Discomfort

It's been two months since I've written here.  I don't know why precisely although I can create a litany of seemingly valid reasons, school demands more and more attention, I find myself more deeply involved in a few of my church commitments, I work hard to create intentional time with my kids, the litany continues.  What is more likely the case on some deeper level is that I have simply had nothing to share that could be formed in any meaningful and articulate way and my stream of conscious thought wasn't something I thought anyone would ever really want to read.

To update you briefly on our first year anniversary, we went to Disneyland for the day.  It does sound kind of nuts on one hand, getting up in Seattle at four in the morning, flying to Disneyland and coming home fifteen hours later to sleep in our own beds.  It's really all we had time for, given school and work for Emily etc.  It was meaningful, more than I can express actually.  Chris' laughter will forever be etched in the walls of Space Mountain so going there to hear it was important.  We left rainy grayness and found Southern Californian sunshine, complete with thriving orange trees in the California Adventure side of Disneyland.  Kids soaked up much needed Vitamin D, something in short supply naturally in our winters and I soaked up that and a plethora of theological and psychological significance to just about everything in the park.  In the end it was simply hard not to smile a lot.  I felt Chris' nod of approval, even at the absurdity of spending the money to fly that far of a round trip for one day.  9:51 p.m., the exact time of his passing, found us on an Alaska Air flight somewhere over Oregon most likely, heading back to Seattle, holding hands, remembering and finding some okay-ness.

I've been learning about discomfort and self-consciousness a lot lately.  I have plenty of both, like most of I suppose.  I have felt increasingly challenged to confront both of these concepts.  So, I'm trying to open up to precisely the very things that challenge my comfort level...emergent types of worship (something seminary is filled with), new ways of thinking about how different people come into relationship with God and even Tai Chi, something that I have been totally closed off to because I simply thought I looked so retarded trying it that I couldn't get past that in my head enough to live into the experience.  I'm not fully there yet but I'm learning. 

Along the way, I've pulled out my bible, partly for the lectio divinio way of reading it, letting it be the organic form that it is and come to ME instead of me having somehow to master it.  That's been tremendously rich to my devotional time.  The other thing I have done is open myself a little more to the last book of the New Testament a little more deeply.  With the help of a book by Eugene Peterson, that is something I will be sharing a little more of here in this venue.  When Chris first passed on, I defaulted to my favorite books of the Bible, Psalms, Jeremiah and Lamentations.  They were very comforting.  And I have long been made uncomfortable by Revelation, mainly because I've struggled to understand it.  But in this theme of being open to discomfort and of my deep desire to stay aware and open to the incredible Church Triumphant, I am learning that being uncomfortable is a good indication that you are growing. 

And so I'd like to invite you into some thought about the meaning of holiness, of the Church Triumphant, of heaven, of the very kingdom of God and into learning to live with discomfort.  We'll see where this goes and I'll try not to let two months lapse before I share more of what I am learning.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

One Year Ago Tonight

If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.  -C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity


One year ago tonight I wrapped Chris up in my arms...he had just been taken off the ventilator and his iv's removed.  He was safely in my arms with our babies at either side, snuggled in holding him with me.  Obviously this has been very present in our hearts and spirits today and we've talked about it some and marked the day with some little special moments that would go unnoticed to most folks but have Weber significance.  Emily shared with me in the car the other day something quite meaningful. She said, "I wasn't sure if I ever wanted to get married until last year, but when I watched you hold dad for a good 48 hours, rocking him, singing to him, praying with him, I knew then that marriage was something I wanted for myself one day."  I only share this to illustrate a truth I have come to believe in greatly...every moment, even the hardest ones, are teachable moments and grace abounds and God is good.

I visited with my pastor today, he's just about the best at genuine pastoring of anyone I've ever known and he has an incredible ability to be present with you and simply hold your stuff and let it be okay. We talked about that portal that opens sometimes in life, when we feel so close to the Divine that we can almost touch and feel.  It's that great cloud of witnesses, the Church Invisible and the absolute Presence of the Triune God that floods in when our spirits are stripped of everything and all of life is set aside.  Holding Chris a year ago today, time stopped.  Life and everyone and everything in it except for our family was set aside too.  While I miss Chris still, quite terribly so, I long even more to touch on more and more of that Presence. 

Chris receiving new life in Christ was the hardest moment of my life and yet oh so teachable.  God really does fill in the empty spaces.  He plants seeds and creates desires for deeper and deeper relationship with Him and all we have to do is lean in to that grace and trust the relationship. Two days after I first gathered him in my arms, my husband's body gave out and in a moment I became a widow.  While I stopped being a wife, I know with total certainty I have not stopped being a sister in Christ to him.  Chris is now in that very great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, touching us, holding us and flooding us with Grace. 

One year ago tonight I wrapped Chris up in my arms...and God wrapped us up in His.  Thanks be to Him who really does keep us from falling. 

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

New Year

After the hardest year of each of our lives, we press on into the new year...together and trusting God.  Blessings on your 2011.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

December 20th!

Happy Anniversary Chris!  Twenty-four years!
The kids are taking me to dinner, we'll take in some jazz too and we're going to S.A.M. for the Picasso exhibit.  I'll miss you terribly, as I always do but I do so rejoice with you.  You remind me daily of the Promise that is each of ours.    
Loving you always!
Your sister in our very present Christ,
Leigh

Big Band Dance

Tonight was the jazz big band dance at Kentridge, Eric's high school.  It was a nice way to start our Christmas break watching my kids dance together and getting to dance with my son a bit myself. 

Staying Open

It was nine months last Saturday.  I meant to post a blog but life and busy-ness and Eric's homework were all vying for my attention too.  We're three quarters of the way through the first year.  In some ways it's still very surreal at moments.  In some ways I can't believe how far we have come.  We've grown a lot, we're closer to one another, we've each changed.  Those awkward, awful weekends of early on have been replaced with a growing normalcy.  Fourteen will never be what it might have been for Eric but I also appreciate greatly the maturity and deepening of his spirit.  And college stuff is in perspective for Emily in ways I don't remember at her age.  So we've grown.

I think I have fallen deeper in love with God than I ever knew I could fall.  It's almost as if God simply stretched open my heart and whispered into it, "you have no idea how I can fill this space if you only stay open to Me."  And that's my biggest take-away in life thus far...stay open.  Stay open even when you think you already have a pretty good idea about things, stay open when it looks scary or filled with hurt, stay open at all costs because Grace enters the open doors in life far faster than closed ones, into which Grace must push and knock repeatedly. 

A week from today would have been our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary, five days later is Christmas and it is into that reality that I find myself yearning to stay open.  Leaning in to Grace, realizing that God is so much bigger than I can imagine, that God has my children in His care far more tangibly than I can myself and surrendering them in their tender years and their grief to Him.  Parenting is far more about praying than anything, not for God to DO something as much as for God to remind me they are His more than they are mine, something mothers work a little harder to accept at times, I think.  Still, there is a freedom in that acceptance.

And so we stay open, as individuals, as a family...and God just floods the space.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

Puzzles

Last year it was the Seattle skyline and he didn't feel much up to helping.  Between the months of chemo and then radiation afterwards, Chris was simply too tired to help with the jigsaw puzzle.  We've had one every year.  During that time when the academic quarter ends and as we head into Christmas we just seem to gravitate to the slowed down pace of a jigsaw puzzle amidst all the other things of life. 

Chris had Job's patience for them, I had enthusiasm but I was pretty terrible at organizing them.  I always got the border done and then he would find his way over to the table and begin this process of fitting pieces that I plain couldn't see or didn't work hard enough to see.  Like in so much of our life Chris brought patience and a methodical determination.  Last year he offered encouragement from the recliner but I was still pretty much on my own with it and that felt a bit weird.  It also took longer that way.  Still, Chris had imparted a desire to learn patience in me and I managed to get it finished before the new year.

Little did I know the ways in which God would be preparing me to face the coming year and everything it held.  Like always, however, God is at work keeping a covenant with me, writing a story and remaining totally faithful.  And so I poured the pieces of this year's puzzle out on the table, it's a map of the ancient world.  Somehow I think Chris would approve of the choice, it's got both kids engaged in the history of it. 

Like my life, the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together in places, offering glimpses of something greater.  Chris witnessed to me the value of patience and God has lovingly and consistently taught the lesson to me for years, especially during this last one.

December offers so many opportunities for "grief moments," a phrase the kids and I use for the official calling of a time out in our house.  Our anniversary is on the twentieth, there's obviously Christmas and more poignantly Christmas Eve, which will mark a year to the day since Chris was last in church.  He had been unable to get there after then, exhausted from radiation.  He sang every word of the Hallelujah Chorus at the end of the service, you would have never known how sick he was then because he sang with an enthusiasm and love of God that was palpable. 

And so the dining room table is adorned with a jigsaw puzzle, pieces waiting for a patient hand, something I learned from Chris and God.  I am grateful that God is patient with me as well.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh