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
Chose your words carefully
Remember both your predecessors and antecedents
While neither should define you, the latter may constrain your rightful impulse towards flight
Because sometimes silence
Because…sometimes silence
Hides terrible things.
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.
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.
Nondescript kitchen window transforms itself into stained glass as I overthink which teacup, settle on porcelain white so different from the non-Euclidean trees green, alive, and fierce in this hot summer wind
I drop
two bags into the single cup, pour water from the kettle, assess how full the tea tin used to be
Last time we were alive
Together.
6 minutes to Ballinger, Texas I missed you. Not possessing the ability to stop all the clocks, I watched windmills instead, recording the flat, hot, windy stretch of road while the Catholic radio station came in so clear with words of uneven comfort. I picture you a Ghibli bride, birdcage veil like Jackie Kennedy, always dainty, smallest, sweetest bouquet of flowers held between your front two paws as you proceed toward our mutual Savior, unswerving in his gaze.
Matthew 1:1 NIV
[1] This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Matthew seems pretty confident that Jesus is the Messiah, a word with so much power to reckon with us and all that has captured us that I am not sure how big or long or loud our explanations of Messiah could be and still be only an approximation of the real.
Some synonyms: King, Anointed, Savior, Redeemer, Ransomer, Hero, Deliverer, Protector
The Reckoner.
Like you I dread
The cascade of terrible deals waiting each day in the junk folder of a yahoo account
Offers for things I don’t want, need, fear
Including Nina’s daily offer of
Gorgeous Russian brides
(Which raises so many questions)
I decide to believe
They are all nesting dolls
With the hopefully-hypothetical Nina the biggest mama doll
Seamed at the waist so
Each smaller iteration can come out
With her own
Painted-on wedding dress, bouquet of flowers
in a line they become their own wedding procession
Waiting for Someone to breath on them
Immortal life
Making us all real.
I leave the shower curtain on the living room floor and the little boy who does and does not resemble us takes it up, exclaiming, the periodic table! with the remains of his little boy voice.
Later, after forgetting and days of heavy gravity, I lift the curtain and pierce each hole again, arms growing heavy-diagonally, the way trees grow.
Admire the way they have been ordered each in their brightly colored boxes. Iron, gold, carbon, oxygen, and the exotic ones we seem to have conjured to fill up the empty places.
He speaks to us in parables.
When I tell you I found the old mushroom-colored sweatshirt which saw us through thick and thin you will know I am talking about the way the Romans used to have it done, long pole, wad of cloth, vinegar soaked as we raise it to the real hero, his naked pain, the way he eschews ordinary safety for a stretched-to-the-limits agony
I take the brush, add the cleanser, wipe it all down with an uneasy litany
Drab for color
Old for young
Plain for beautiful
Forgotten for remembered
He says
Me for you
Death for life
Life, everlasting.
Carrying Light 