EVERYDAY ALTARS, CROSSES & COMPASSES (during COVID-19)

This COVID-19, like most disease or illness, is shamelessly apathetic
There is no one it will not touch
It is indifferent to race, age, gender and geography
It separates, divides and detaches
It robs families of proper good-byes and funerals
even healing touch is not outside of its stoic capacity to annul.

As usual, the most vulnerable, are targets
the virus is heartless as regards suffering of all kinds
It targets the weak, the elderly, those already ill and
those in compromised, miserable living situations.
It is not put off by war zones or refugee camps
It ruptures trust between government and its people,
between industries and countries
between neighbors and families and cities.
It delights in distancing people socially and geographically,
People are stuck at home or away from home or somewhere in between.

Its power to close is monumental
places that have never been closed a day have been forced to retreat behind closed doors.
Services and pleasantries that are adjacent, convenient, neighborly
stand closed in quiet defeat while the virus mocks
The surge in sudden medical needs have rocked the hospitals & clinics
obliging them to spread out into hotels and tents and industrial parks
The long waits for masks, alcohol, respiratory machines & quick tests
are interminable and for many the wait is too long and too late.

The virus has not only spread geographically
but it has usurped the press, people´s conversations, the internet, our thoughts
It pushes its way into parks and patios and parking lots
It considers itself popular and flaunts itself immodestly through every cable and fiberoptic point.

It is unmoved by "normal," ongoing pain.
People are still grieving leukemia, miscarriages, car accidents, divorces and domestic violence...
(to name a very few)
Heaped upon it is the burdening sadness of COVID-19´s violent attacks,
Its indiscriminate seizing of lovely people.
It is especially ugly among the defenseless & in areas already scarred
by war & poverty & complex displacement.

BUT -

It is as yet unaware of the upsurge of goodness in the face of selfishness
It is not acquainted with the god-like efforts of caregivers & medical personnel
It is so self-focused that it is blind to the heroic creativity of parents in small apartments
of the super powers of little ones in their imaginations against this great beast
It is veiled from noticing the undying concern of educators for their students´ good
It is masked from the power of the unity of applause at 8 pm.
It is deaf and dumb in the presence of songs & art, poetry & homemade crafts
All created (albeit innocently) for its very destruction.

People are reflecting about their lives, even making changes
Journals are filling and tears are streaming
Families are conversing, couples are snuggling, teens are coming out of their bedrooms
Yes, it is true that the imposed closeness is stirring up things from dark places, too.
Grief, depression, irritability, impatience, lack of discipline, past hurts
But there is time now to take a second look, to pull back from a reaction
to ask for or to extend forgiveness
And it is making us tenacious, resilient & steady -
All those who choose to be.

There are thousands of variations of challenges for different ones
But there is also opportunity
There is a myriad of tests & trials & valleys for all
But there are also crossroads for any who are willing to change course
Simple everyday things are transformed into altars, crosses, compasses, stars & sacred encounters
God is speaking and people are listening
God is moving and people are making room
God is healing and people are receiving
God is present and people are being transformed.

This virus will fall into its own apathetic trap
and its evil will be crushed in regret.
Those who are willing to believe
in everyday altars, crosses, compasses, stars & sacred encounters
will triumph in spite of death tolls, for death has no sting to them.






Photo by: Bhailey Resident

AFTER ALL THIS

After all this time,

all these years,

all the pain

and all the tears

I´m still here.

After agony of loss

and shock and disbelief

After years of missing

and aching and restructuring

I´m still here.

Still here trying to write

Still here creating laments

Still here because grief is still real,

Still here because it keeps changing,

throwing me off my game.

Still here because I´ve nowhere else to go...

After relapses and seasons

valleys and waves

After anger and bargaining,

spirals and pain and feeling lost,

I´m still here.

After darkness and candleless nights,

sad holidays and lost identity

After arguments and setbacks

recesses and repercussions,

I´m still here.

After two steps forward and three back

one person up and three down

or any other combination thereof,

there is no sense of healing for all,

no harmony or peace or the happiness of before.

Where are those days?

Why must they be gone just because she is gone?

Why can´t we move on?

Why can´t we all be well at once?

What has happened to my life,

to our life?

Nothing looks the same to me.

A most precious thing has been taken from me -

the very faith of my children.

As if losing Jenna wasn´t enough!

All I wanted was for them to see and love you like I...

But I have not been able to protect their beliefs, their worldview

Somehow in the midst of the years of grief,

they decided You were not real.

I have failed.

I am devastated.

How could I not protect them in the midst of such pain and vulnerability?

Five plus years later and I am still a mess

So many emotions and so little capacity

So inward focused, so unpredictable

I long to be stable,

to be healthy...

But I am struggling to hold it together.

I have questions and doubts

we have so much love (thank God)

yet faith is gone, it is no longer central;

We all felt the division at Easter...

It split us in two

And I am grieving this loss.

Jenna would have understood me

She would have known without a word

She would have sensed it and made sense of it for me.

She was special that way.

Somehow COVID has stirred up old stuff

I thought things were better

Yet I struggle to sleep and to stay calm

my health announces that my body is grieving;

I don´t  know how I am anymore.

Oh please bring my children home to You!

Bring them back to your love!

I cannot live this way in defeat

letting the enemy have his way

Please break through

please triumph

please be God to them again.

I know the seeds are there,

The years of love and stories (real ones),

of insights and prayers,

of true love and belief;

of transformation...

they beat in my heart

And echo through the corridors of many years.

After all this

I am still here.

You are my love

where else would I go?

You alone have the words of life;

please breathe them over us all.

Breathe them over all the pain, the tears and the years...

For after all this,

I am still here.

Photo by:  Claudia Dea

THE RACE SET OUT FOR ME (repeat)

With big thanks to Ralph Anderson
for helping me reflect on these verses.

¨And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us...¨  

Hebrews 12:1

I have been entrusted with a race.
It is uniquely mine.
No one else can run it for me.
No one is competing with me for it.
I go at my own pace...
The pace he has given me capacity for.
I run in my own style...
The style he has created me for.

Sometimes it doesn´t look pretty.
Races have many stages, many stations.
My race sometimes has detours.
Sometimes it has a roadblock.
At times there are others cheering me on
And other times there are long stretches of desert loneliness.

I like it best when I can see others running their race nearby.
We don´t follow the same course
Nor do we all finish at the same time...
Yet we are headed to the same finish line!
I love that.
We run unique races yet the same One calls us.

But some days I wish I could run someone else´s race.
Their´s may look easier or more fruitful or even more fun.
But then who would run my race?
The one I have been entrusted with?
No one else can run for me.
No one else can run it in the way that I can.
And He has created each of us to display certain aspects of Him.
We each carry that privilege, that trust.

I have been entrusted with a race.
I am not sure why mine has been riddled with so much sadness.
Yet there has also been fragrant & beautiful fruit.
I don´t want anyone to miss seeing His amazing grace in grief.
I don´t want anyone to miss seeing hope in loss.
I don´t want anyone to miss seeing His display of love on me.
So I keep on running.

I have run for Him throughout the years,
Through continents, creative kingdom work,
Through pouring into others, through blessing, through hardship.
There have been many curves & plenty of love-hills.
And it has sometimes been very, very hard.
Those are days to ¨consider Him,¨
Those are days to fix my eyes on the finish line,
Those are days to look for the Pioneer of Faith.
So that I´ll keep on running the race...
The one marked out for me.

I have been entrusted with a race.
It is uniquely mine.
No one else can run it for me.
I will run, walk and even crawl to get to that finish line.
I want others to see His uniqueness in me,
I want to hear ¨well done,¨
I want to see Him.
That is why I run
This race marked out for me.

¨Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.¨

Heb. 12:2

¨Consider him...so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.¨ 

Heb. 12:3

ARE YOU SICK OF MY GRIEF?

"He was...a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."  

Isaiah 53:3

Are you sick of my grief?
Sick of hearing about it, reading about it?
Maybe you think it´s taking an awfully long time for me to recover.
Maybe you just want to see me be well again.
Maybe you´re worried about my kids or my marriage.
Maybe you think I should have been through ¨those stages¨ already.

Or maybe grief makes you uncomfortable.

Maybe you just don´t understand grief.
Especially grief after the loss of a child.
Especially ¨compounded grief.¨*
Or maybe you think Christians should ¨do better at it.¨
Maybe you think I should ¨do better at it.¨
Maybe you want me to hurry up.

Are you sick of my grief?
Do you think I should be happier by now?
Get out more often?
Travel with Bruce more?
Be more involved in all kinds of activities?
Have more capacity by now?

You know what?
I´m sick of my grief, too.

But I have learned on this journey
that there is only one way through grief: straight through it.
There are no short cuts.
No one else can do it for me.
I am the only one who can walk this road.

Another thing I have learned on this journey
is that grief never ends - but it does change.
Being intentional about your grief
and the passing of time does help -
but you will always love and miss that person...
and the memories of them will last a lifetime.

I have been very intentional
And I have been honest with God and others.
I have experienced a lot of healing.
I am not the same person I was.
Nor is any one else in my family.
We are all still trying to figure out who we are.

I have had ups and downs.
I have experienced the proverbial
two steps forward, three steps back
more times than I can count.
I have rolled with all kinds of grief waves
And been swept up in tsunamis.

Yet there has also been beauty discovered
in unexpected places and ways.
There has been love received
that I have not known before.
And there has been hope present
in spite of much darkness.

Everyone says, ¨it takes time.¨
And they´re right.
A lot more time than you think.

So if you're sick of my grief, know this:
grief is love without a place to land.
Deep grief is commensurate with deep love.

My grief only finds a place in the arms of the One
who loved me first and
who knows all these things.
He is not sick of my grief.
He is patient, compassionate and loving.
He is counseling and shepherding me through this journey.
I trust the pace He sets and the places He takes me to.
This Man of Sorrows has entered fully into mine
and I will forever be grateful.

So please trust this process with me;
trust Jesus and I as we walk it together.

"He was...a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."  

Isaiah 53:3

"He has sent me (Jesus) to bind up the brokenhearted...

to comfort all who mourn,

and provide for those who grieve..."

from Is. 61:1-3

*Compounded grief refers to multiple losses in a short period of time.

TheGriefJourney.org

Photo by: Sharon Brogran

HOLY PAUSE

       

This forced quiet, this compulsory isolation

Is it not an opportunity?

This gift of seclusion, is it not from God?

Is something so huge touching the entire globe 
not a roaring call to the global church to pray and to BE CHURCH?

Oh! For such a time as this!

  

Although sin has left this earth full of sickness and disease,

He chooses to work with it, under it, over it, in spite of it.

Whatever your theology on this pandemic is,

I think we can all agree that wherever it is darkest,

there will be close behind the brightest light of Glory

you could ever have imagined!

Most of us remember the moment when we finally “got it.”

We finally saw that, in the end, little was being exaggerated.

And we realized that people had died, were dying, were going to die.

And we began to question and wonder and wrestle

with something so colossal none of us could wrap our mind around it.

It´s absolutely global…and yet so neighborly…and so invasively personal all at the same time.

It sucked up all our freedom and independence.

And thrust us into a frenzy of change in order to be able to continue working, studying, 
caring for others, caring for our bodies. Or not.

We feel & see every array of emotion,

We feel things we don´t understand, say things we don´t mean, pray desperate prayers.

We are captives in this life-halting, things-will-never-be-the-same-again pandemic.

And it´s ok.

We have been extended an unplanned self-retreat, 

an unexpected time of self-reflection.

I realize this looks differently to everyone.

Some are still working fairly normally.
Those in health care are living true nightmares.
Some of us have switched to working from home,
While others cannot work at all.
Some have suddenly had to shift to full-time child care,  
While others live alone & are facing a sort of solitary confinement.

Yet for everyone, everything changed.

There is a quiet to everything outside, to all our activities.

In this stillness, in the hushed, reserved tones of quarantine,

things begin to stir...in us, in those around us...

and we are all confronted with a mirror.

                                                                                                     

Yet as we begin to walk out days at home,
He is moving, inviting, correcting, enveloping

He confronts us in all we claim to be -

We realize how inept we are at so much togetherness

and loneliness at the same time!
And there is no escape.

We are being graced with

An alluring chance to grow into one another,

Not just “do our own thing.”
Will we take it?
Will we grow in family, in community, in church?
Or will we become stuck in time, ignoring this chance to peel back unhealthy patterns?

We cannot deny this chance to listen, to discern,

to experience compassion, to experience grief.

To laugh, to play, to create

And we may find ourselves in unusual roles, exercising significant patience,

experiencing jealousy, uncomfortableness, anger, sadness…

Extroverts and introverts trying to find a routine that works.

Spouses are trying to meet needs & get needs met.

Kids are going crazy and the educational systems are stretched raw 
adjusting to education on line in this unexpected time.

No one can negate the rising fear, anxiety, confusion, distrust & even outright bewilderment
in our communities and around the world today.
Yet there are God stories multiplying in forsaken places,
Love stories among the vulnerable,
Jesus is coming alive in us
and we must pray that He will be seen.

There is uncertainty,

Yet we know one who is Certain.

There is fear,

Yet the “waves & wind still know his name.”*

There is breath held over the incredible economic impact.

Yet he can blow His breath across this globe in restoration.

There is loss & sadness & anger against how poorly prepared we were.

And we learn.

What were first numbers now have names, and soon, you know some of those names,

And there is grief.

And He sits with you.

He is in every individual sacred moment of yours.

And He is strategically working a billion things we cannot see

For the establishment of His kingdom.

It is a sober thing to be “making” history.

Yet Jesus has the script. (He writes it.)

Even in this, especially in this, he is turning, healing,

redeeming, calling forth heaven even in this, and it will be for His kingdom´s glory.

This is not the “glory” we expected in 2020!

But Jesus isn´t much into doing what we expect.

This extraordinary time calls for extraordinary attention.

Attention to the One writing out history.

Attention to the One who is redeeming in the midst of wars, chronic illness, vulnerability, natural disasters, human trafficking, crime, poverty….

Attention to the One who can redeem this virus, too.

Attention to our own hearts & His activity there.

Can we release our plans, our freedom, our right to choose?

Can we hold both hands open to our compassionate God,

One filled with grief and the other with trust?

For these two are companions; we experience both.

One does not cancel out the other;

we have to find a way to live with both, to hold both.

Like a lot of things Jesus does,

He accomplishes through paradoxes.

He is Love, Compassion, Power, Comfort, Mercy, so many things…

But he is also Mystery.

We cannot have it all figured out,

But we do know he is speaking.

So, this forced quiet, this compulsory isolation

Is it not an opportunity?

This gift of seclusion, is it not from God?

*from the song by Bethel Music & Kristene DiMarco

Photo by: iezalel williams

This B&W photo is of a passion flower. For us in Spain, our quarantine (cuarentena) has lined up with Lent (cuaresma) and Easter. I doubt that is a coincidence. This year Passion Week will be full of a different kind of opportunity, a different kind of community, a different memory for years to come. May your home be full of love & grace.

LET IT RAIN!

Here in Spain during our two+ weeks so far of lockdown, 

we have had a LOT of spring rain. There have been 

conversations about if the rain makes it easier to have 

to stay indoors with varying opinions. In general, most 

of us living in southern Spain are completely spoiled with

 the many days of sun. But today, the rain is speaking...

and I for one, am listening.

The hard rain is buffeting the ground

The ground is oversaturated

and sits in docility

Receiving the abundance

The streets, patios, alleys & drains

surge with drops & swirls & rivulets

They join other sources in growing strength

And course together down the street in victory.

Oh! that it could wash away the virus!

Oh! that it could cleanse the air forever!

How we all need these spiritual rains

Showering down on our heads, our minds

Sanitizing our thoughts, unhealthy defaults

We need this atoning drizzle over our hearts & souls

I need it to pour over my emotions

taking the negative & toxic ones away in the stream

I need gentle showers over my spirit

refreshing, restoring, redeeming

And over all our bodies

Please let it rain atonement, cleansing, healing.

This hard rain buffeting the ground?

It is music, it is provision, it is life

It is God´s invitation to a deeper, internal work.

Photo ironically by:  Don't Panic: Music | Art | Culture | Events

IN GRIEF

Many things stir up grief unexpectedly. You think you´re finally at a certain point when Boom! something inside you explodes. And so the sadness of the COVID-19 around the world has not only provoked varying emotions in me, it has been a trigger to my own hidden stuff. Grief is never over, it just changes. My own grief in its many diverse expressions & stages is now calling out for attention. Understandably, it is also a time of decreased activity and increased reflection. I should have seen it coming...



So many stages, seasons, shades
of grief
So many days, months, years
of grief
So many tears, sleepless nights, breaths
of grief
So many adaptations, adjustments, sacrifices
of grief.

So much illness, weakness, fatigue
to grief
So much justification, questions, theology
to grief
So much toxicity, pain, wrestling
to grief
So much time, intensity, challenge
to grief.


So many scars, nightmares, trauma
from grief
So many marks, lessons, walls
from grief
So many changes, losses, limps
from grief
So many special days, bittersweet days, melancholy days
from grief.

So, so many
Too, too many...

Too many memories, songs, jokes
in grief
Too many emotions, attitudes, efforts
in grief
Too many mornings, afternoons, nights
in grief
Too many reality checks, second glances, shadows
in grief.

Too many storms, misunderstandings, clouds
in grief
Too many hidden meanings, paradoxes, mysteries
in grief
Too many closets, papers, photos
in grief
too many choices, behaviors, mementos
in grief.

So, so many
Too, too many...

So much love, caring, comfort
with grief
So much depth, honesty, genuineness
with grief
So much change, maturing, sweetening
with grief
So much compassion, understanding, empathy
with grief.

So many words, prayers, hugs
with grief
So many journals, albums, pages
with grief
So many paintings, songs, dances
with grief
So many moments, presence, consolation
with grief.

So much, so many
Too much, too many
in grief.




Photo by:  Johannes Neustifter