November 13th, 1998 was an uncharacteristically beautiful day in Beaver, PA. I can remember the day verbatim because it was the day I lost you
Triplet B
Little one
Fifteen year old girl now
No matter what happens
I will always love you
My precious foster child
You changed everything
And losing you
Was like a total eclipse
Of the sun
We do the parable of the king who invites people to a wedding feast for his son. People ignore the invitation so he finds street people to come. There are some messengers hurt and killed in the process.
When the indigent dudes get ready for the clambake (uh, wedding) one is wearing his beat up, stinking work clothes. The king asks why he has not changed into the provided wedding clothes.
He was oppositional defiant and didn’t feel like it.
So he got kicked out into darkness with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
We talk about the messengers–prophets who told the truth and got hurt for it.
My daughter, who was five when we discovered and stopped what was happening to her, begins to tear up as she talks about the church and friends and family who could not handle our story.
We cherish those who did.
It is a hard thing to tell the truth and lose your community.
It is a harder thing to lie and lose your soul.
I don’t go to church. I should. I used to speak in church. Also teach aerobics, Sunday school, and youth group. It was like a one-man band.
The reason why it was like that was the apathy at the heart of that church. It was a social club, not a place of worship, a fact that became quite clear when I went to the leaders about a self-confessed pedophile.
Church is not a building
Church is not good coffee
Church is not the offering plate
Church is not babysitting
Church is the cathedral of the world, built by God not man.
Maybe you are like me–so burned by the wolves in the sheepfold that you don’t want to risk yourself on God or His messy people.
If you feel burned by it all, you probably have a good reason.
So try this–
Ask Him to show you His love
Falling leaves? Squirrels? Snow? Your children?
The world is full of signs of Grace. Look for them.
Then try Jesus. He is church–the strong tower of love. Open the books of Matt, Mark, Luke, or John and read a story –a verse, five verses.
Then listen. Find a quiet place and listen.
He loves you.
That is church.
(God loves us so much that He sent His only true soul’s child to scoop us out of despair and the hells we make for ourselves and give us hope, love and a place of sanctuary close to his motherly heart)
Church.
Built by the hands of Love
I went to Cape May once, Atlantic City twice, New York City a handful of times. Places of national iconic memory as well as personal.
I have also survived hurricanes. I know about their massive deadly power, the way they stir the sea. When you are waiting for a hurricane you pray two prayers–God, keep people safe and God, not us.
Most people don’t like to admit to the second one. It is a selfish prayer, a prayer of survival.
I think of the Krims. Their perfect storm was providing kindness to a stranger they thought they knew. The waters will recede, cleanup will restore the streets of New York, but each minute of each day will be a terrible hurricane of loss for an ordinary American family.
My prayers remain, just as I pray for all those who struggle to survive the violence of loss, another kind of fierce and deadly storm.
My heart aches for you. I know your lives have been thrown into the darkest tunnel. You are constantly in my thoughts and prayers. Words fail.
There is an Old Testament story that keeps coming to my mind. A woman whose family was executed to stop a war sits over the bodies of her loved ones warding of the birds.
It is one of the bleakest images of grief–all that remains is her lonely figure on a hilltop. I wish I could ward off the birds of memory seething around you and your beautiful, heartbroken family.
May my words be like hands
Warding off the birds
Imagine grief
Is an iceberg
Traveling through cold water
I just tell you
The part you can see
Is nothing compared to
The cold country in the depths
The place we cry
Alone
Isaiah 42:1-4 (NIV)
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. [2] He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. [3] A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; [4] he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his teaching the islands will put their hope.”
Last year I had not yet written an obscure self-published memoir called Just: a story of the lost and found.
I was not on Facebook. I was a private citizen wading through the havoc and grief caused by our decision to adopt a boy who would rob us all of our innocence.
My birthday is a watermark. Three years ago I did not know my children were being abused. We found out the weekend of Columbus Day 2009.
Rough memory
It stalks through family
Pictures, movies
Dates and times
No one is safe from it
The dark ominous
Scowl of truth
I have given myself some birthday gifts:
The gift of freedom from what people think
The gift of mobility
The gift of prayer (to the God Who Indeed Lives)
The gift of preservation and strength for my children
I have walked away from people I wanted to trust because they did not fight for my children
I fought instead
So it will be strange for me today, my birthday because I do celebrate these years–this gift of a broken life redeemed.
And I bless my God, my Friend for this new community He has given me
In place of the years
The locusts have eaten
Once
When you were still a boy
I walked with you
Into cool water in a dying light
No deeper than your waist
Although the gulf itself
Stretched for miles
Out forever
When I draw words for hell
I get them from Sartre
Not Jesus
Or Dante
Like lighting a match
To draw fire
This room is airless enough
The faces of it’s inhabitants
Never vary/a rictus of pain
I wonder…
Are you as afraid as I am
Of the little things
That last
Forever?
And the possibility
That there will be
No way out.
We have to talk about it
Even though we don’t want to
The ways we are broken
The way the past haunts me
I don’t think it haunts you
The same
Like two different ghosts
Mine brings me beautiful picture
Then wryly points to
The darkness behind them
And yours
Merely piles
Rejection letters on your desk
From all the cool people
And the clubs they go to
Without us
Carrying Light 