abundantly impossible mercy

I meant to write yesterday.

Really.

I did.

But each time I sat down to type, the task felt impossible.

See, last week my computer crashed. While pieces and parts of my current novel-in-progress were salvaged, smoothing and repairing and working with the detritus  felt overwhelming.

Impossible.

Sad.

Sadness.

What a strange emotion to have about a computer crash.

Until I realized the scattered electronic pages mimicked the scattered state of my heart. A few short weeks ago, my grandfather passed away. A good grandfather. One who never hurt me. One always quick to   tell a person they’re special. One who never hesitated to say he’s proud of us and we matter.

Like the loss of reams of research, edited manuscript and files upon files on my paralyzed hard drive, I don’t know if I’ll ever know precisely all I lost when I lost Grandpa Joe.

But I do know God blessed me with a closeness and a knowing in the last ten days of his life which no hard drive can contain or record. We spent days and hours and minutes visiting, he and I. A hospital room does that to people, you know: reduces the fading one to a thin, green gown; reduces the visiting one to a flower unfurled and reaching toward the old and wise one with a feverish longing to know.

To know him.

To know what mattered.

To know what matters, in the last ten days of nearly 95 years.

I still have no certainty about these things. But I have deep-bellied guffaws. Pictures of a man walking his girl to school for years, protecting her books in a special satchel built to withstand lake-effect weather and built-for-two. Stories of hard work and honesty which pays off in a lone octogenarian, limping with a cane–a long-ago employee of the giant, sleeping man in the silver casket. A man who comes to pay his respect and a funeral attended by six friends and ten family members.

One thing I am certain of: God knows our loss. 

Large or small, He knows.

He goes before.

He comes behind.

And though we may feel lost and thin and stuck under the deep, cold soil of winter, He makes a way for us to emerge.

As much as we might think flowers push themselves up out of the ground, it is the warmth of the sun which pulls them.

It is the light of day that pulls open the petals which reach heavenward for more.

New.

Life.

So instead of writing, today I knelt in the soil. Let awakening blades of grass poke between my toes. Patted spade-fuls of soil around fragile, wanting roots.

And then I watered it all.

Welcoming the spring, even as the sharp cold of winter beckons me.

And hoping in the possibility available in abundance from the impossibly merciful God.

“So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth.”

Hosea 6:3 (NASB)

Face and live through

Darkness.

God said, “Let there be light.”

And there was light.

Quickly followed by darkness.

Even today, when the sun hangs from the highest point in the sky, we wander and grope in darkness. Darkness brought on by our choices. By the choices of others. By the choices of generations before us and yet to come.

It’s easy to get lost in the blackness if we forget we don’t have to stay there.

We cannot escape the ebony blanket around us, but we can allow Jesus Christ to lift the covers off our souls, breathe in the cool scent of day and the weightless breath of Him.

Sometimes–too often–I forget that I belong to Him. That yes, I must face brokenness, but that Jesus overwhelms my brokenness. Jesus took on my brokenness. Jesus crashes through my brokenness and walks with me through it.

Remembering these truths is the challenge. Lifting my head and shifting my gaze away from the train wreck around me is the chore.

But when I do, the burden lifts.

The light cuts in.

And I am once again free in Him.

“A Christian is a person who decides to face and live through suffering. If we do not make that decision, we are endangered on every side. A man or woman of faith who fails to acknowledge and deal with suffering becomes, at last, either a cynic or a melancholic or a suicide. Psalm 130 grapples mightily with suffering, sings its way through it, and provides usable experience for those who are committed to traveling the way of faith to God through Jesus Christ.” ~Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

Thoughts from an almost-spring walk

 red bird crosses

the gritty path downward

trodden heavy

laden mindless in a heart that knows

how to be mindful

in the forgotten

places

green things poking

through decay and crunchy

layers of bitter

winter wondering when

it ends

green things reaching

weaving

intertwining

to the sun pulling

up through aching

warmth

lost in the wonder

worry and choking

fear and distrust I beg

for a remnant of the cross

I knew and faintly

remember promises of

omnipresence

and truth in

small, small places

I beg to see the cross again

I look

up and

I

do

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35, 37-39