this Season

It was after her question at the hardware store. Trudging across broken pavement in biting snowy cold, we pushed hands in pockets deep, my arm through hers protectively.

Inside the red box store, she asked it --my mom wanting to know -- and it has reverberated inside the depths of me still.

"I want the kind that keeps burning even if one has burned out."

Photo Credit: Flickr user Rakka, Creative Commons cc license

She's holding a defective string of Christmas lights, but it feels like me. How do we keep burning even if part of us is gone?

At the customer service desk earlier, we had graciously handed back the cardboard box of twinkly lights, sliding the receipt beside it.

"Anything wrong with them?" a red-sweatered woman asked smiling.

"Nope, they're just the wrong ones. I want the lights that'll keep burning even if one bulb is dead."

Later in the parking lot, we walk arm in arm and I unlock her door first.

"Jennifer, I've realized that I need to let my friends know what I've been learning -- what God has been teaching me in these hard times. God has been teaching Dad and I so much about suffering..." she trails off, her voice breaking slightly.

Dad is gone, and Mom has been sobbing in the loving closeness of her God as she walks through the grief of losing her husband.

Her friends are veiled elegant North African women, emigrated to Minneapolis. My mom learns the lilting beauty of their language and helps them navigate English grammar and vocabulary. They eat sambosas and saffron-flavored rice, and speak often of husbands, children, and aging parents faraway.

"I get to tell them of the hope we have in Jesus and of the confidence we have that Bruce will be in heaven with God."  Mom spoke excitedly of the Christmas presents she was gathering for her international friends, and she carefully chose cards to accompany them.

At home later, Mark and I uncoil our own long strands of lights and assemble them end to end. Wrapping the tree in strands of red, blue, green, and yellow, all the wiry lights culminate into one outlet plug. Electric current courses and the lights shine on.

Verses of Bible truth grab me this Christmas break as we march wise men to a starry stable and gather shepherds near, their sheep already fallen over. I pour eggnog and grind another portion of French Press coffee beans. In crowded rooms here and there, we pass gingerbread men and Belgium chocolate truffles, talking loudly as nieces and nephews race with toys underfoot.

And my mom, sister, and I plug into our Source again and again, drawing strength and constancy from God. As the tears come, and we count it out -- two months now since Dad died-- we play his songs, and laughing-cry as we scroll through old photographs.

This intermingled grief with joy is a sharper chapter for me now, a newly-formed reality. As the question bubbles up: "How do I keep burning even when part of me has burnt out?" I sense the answer.

Pulling out pen and paper, I reflect further. I trace the words and underline "In Him" and the lights keep burning -- through no strength of their own.

"We wait in hope for the Lord; 
He is our help and shield. 
In Him our hearts rejoice for we trust in his Holy Name. 
May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you." Psalm 32:20-22.

Merry Christmas, you. May this New Year bring you an even deeper sense of God's rich love for you and his delight in you. May you rest in his presence. What have you been reflecting on this month?

If you are not receiving my posts by email yet, welcome. Simply enter your email address in the box under my bio in the top right of the page. Don't miss a post and be part of any special invitations too! 

On the Dark Nights When You are Counting Days and Remembering

It is three weeks ago today that I last talked with my Dad, last heard him speak back. That day blurs into that night, and then it was Friday 2:08 am and he was gone.

My sister, mom, and I had tracked the evening hours on a paper chart, slipping in soluble morphine and attavan pills between Dad's drying lips, moistening them with a little blue sponge.

"Dad, can I give you some more medicine?" I had asked respectfully, as the hours passed and his sleepiness mounted. His words lessened, and his moments of lucidity stretched further apart.

Pain rippled across his face, and I gripped his hand. "The morphine will help, Dad. It should kick in really soon."

Friends had driven on dark country roads after rush-hour traffic to stop in and greet him. Dad recognized them and opened his eyes briefly. They stood tall and uncertain beside his bed, searching for a special hymn's lyrics on their phone before starting in, their voices strong and speaking truth.

"God sent his son, they called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died to buy my pardon, an empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives."

My dad heard and moved his head, faintly singing along, these truths he has built his life and joy on. My mom, sister, and I joined in, my voice cracking in emotion

"Because he lives, I can face tomorrow, because he lives, all fear is gone." I swallowed, "...because I know he holds the future, and life is worth the living just because he lives."

Dad's two friends sang on, swiping tiny lyrics higher on a touch-screen phone, both men squinting to see in the dim lamp-lit room.

I stopped singing as I saw Dad wince and reach towards his neck and shoulder, then fumble in his side pocket where the meds usually were. Checking the clock, I saw we were close. "Here, Dad. It's time for your next dose."

His friends finished the song, and we stepped out to give them privacy as they said good-bye. Nurses had said my Dad was in his last days, and the minutes drizzled away.

In dignity and strength, my Dad lived. In dignity and strength, my Dad died.

We have seen God's sweet kindnesses taking care of us each day. We have felt the tangible love of friends and family near and far, who have dropped off meals, mailed cards, helped in countless ways, and walked beside us.

We stood tall at Dad's funerals, so proud to be associated with him, nodding and smiling in joyful pride at the stories friends and colleagues told of him. I gripped podiums tight and spoke in tremulous pride, shuffling papers and describing African night skies. Three special songs rippled out harmonies that explained my Mom and Dad.

I'm finding that grief looks like efficient hours of phone calls and business letters as we confirm the death of a dad.

Grief looks like driving in silence and twice pulling into the driveway with the gas light blinking orange. It looks like staring numbly, moving slowly, and blankly wondering what project I was in the middle of.

Grief feels heavy, makes me exhausted at three pm, and leaves me ready for bed at nine-thirty. Grief for me looks like tears and sobs the first week and a half, and an inexplicable feeling of being "too sad to cry" this week. Time stretches long, and has it only been three weeks? Yet it feels so long since I've talked to my Dad.

"This is the first class I've taught that I didn't talk about with my Dad," I told Mark Monday night as I drove away to teach my college-level Village Schools of the Bible Cover to Cover Bible Survey class. Grief slid down my shoulders to my back. I pictured talks on the back porch with my Dad, and our love for God's word.

My mom and I had a girls' sleepover last night at my parents' house, both of us pulling our Bibles closer. She spoke out verses from Romans chapter five about God gently, beautifully, wielding sorrow to craft beauty and character in us. I scrawled G2 pens fast across notebook paper and talked about the tender love of God who longs to walk beside his people, helping them know him intimately.

I spoke it aloud three weeks ago today, (Thursday morning, October 26th), sitting cross-legged on my Dad's bed, hugging him in a period of his pain, and breathing out any words that were truth and that would offer hope for both of us.

"The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. 
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. 
The precepts of the Lord are perfect, giving joy to the heart. 
The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. 
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. 
The ordinances of the Lord are sure, and altogether righteous. 
They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. 
They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb..." 

We had studied them together earlier that autumn, and now they were the only truth I could grab while he was in pain. I alternated between singing songs to him, praying for him, speaking God's words, and hugging him, or rubbing his back.

In between two dear friends leaving, two pastors arriving, a phone call to hospice triage, and several of us there, I wrapped my arms around my Dad gently, his body so frail and easily broken at the end. I kissed his whiskery face, told him I loved him, and grabbed the only truths I knew.

And I grab them now, and know that God's heart can be trusted.

If you are not receiving my post by email yet, welcome. Simply enter your email address in the box under my bio in the top right of the page. Don't miss a post and be part of any special invitations too! 

Living Two-Handed and Two-Faced

"Where's the video on college dorms?" she asked.

We clicked computer screens until the welcome week college video started playing. Smiling faces toured the university campus, music pulsed, and Morgan and I watched footage of dorm room move-ins and bunk bed assembly. Joy welled in me, and I thumped her back.

"I'm so excited for you!"

"Me too!"

Her long ponytail trailed her back and we sat in chairs pulled close to my desk. Music throbbed and the short film ended. We laughed to see that we were both wiping away excited tears.

Photo Credit: Flickr user COD Newsroom, Creative Commons, cc license

"I think it's the video," she stated.

"Well, I'm just so happy for you," I exclaimed.

She stood up, her enrollment deposit paid, the move-in date now written on our calendar. Bouncing downstairs, she was gone and the kitchen was silent.

I've been learning this week the dual truth that joy and grief can be simultaneous. Nine days ago, sad family news stopped my world. Since then we have walked numbly to doctors' offices, pens scrawling notes in solemn vigil. We have scrolled medical websites, estimated timelines, and stared silently into space.

And he said it once, a wise friend of ours, "We rejoice with those who rejoice and we mourn with those who mourn, and sometimes we do it back to back."

I am learning this week what it is to hold grief in one hand while navigating life with the other. In wanting to live transparently, I have been sharing our family news in occasional prayer emails and to friends in person, crying against their shoulders. But I also see the need to interact and to be present with sensitivity to a variety of settings. At Wednesday night youth group, junior high teens bounced energy as we played zany games of Pictionary Telephone and Four on a Couch. Their joy was evident and legitimate. Seeing their sweet faces that are so loved by God and us, I looked deep into their eyes and chose to be present, to be there, to be playful with them.

And we can hold grief and zany laughter in one body. I am learning this surreal and complicated reality: that joy and grief can co-habitate and that I hold them in honest hands before me.

I can mourn. I can rejoice. And I'm trying to honestly, transparently, let myself hold them in two hands, in two faces, back to back.

Photo Credit: Flickr user johnjodeery, Creative Commons, cc license

If you are not receiving my posts by email yet, welcome. Simply enter your email address in the box under my bio at the top right of the page. Don't miss a post and be part of any special invitations too. 

When Grief Stalks

Cinnamon coffeecake plunges high up my plastic fork while brown sugar topping flakes and tumbles from the top. Espresso grinders whir loud then fade to the music from overhead speakers. Three inch pink baby shoes glide by in a black stroller; purple sippy handles peak from a stroller's corner. Wooden coffeehouse chairs scrape and clunk hollow, and I sip my hot refilled coffee from blue cardboard.

On a morning of Monday's clean laundry piled high and an upcoming evening church softball game, we received word of a tragic car accident. A former youth group student and his family of five were killed in a multiple car pile-up involving a semi-truck. His family's faces still grin happy in the missionary magnet on my fridge, just a month away from their departure to a new life in Japan.

My cell phone's text message blinked the news, and it was too awful to believe or to speak aloud.

"What?" Mark kept asking me in my gaped silence, "What?!"

Our shock and grief looked like crying in Mark's arms, my tears and nose running and wiped on his shirt unconsciously while we prayed. Grief looked like numb silence and staring slack-jawed out the window.


"What are you looking at?" Daniel wants to know, peering out the window too.

"Just thinking about our friends, bud," I murmur, and we both fall silent.

Earlier, concerned by our tears and unsure how to respond, Daniel had fled the room. Following him, I found him burrowing under his blankets in the dark room.

"We can be sad together. It's okay to cry and to ask God hard questions."

My words falter and fall short today. Typing a short message to my friends to mourn their son and his family, I tell them that we ache and cry with them.

Community is shared grief, shared silences, shared tears. And God's chest is big enough for those hot tears and raw words too.

In the Muggy Nights after a Month of Headlines

I remember it, how the air was hot even though it was September 2007 and how Mark had crossed the stage, his shoulders carrying the pain.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Mick Baker Rooster, Creative Commons, cc license

Photo Credit: Flickr user David, Creative Commons, cc license

His voice softer than normal, he had smiled at the forty or fifty students in the darkened worship sanctuary and said, "Well, we had planned to tell you exciting news tonight--"

Several junior high girls squealed in excitement, missing the qualifier.

"-- about being pregnant, but Jen and I miscarried yesterday. We're sad and grieving but we know that God is still good."

The teens had gasped, sighed, and moved instantly to crowd around us. Not trusting my voice, I had simply nodded and bit back tears. The students and youth leaders engulfed us, putting hot hands on our shoulders, backs, arms, and heads.

Their words spilled out on a sticky muggy September night, and my sadness spilled down and over. They spoke words of grief aloud to us, and to our God, and they hugged us tight.

Today, in this week of muggy days where sadness leaks out for so many names, that image flashes back to me. Because the most comforting thing about that night in 2007 was how they came alongside to simply cry with us and to honor that little one's life.

In our world with so much violence and grieving and death today, can we just come alongside in the muggy nights to say: we cry with you. We ache with you.

Your loved ones' names matter. Their lives mattered. 

We ache and grieve with you. We moan in surprise and pain at each new headline, and we say your names from Florida, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,  Louisiana, Minnesota,  Texas, Syria, and more.

Your names matter. Your lives mattered, and we ache with you and sit in respectful crying sadness with you in the dark muggy nights.


If you are not receiving my posts by email, welcome. Simply enter your email address in the box under my bio at the top right of the page. Don't miss an article and be part of any special invitations too. 

Burying Our Inner Critic and Censor

"The footprint of the house looks small for all the living we did here," I remarked to John, staring down into an excavated basement cavern.

Photo Credit: Terinea IT Support, Creative Commons, cc license

"I was thinking the same thing," he said, kicking a clod of dirt careening below. Mounds of soil flecked with green shingle bits slumped nearby. My mint patch grew hale and green, unchecked by the demolition.

Daniel stomped around the perimeter, stopping to smash occasional dirt chunks or peer cautiously into the hole. Just a few days ago, when first seeing the destroyed house, he gaped in surprise with all of us. Speeding by it after the intersection light flickered green, my daughter had snapped grainy cell phone photos, and we had all craned our heads to follow the pile of house as it passed through each window. Cars lined up behind us in the turn lane so we could only stare through the twilight as the pile slipped out of sight.

"I'm too sad to cry," Daniel pronounced solemnly as we turned up Fraizier Street and away from the scene of our former home.

Having only left there three months ago, we still smiled nostalgically each time we drove past it. Quipping, "There's our old house," we'd let our eyes trace possessively the hills, four pine trees, drying sunflowers in the garden, and familiar yellow and green siding and trim.

Sunday afternoon, Daniel, John, and I were there in daylight to study the scene and say goodbye.

"Hey, I recognize that rock," John grinned as I stooped to retrieve a blue boulder from where it used to prop up the ribbed gutter behind the garage.

"I'm getting it. It's ours," I declared.

After greeting our neighbors briefly, my boys headed to the car. Darting from the vehicle suddenly, I raced to my patch of mint, still growing strong. "I need to harvest some before the snow comes tomorrow."

John shook his head and ducked his tall frame into the car.

Sweet crisp spearmint crushed in my hands as I tore it off bushes I had planted two years ago. Tall gangly stalks bounced and bobbed in the movement and the autumn wind. Yellow dust scattered.

Climbing into the car, laughing sheepishly yet oddly defiant, I dumped the mint leaves onto notebook paper in the front seat and fastened my seat belt. John put the car into reverse as he backed out of the driveway. "That's right. I had forgotten how hard this driveway was," he said, looking both ways at fast-incoming traffic. We paused.

"Look at all the gopher mounds," he laughed, shaking his head, remembering my battles.

I quietly said goodbye as we drove west on Ball Road: goodbye to the invisible yellow house, to the two yellow maples out front, the four pine trees standing guard in the west, and the dried sunflowers hanging drooped heads low in the back.

"It doesn't feel like our house anymore," six year old Daniel said. "It feels like death."

And we pulled onto Lexington Avenue and drove south. Leaning in to smell my mint, I blew unconsciously at the dust coating the leaves. Scattering instantly across the car, making John cough, dust from our house floated in the air.

My six year old's words held power and strength this week. In freedom, he sieved through his emotions, naming them as they bubbled up, and releasing them aloud. Knowing that goodbyes to people, places, and seasons is vital --and dangerous when squashed-- I am listening as he speaks and affirming his feelings. Nodding my head, I let him know that it is okay to hold both grief and joy, both nostalgia and excitement, gratitude and goodbyes. Resisting the urge to censor, educate, or reframe his feelings or expressions, I free him to put words to his emotions.

Dancing in the sunlight, yellow dust particles swirled near the car vents, with the sweet smell of mint mixing in.

Where Do You Hide Out A Storm?

On a long windy gray pier in Duluth, tourists wrap overcoats tight and pace the length, peering down steep embankments to the treacherous water below. White freshwater gulls dive and parry for bread scraps, sounding like a coastal town. Giant oil and iron ships pass under the lift-bridge, while stern metal signs warn pedestrians to stay far from the churning waters and the slick shear sides of the canal.

My in-laws lived in Duluth for decades in an old blue and white wooden house perched precariously on a steep hill, overlooking Lake Superior. Above the mantel in their living room, a magnificent framed photograph in greens, greys and blacks caught everyone's attention upon entering the home. In the tiny center of a storm-swept pier, where galing winds and waves crashed against a lighthouse, a small figure slipped quickly behind the protection of a strong door. Giant waves had already engulfed the pier's length, and raged menacingly against the lighthouse. Built to withstand any storm, the lighthouse was a stronghold, a protected fortress.

Mark and I have heard of two deaths this week, and stood crying next to a mom and dad our age whose thirteen year old son lay in the coffin behind them. Hugging thin shoulders, we spoke just a few words, and let silence hang in somber honor of the loss. At the coffin, his mom found herself running her fingers through her son's ringlets and wavy hair.

"He always had the best hair," she laughed and cried.

The intimacy of that act shook me, and has stuck with me the longest.

"That's what I would be doing too," I whispered ragged to my husband. "I can't imagine the agony of having to close the lid on my son and not see him for a while."

We have been aching with and praying for our friends this week.

The image of a stalwart lighthouse built to withstand the fiercest storms comes to my mind tonight. In my women's Bible study this morning, we learned that the Hebrew word for "strength," maoz, means a safe haven, refuge, protective fortress, stronghold. 

So tonight I'm praying for God's strength to be that fortress, that safe haven; to be a place where my friends-- and all of us--can hide out from the crashing storms that threaten to swallow us.
 
Photo credit #1: Jerry Bielicki.
Photo credit #2: LakesnWoods.com Duluth Gallery

(Feel free to check out this past post about similar topics, entitled: Life and Death Intertwined.)

How can I pray for you this weekend, friend? We're heading out on a youth group retreat this weekend, if you want to pray for us. Or join me in praying for our friends who are mourning their son. Thank you. 

(Linking with Emily.)  

What Your Body May Be Trying to Tell You

 I find myself on edge and the grief hovers.

During dappled sunlit blackberry-forages in the woods with friends and the welcome distraction of iced tea conversations, my thoughts and feelings are put on hold. But in the silences and lulls that follow, I pull up world news footage and read with horror of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, of burning churches and massacres in Nigeria and Egypt, and of polio epidemics raging across Somalia while the Doctors without Borders evacuate from escalating violence against them. I swipe computer screens, scrolling through story after story, my angst mounting.

Fidgeting I flip into Netflix to watch a comedian; set out supper for my youngest; absentmindedly interact with him; and wonder at the heaviness of my heart. Turning on sentimental music, I wash dishes, my limbs heavy and numb.

Peter Scazzero, in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, states, "The problem, however, is that we can't reflect and respond thoughtfully to our feelings if we don't know what they are. So much of our true selves are buried--sadness, rage, anger, tenderness, joy, happiness, fear, depression. Yet God designed our bodies to respond physiologically to those in the world around us.

"God speaks to us through a knot in the stomach, muscle tension, trembling and shaking, the release of adrenaline into our blood stream, headaches, and a suddenly elevated heart rate. God may be screaming at us through our physical body while we look for (and prefer) a more 'spiritual' signal. The reality is that often our bodies know what our feelings are before our minds" (Scazzero, 71).

It's grief, this sadness.

BBC correspondents recounting grim details of blood-stained mosques, grainy photos of UN convoy trucks, and curt embassy evacuation warnings bring back my own history of a civil war in Liberia, West Africa. I remember hastily-packed luggage, last-minute airplane details, and the many things we left behind. I know too the feeling of wondering if you will ever return. So these stories grab my mind, and my heart goes out to families in this situation around the world.

Grief wells up, and my limbs are heavy.

Perhaps you too have some misunderstood or misplaced grief? Grief can result from a number of factors: death or loss of someone close to you, a stressful situation, job change, loss of a dream, illnesses, family moves, and more.

"Turning towards our pain is counter-intuitive," Scazzero notes, and yet "transition into adulthood requires that we mature through our defense mechanisms [to] honestly look at what is true" (141). He lists common defense mechanisms: denial (or selective forgetting), minimizing, blaming others, blaming ourselves, rationalizing, intellectualizing, distracting, and becoming hostile.

"In our culture, addiction has become the most common way to deal with pain. We watch television incessantly. We keep busy, running from one activity to another. We work seventy hours a week, indulge... overeat, drink... -- anything to help us avoid the pain" (Scazzero, 139).

So, tonight, I'm listening. I'm stopping the activity, the fidgeting, the distractions, the running from.

Looking inside, admitting it to myself, I name it. This is grief. This is sadness and loss.

And, with God, we don't need to mince words. I'm stepping in, friend.

Photo Credit #1 to Autumn Evertide.
Photo credit #2