Gifts from Grief

Last Friday, I spent all day decorating our house for Christmas.  Our tree had been up for a week and the kids' winter break was about to begin.  The prospect of sixteen days off sure made me merry and bright! And as I opened the boxes and bins of old decorations, they became fresh with meaning. I framed holiday cards given to us in past years and placed them around the house. Some of them represent new friendships that were painful to leave so soon. Other pieces hold memories with my family long ago yet felt different today. Pondering the gifts of the years filled me with joy.

Grief has also had its place, so I've pondered it. We won't be home (in NJ) for the holidays. That's only ever happened once, the year Owen was born. Even then, he and I flew home for a visit just weeks into the new year. Today, we have no idea when we might return.  to that place and a circles of circles of family and friends that are changing now without us. "Even when you're moving for positive reasons... moving is a major grief event," says Russell Friedman (Grief Recovery Institute). "Rather than avoiding the feelings of grief, lean into them... Grief is the way out of the pain."

Most of us on Earth are either grieving or living not far from grief. Some can't be home at the holidays, some are truly alone. Others grieve secretly while some are unaware that grief is the secret they hold. Sometimes it comes by utter devastation or by sudden loss. Other times it's simply a bi-product of the natural course of life. No matter, grief is painful. Whatever the circumstance, Friedman's definition will fit:     

 "the conflicting emotions caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior."

Not long after our August move, a friend of ours kindly reopened the door to permission when she said I should take all the time I need. Change takes time to navigate. Even really good change. We already enjoy so much about our life in Colorado that people are confused sometimes when I say I'm doing well. It doesn't mean I don't have grief to walk through, that many moments are not hard. I'm just not depressed about what I don't have, about the distance, or even about the grave financial struggle that's come with relocating.

Grief doesn't exist in an emotional vacuum apart from peace, beauty, love. Likewise, there's a joy that is only found once we've known loss. It's why I'm thankful for past seasons of grief, why we can celebrate even in the midst of sorrow. On December 23, 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter of condolence to the daughter of an old friend, William McCullough, who'd just been killed in the war. Lincoln wanted to assure her even in the depths of anguish: "The memory of your dear father, instead of agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before." We may never be the same after mourning, but we can become more.  

Perhaps through grief we find a friendship that stands the test of turmoil. Maybe after extensive sicknesses we experience profound health for the first time. A tragedy may restart our hearts with a fresh focus on what's really important. One season of grief may uncover a former loss we were never able to process till now. These are gifts we find even as our days bring loss.

Here we are at Christmas. This season enunciates the Greatest Gift ever to come from emptying and ultimate loss.  God himself would become a child and suffer all that man could, in order to make us whole. Wholly his. Rejected, despised, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief... Jesus the Son and Light of the World knows our pain personally and always offers more of himself in the dark places. A letting go can make room. 

Rainer Maria Rilke famously spoke, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." Here is a poem of his, in the same vein.

LET THIS DARKNESS BE A BELL TOWER

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

You are here. You are alive.
You and I.
Let's keep going.

I'm back

I guess I'm back on Blogger with tales to tell in a whole new place. A literal one this time.

We moved to Colorado over the summer and now live in the one of the country's richest, "safest," cleanest places.  In Boulder County, the beauty alone evokes pleasure, strength and venture with every daybreak! The receptiveness from everyone we meet is wonderful and it frees us to be ourselves. It’s nearly too much to comprehend how many facets of opportunity this culture provides to enrich our lives.  This is a season for restoration and enlargement.

Intriguing, then, are the frequent dreams at night that I have of home in NJ. With all the celebration I'm taking in, I'm not longing to go back. They’re not leftover nightmares about troubled days, either. But they do cause heartache.  Sometimes the prostitutes appear, the homeless, the drug dealers, the imprisoned.  They’re all there, with our other neighbors and friends, going about their usual business like any other day in Millville.  And I’m there with them.

As major changes go, it's natural to miss what's familiar, and our neighborhood was the thing most palpable, dynamic and affecting to me.  It wasn’t relatives nearby, our church friends, the other places I frequented or my regular escapes into nature. Life was a struggle on our troubled street, but it was home.  And it’s where I loved and found Love.

I’m paying attention to these dreams and the feelings welling up, to the grief over how much tragedy occurs and how many lives are ever-stuck in emptiness, darkness and despair.  I’m considering how it all translates into life here and the now-distant relationship to Millville.  Yet I recognize the need to let things play out as they will, in their own timing, so to enjoy the gift of the present.

Years ago, Kenn gave me Mother Teresa’s A Simple Path.  I do prefer weightier books but decided to read it another time.  It’s straightforward, like the life of Teresa and her fellow missionaries: all sincere yet most unsophisticated.  Except for their love.  To simply love, with no questions asked (or strings attached) and no judgments made, this is the most profound way of life.  It is The Way.

Almost daily, I celebrate how our NJ days rooted us deeper on that Way.  Those times enlighten these, like a preface to a book. How will this story of Love go on?  Let's let the Artist do the unveiling.

Unfold the Tapestry.

New again

Last year was a big marker year for our family, and entering the new in 2014 brought such joy.  It was in the major transitions of 2013 that I got to feeling dizzy with LOTS of frustration and at least some fear mixed in.  We weren't just entering a new chapter, it felt like starting all over again.  This, despite the evidence that the changes were actually leading to a wonderful culmination of the last ten years.

I confess I still have days, every week it seems, where I just cannot see that evidence!

But back to the story... I was spilling to my Hub this struggle with all the newness, when he acknowledged so simply,

"It's hard to be in a new place."  

That's all I needed: the permission to say it is hard.  It is normal/acceptable/human/forgivable to struggle to believe and stay in the moment.  I wrote down my circling thoughts as a poem, including the fantastical things that happen in my head when the Now becomes uncomfortable.  Months later, I reformed it into the villanelle below.  It reads very specific to me.  I hope some of you can relate enough to find permission, and then be freed to face the disbelief.

New again is still the place
where I smile for the hope
but then run a moment later

to where it’s long been cold.
For I’d rather be there, then.
Not new again, displaced.

What if today is just mistake 
I let our yesterdays take me
running only moments later

to where I'm dizzy, unrequited,
mistaken over you, wishing
new then was still my place.

Then back again, though not far
off, I still find hope is hard and
cannot run in moment’s laughter.

I do mistake what is today
to mean our dreams are now erased,
that being new in another place
bodes us run alone hereafter.

Noah, me and 40

Reaching this age used to be embarrassing.  At least that's how adults seemed to celebrate turning forty.  I'd like to think I witnessed in them some kind of maturing into humility.  It felt more like fatalism.  Be sure, I've got the wrinkles and grays and "such" but those changes chisel away at pride in a different way.  They don't usually leave one grateful or in wonder.

One way I've celebrated reaching forty is recognizing it's come at this other juncture in my life - during a sabbatical and transition in work.  I get to enjoy all the changes, all together.  No sarcasm.  In this time of rest, I get to remember how truly abundant my life has been, and becoming forty becomes an honor.  I'm also left deeply grateful when I remember I cannot give this life nor take it away. . . .

Which brings me to Noah.  And wonder.  God decides he'll do away with an overwhelming majority of his own creation.  And Noah?  He gets to ride out the catastrophe in a boat.  Why? He walked with God. Go back about 500 years, when Noah is given his name, which means he will comfort.  Sure enough, he was found to be a comfort: to the grieving heart of God.

Can we imagine it? The One who can and did release all the waters of existence to destroy mankind: could he have found rest in one man? The waters recede, life starts new.  God finds pleasure in Noah once more and decides to make a covenant with all people, for all time, declaring:

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

 

It's as though God himself found a new reverence for life.

This poem could be about life, about the ark and flood, or any time, any man.  It's also about me and my forty.

forty days 

forty nights
forty years 

forty gifts

one today
for every day
forever rain pouring down

pouring out pouring in 

from the depths bursting forth opened gates 

flooding up to the heights lifted high

on we walk with our God

favor found above the ground

ch-ch-changes

now we are six, no longer five. 

we're a different family than we were last month.  

all of a sudden, 

kenn and i became parents to 

a newborn

a kindergartner

a three-year old

&

a fifth-grader

this newest change of seasons explains some things, 

like the exhaustion kenn feels or how affected i am with my continued need to be still and heal.  

yet it's just a season, 

and these are days that will practically fly away from us.  

these are the days, the moments i could miss 

and one day 

i probably will. 

before school began this week, we took some time to list 

the good memories we have from our summer together.  

these times change us.  

what a great way 

to welcome the change 

while celebrating what's been.  

today i'd like to celebrate what is, 

before another change begs a welcome.