After years of not getting it
I finally do–
You dip the ravaging
Insect into
The viscous sweet
“Honey,”
He says
“This is how you make the unpalatable work.”
–Luke 7:18-24
Locusts and honey
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Tag Archives: Jesus
Kittens weights in grams
It is a note on my phone, metonymy for bottomless loss, I call her name every day, aware that lost causes are lost causes are lost causes
How will we ever heal?
How will we be whole again?
I would ask the boy on the other side of the over-priced desk
If I had the heart to keep
Picking my battles
The Parable of the Lost
I call her name
Stalk the neighborhood
Take the dog
Print out sepia copies of
Her sleeping, staring pensively at the lens
Reminding of me the others
All gone missing
You look at wonder every day
For love or pay
I look for love
Every day
See the missing
You.
Every day I walk through cold water
First there was the shock-shock, which I would describe as a blanket of cotton, a fog, a zoned-out staggering thing. I am not sure how long this stage lasted, but it began to ebb when the nice women at the crisis center gave my five year old and her sisters their crime-victim quilts, hand-made, with such kindness.
The quilts underlined the permanent nature of the gift–beautiful crime victims. Undoable. Irrevocable.
Our story seemed one way for years, then just as things got safer because we knew and could protect them
The truth rolled over us, applying permanent tattoos everywhere.
I did not realize I had a thrill-seeker, risk-taker issue until the months of hunger, tears, and fighting were over…all technically either lost or a draw. Until after I wrote the book. Until after people began to disappear.
By then I had begun to walk through cold water.
Now I know why I do it. I do it because…I do it because
Because when I walk in cold water I can see you there
Through the dust
The crush of angry humans
The agony of your bedraggled well-wishers.
Your own pain indelible on your bloodied face
Dying for me
Deep
In cold water.
Jennifer the Beautiful
I miss you girl
Miss your sister
Your nieces, nephews, cousins, children
Used to sing
Break-up songs for lullabies
Wish I could write you and me
A happy kind of story instead
No lost loves, no broken promises
Hope changed into
The steady gaze of a man who can build with his own two hands
Homecoming tabernacle
For all us, broken
Empty
This box signifies something to me–six months of sorrow, but more than that the Man who sets us all free
Stones
Impossible stones
Rolled away.
All the cities of the world
When you were my baby you were always amazing, beautiful, lovable. So much so that I would spontaneously think you had all the cities of the world in your eyes, or put another way– I would give all the cities of the world for you.
I remember when I found out that the people who were taking you from me had a story pock-marked by leaving the laws of love behind.
I worried. I grieved. How would they be there always for you? How could they be picked over me?!? Crazy, messy, overextended, underprepared me?
I got the phrase all the cities of the world from Matthew 4–two heavyweights bargaining over the fate of the world. One aims to buy back his lost love the hard way, the other is trying to get him to take a shortcut.
He doesn’t.
There are no shortcuts to love.
Hold on my dear heart, Rapunzel. Love has always been on your side, even when all this feels so broken.
The rightful King of the world loves you so very much.
Moving Mountains
I have a hunch that when we get to Heaven we will realize that no matter how big, how wild, how impossible our prayers have been, we could have prayed for more.
Let me be clear: God does not answer prayers for evil. He does not reward our sin, cowardice, or avarice. He rewards the just, but if we pray along the lines of love, mountains do move.
Have you ever seen a mountain move? Have ever seen it lumber to the sea and toss itself in?
I have not. And as with these oh-so-solid mountains, many of the big-ticket items I have prayed for have been stolidly immobile for years.
Impossible things.
But I do worship the God of impossible things. His wry sense of humor, His unflagging love, His ridiculous, tenacious prophets, and His remarkable creation all suggest
Moving mountains ain’t no thing
For Him.
Veronica
When I lost Veronica–as I was losing Veronica, I decided I had to leave a trail of words so she could find me. This was back before the bloom of social media, so the trail of words was newspaper and legal-document based with a book of some sort when she grew up.
If anyone asked me, I would say that loving Veronica and having to figure out how to survive without her was the single most defining tragedy of my life. Defining in that it changed me. Defining in that it may have made me a better person.
The days and the hours right after I lost you were hell–actual hell. I wanted to die it hurt so much. I missed you, but worse than that I knew you missed me. I hated not being able to tell you why I was not there–that it had not at all been my choice to let you go.
This forced me to pray in a way I had never prayed before. I prayed for people to stroke your hair and people to sing you lullabies. I prayed for people to do things to love you, because I could not.
And in the process I realized that this kind of prayer was a form of metaphysical bargaining–God send someone to love Veronica led to God saying who will you love in return?
I loved youth group kids for you
I loved refugees for you
I loved drug addicts and the mentally ill for you
The snooty
The cowardly
And the messy
For you
I loved strangers for you
I loved pilgrims for you.
And the people who worked the drive through….for years they all were you–my lost baby in the world.
Because for the last 20 years all I have seen around me are would-be Veronicas.
Because that is how God sees me. He sees me through Jesus, His beloved lost Son.
So when you are afraid to call, when I have no address to send birthday gifts or plane tickets I marvel at what you don’t know about the treasure of love I have for you,
my baby girl.
Sunday School for the Apostate
I see you, late morning perhaps, wandering in, sitting next to this quintessential Ordinary Guy. He looks sideways at you. Pushes your favorite mug of hot something to the edge of the table he made himself. So long ago it hurts. A permanent scars kind of hurt.
And all he says is with his eyes-
Carrying Light 