You Who Were

Last week I co-directed Junior Camp at campgrounds I hadn't been to in 15 years.  There were lots of new things to get used to, but I was shocked by how much remained the same.  The stairwells, the dining hall, the bunkbeds, the smell....all the same.  While I ran in the hushed dawn before 40 children awoke, I traveled back through my own memories: there was my first kiss, there I met a woman I still speak to, there I felt the deep claws of jealousy, there, there, there...

I have moved so many times in my life, and I rarely have the opportunity to travel back to places I once was, to remember the person I once was.  I was thankful to have the luxury to stand in my memories and reach across the great cavern of time to the sepia-toned days past.  But like most of us, I wished I could have done more than just watched the old home movies of memory.  I wished that I could have warned myself, my fragile, dramatic, silly teenage self, of what was to come.  

Here is what heartbreak tastes like....

Here is what transcendent joy smells like...

Here is what crushing doubt feels like...

Here is what utter failure sounds like....

Here is what the days to come look like...

Oh child who was, if only you knew

We cannot break the solid glass that separates our current self from our past existence.  We can only lay our palms upon its surface and watch ourselves walk into fire, walk into life, walk into pain, walk into beautiful chance.  We watch and wonder at who we were, wonder at who we have become.  And we turn to the obscured glass that stands on the opposite side of our memories and try just as hard to break through to our futures.  To know the heartbreak, the joy, the doubt, the failure, the days that are coming.  

Maybe these barriers we feel on both sides of us are the cause of the energy we put into our children, into the lives of other people.  We cannot change our pasts, we cannot know our futures, but we can try to spare those around us, we can try to bless those around us.  It's why recovering drug addicts attend NA and walk alongside those who are still enslaved to their demons.  It's why lonely former youth group members become passionate youth ministers.  It's why neglected children become helicopter parents.  It's why those who never knew love pour it out onto others.  It's why those who lost all hope preach the gospel of hope in Christ Jesus.  

The walls that block us from going backward, that keep us from skipping ahead, they are insurmountalbe.  But the walls that keep us from each other?  Ephesians says that Christ "with his body, broke down the barriers that divided us."  It's one of the reasons why I share with all of you (those known and unknown) all my heartache and grief.  The I who once was is lost to me.  But you, you and I are only separated by the screens between us.  So to you I give my stories....

Here is what heartbreak tastes like - bitter, chalky.  Here is what crushing doubt feels like - it pinches, it constricts.  Here is what utter failure sounds like - it is choked tears.  Here is what transcendent joy can be - the laughter of tiny children at play.  

Here is life.  

Twitching

For the first time in my life, earlier this morning, my collarbone (clavicle if you're feeling medically fancy) hurt.  I'd taken Gareth to daycare early and so was running without pushing him in his stroller.  As I passed the 2 mile mark, I had to stop and breath through pain that suddenly radiated out of my collarbone.  The interwebs tell me the most likely culprit for my mystery pain is that I was tensing my shoulders too tightly as I ran and that I needed to loosen up as I ran.  

Imagine that - I'm tense.

That tenseness manifested in other ways this weekend.  I took G to see Cliff on Saturday, and during the visit the muscle under my right eyebrow started to twitch.  And kept twitching until this morning.  Again, I surfed into the deep darkness of google and discovered that I needed potassium, or sleep, or a lack of stress in my life.  

Imagine that - I'm stressed.

I've learned to pay attention to my body and what it is telling me.   Scripture tells me that my "self" is not just my spirit or my soul or my body, but that I am all things at once.  My soul is never separated from my body and my body is never to be escaped because I am all of them together, a blending of aethyr and earth that cannot be compartmentalized.  So when my eyebrow starts twitching and my collarbone radiates hurt and I can't shake a cold, I know to look deeper and see what the root is of all the distress.

It didn't occur to me till I was almost finished with my run what today was.  Two years ago today, I sat with my sister on the couch of my house in Waco and waited to hear the judgment of Cliff's jury.  Two years ago today, my life burst apart at the seams when I read a well-meaning text message from a concerned friend that only said "I'm so so sorry Elizabeth."  I wasn't in the courtroom to hear the verdict, but those words told me all I needed to know.  Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.  Guilty.  All charges.

Imagine that - the latent pain of this day wends its way even into my cellular structure.

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I'm not really sad today.  Choosing to pursue divorce has helped me to let go of the more stinging aspects of grief.  But whether or not I'm married to Cliff, I'll always be connected to him through our son.  So I will never stop having to negotiate prison visits and legal repercussions, custody concerns, financial arrangements, etc.  And I do it alone, still.  I'm a metaphysical weightlifter in this regard, bracing myself under the burdens of life after "all the evil", so its no wonder that I develop twitches and tense muscles.

This last Sunday, the lectionary gospel reading was a dark one - Jesus' apocalyptic predictions in the book of Luke.  Wars and rumors of wars, persecution, moons like blood, suffering and the like.  It's pretty depressing stuff, except the last verse in the pericope.  "By holding fast," Jesus says, "you will gain your lives."  Indeed.

Jesus knew that life was filled with unfairness, with unearned punishments, with unlikely tragedies, with unforgiving judgments.  Jesus knew that and was always honest with his disciples about the trials that every life intersects.  And he told them to hold fast - not that they would escape the pain, not that they would escape the loss of the days ahead.  He told them to hold fast.  To belligerently choose existence and tomorrows and dawn and new experienes and life even as the world crumbled and roiled around them.

Unknowingly, that has been my theme during these passing years, the one repeating refrain, the goal in all the turmoil of my life - Hold fast.  And I am grateful for the words of Christ that remind me WHY I'm holding on in the first place: because I gain my life this way.  It may be a life where I occasionally twitch under stress.  It may be a life where I have to focus on letting go of the tenseness that I carry in my shoulders.  It may be a life where colds linger and where I still have the occasional late-night cry.  It may be a life of gray Novembers.  But I gain my life by facing the moons of blood and devastating spiritual earthquakes and holding fast.  

The days pass my friends, quickly and haltingly.  The days pass, and some memories fade while others remain burned forever into the film of your mind.  The days pass, but we can hold fast.  The days pass, and there is life to be gained.

December is almost here.  

Praise be to God! 

Memory

On Sunday during the Children's moment, I shared a story about the aftermath of 9/11 and how the very rich and very poor came together to serve those who were cleaning up the site of the WTC tragedy.  It's been 11 years since those terrible days, and I didn't even know anyone who was hurt/killed in the attacks, and yet I still choked up talking it.  I couldn't hold back a few tears, and I had to pause during the story so I could get myself together.  As I said to a friend lately, everyone touched by a tragedy, even those tenuously connected, experiences long lasting effects of it.  I think I wasn't the only one in that sanctuary on Sunday who felt the continuing weight of that tragedy.

Today on FB, I merely posted "I remember, I remember, I remember."  There's so much I remember of that day - sounds, and conversations, and startling images - but what I most remember is the shock at the horrific reality we all suddenly inhabited.  Suddenly the world was darker, or maybe it had never been as light as I thought it was.  It was like a bubble around me had popped and left in its wake the realization that the world was dangerous and that mortality was the rule rather than the exception.  I was only 17.

The difficult thing to admit in the days afterwards, was the fact that what America experienced on 9/11/01 was what many countries all over the world had already been living through.  The desire was to say "THIS IS THE WORST TRAGEDY EVER" and "NO ONE HAS EVER EXPERIENCED ANYTHING LIKE THIS" or "NOTHING WILL EVER BE THIS SAD."  But those statements are completely untrue.  It was a  terrible tragedy and it's exact likeness will never be repeated and the whole day will be forever (at least for me and the generations that have preceded me) drenched in sorrow.  But categorizations of "worst" and "nothing like this" and "never" are unhelpful and dishonest and they smack of competitive sorrow.  And that is unnecessary.  As I'm learning in the aftermath of my own tragedy, platitudes and comparative suffering have no place in our language.  The best that we can really do is speak truthfully about the sorrows that we undergo.

I imagine that survivors of the WTC & Pentagon attacks are a bit out of phase today, lost in terrible memories, in triggering conversations.  And if I knew any of the survivors, I'd like to imagine that I would find them in their haze and sit/stand with them and say "Today is a bad day.  I'm sorry.  I love you."  Because really, what else is there to say?  Nothing.  I may be projecting, though.

The weather has started to cool down and yesterday when I let the dog out to relieve herself, I stood in the chilly morning air.  And felt a stabbing thrust of GRIEF.  The dog trundled about in the grass as I closed my eyes and tried to figure out what had triggered me and I realized that it was the cold air.  Just that.  Because last year, when it started to cool down, we were on the downhill free-fall into Cliff's trial/sentencing/conviction.  And last year at this time, I was in the throes of anxious panic, of nights sleepless with fear, dreading the relentless passing of days. The cool air reminds me of the suffering that had already begun and the suffering that was about to shatter my life apart. I imagine that the survivors and victim families have experiences like this, days that lead into September and down the rabbit hole again to dark and rending memory.

I experience my own selfish moments when I want to say that my tragedy is the WORST tragedy ever, that NO ONE will ever suffer like I have, that no one's life will EVER be as sad as mine.  But I know that's not true.  Mostly, what I need is someone to sit near me when I'm in a haze of triggering grief and say "Today is a bad day.  I'm sorry.  I love you."  No platitudes.  No explanations.  No prayers.  No scripture.  Just presence and acknowledgement.

Memories sink down into your bones and sleep and wake in fitful starts and stops, ever present but never constant, silent passengers that grab hold of you and grip tightly and then suddenly release you again.  Time passes and experiences accumulate, but some memories will never loosen their hold upon you.  We know that because of 9/11 and the national mourning that we all participate in it.  And some of us know it because we carry around the hidden wounds of un-commemorated personal tragedies.

We remember.  We remember.  We remember.

Eulogy

One of the women that I have been visiting weekly this semester passed away on Monday. I gave the eulogy at her graveside service today. Here it is:

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Memories surround us in this place. They hover on the edges of our vision, on the tips of our tongues, just out of ear range. We close our eyes and let those memories wash over us: We remember Evelyn as a young woman, cradled in Lyle’s arms, spinning across dance floors, laughing. We remember her standing behind us, her voice scaling up and down in great tales as she created masterpieces with our hair. We remember her behind the stove in her kitchen, in any kitchen, chopping, measuring, cooking without recipes. We remember her in her last days, struggling to the find the words to speak. We remember her stories – we remember her struggles - We remember her. Now that she has gone on and received her ultimate healing – our memories have become more precious than we ever knew. Some of the imporantce in moments like these, in places such as this, is that we suddenly realize how valuable our memories are – how valuable our memories have always been. To all people in all places. The people of ancient Israel knew the value of memories – they passed on the memories of their history, the memories of their mothers and fathers, through stories told around campfires, through the words and acts of priests and prophets, through the poetry of their psalms; “what our fathers have told us we will not hide from our children, we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.” Jesus himself taught us the power and value of memory – “When you break bread and drink wine” he said “remember me.” Memory. It links us to our past. It links us to our loved ones, whether they remain with us or have gone on ahead of us. Memory helps us peer back and see the subtle and almost invisible movements of God among us and in us. Memories surround us here. Share them with each other like Evelyn shared with all of us – tell the stories of Evelyn knocking wigs off nuns, of Evelyn escaping the torture and terror of the concentration camp in Dachau, of Evelyn dancing through the night, of Evelyn and Lyle fighting and loving each other simultaneously. Tell each other about Evelyn’s love, her devotion, her perseverance, her stubborn, stormy, fiery nature. Tell each other about her struggles, and frustrations, those last days that seemed to fill with pain. Tell each other about Evelyn’s faith, her love of the Lord, her love of church, her love of all God’s children. Share – link yourselves to the past; link yourselves to Evelyn, to each other; and look back and see God moving within her life, within your own. Memories can bring healing, and I pray that today, and all the days that follow after this one, you will begin that painful process of healing. That the scars of yesterday may disappear, that the tears of loss become tears of thankfulness, that your hearts may be filled by the love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ instead of by loneliness and despair. God wants you to remember – your memories keep you aware of a greater world, of a greater people, of a greater purpose. God wants you to remember - in the act of remembering, your past becomes a part of your present, God’s saving acts throughout history, become his saving acts now. God wants you to remember – our loved ones can never really be gone when we purposely and thoughtfully pass our memories amongst each other. Share your memories. Heal each other. Remember Evelyn. Let us pray.