Category Archives: grief

Christmas Stories

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I truly believe Christmas is the hardest season of the year. It is a characteristic of humans–our ability to make the most joyful event in human history into a frenetic, stressful, lonely race for the trappings of glee without the core of joy.

So this month I am giving myself the gift of stories.

My favorite storyteller was my paternal grandfather whom we called Papaw. My favorite thing about Christmas was his stories, his kitchen. For a nomadic military brat, his house, his kitchen was home.

Flawed, aging, ordinary home. But something about the combination of warm food aromas–coffee, pinto beans, brisket, pies–still comes back to me through all these years.

Home. The very place Jesus left to save us.

Cover

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It is a simple enough word
Cover
A blanket over me
The cleft of a rock
A bit of plastic tenting
as the storm blows in
.
These angels,
Fierce angels
Stretch wings of splendor over our history of blood

Turn your head to the side little girl
To the past where we both came from
And imagine for a minute
A world without cover
The shadow of majesty
Passing over us
Leaving us all
alone

Message in a Bottle

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Once a very wise person lost a child. Maybe children. He mourned because he loved them. so he came up with a plan. Put fire in the sky to guide them at night. Put smoke in the sky to guide them by day. Give them rules on something durable to keep them safe. Tell them from the beginning that you have a plan. Don’t worry, a plan of love.

Send messengers to remind them. Send someone like a son to find them. Document who you are and who they are. Leave a record of your love. Do everything because they are everything to you.

Understand that the story they are told about you may not be all true. Understand they may not want you in the end. Understand that no matter what no matter where no matter how, you will always love them. Because you are their dad. Because it is your nature.

Oh yeh, and write a book. Tell them in the book how much you love them. Pray they read it. Because it means everything.

If what i do ever seems a little crazy, remember that I am following that guy, that Wise Guy, so that one day I can tell my daughter face to face…

I have always loved you.

Losing the Triplets

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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

Church for the stubborn hearted

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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.

Church for the rest of us

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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

Surviving the Perfect Storm

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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.

Dear Krim Family

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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