new years love

breathe.  it's the end of 2013. tomorrow we begin again.

i'm not a big new years person.  i don't like staying up late and i don't like champagne,  but i do like new beginnings.  in fact i love them.  i need them.  maybe because i mess up so much.  maybe because it gives me hope.  the sad part is, i feel like my resolution, my goal, my hope for the next year is always the same- to be still, and present and more for people.  to savor and appreciate the small moments.  to be thankful. to live into gratitude.  to practice joy and patience and love.  to really love.  to love well.  to love in the 1st corinthians 13 way:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, 
but do not have love, 
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.   
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, 
love is kind. 
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

this year i don't want to be a gong.  i don't want to be the clatter clatter of the clanging cymbal.  i want to learn real patience and kindness.  i want to let go of what is jealous or proud.  i want to honor those i love, ahead of me.  oh i so don't want to be angry.  i want to forgive and let go.  i want to be full of the light of truth. i want to protect and trust and hope and continue- endure- proceed- keep going- hold on- improve.

the other day i came home with a giant branch and put it in my favorite vase given to me by some dear friends.  

the kids all asked what this monstrosity was and showed me how easily they could poke out their eyes on it.  but it was my "new years be thankful branch"  i wanted us to decorate it with what we are thankful for, to begin to live in a place of gratitude  because we have been given so much.  but now i think i might need to make it our "2014 love branch". i might need to fill it with what love is- all the parts- all the ways we should be for each other and care for each other- and out of that love will bloom gratitude and thanks and joy. 

zoe surprised me by writing LOVE with LPS's

living in thanks

my brother and my uncle decided that 2014 should be the year of being thankful.  that we should live in this. look for it. communicate it.  that we should reflect and share with each other what we are thankful about, and who we are thankful for. 

i agree.

so yesterday, i woke up and decided that even though it was the end of 2013- it was time to begin with thanks.  i began with being thankful that Christmas is over. because this year, Christmas was hard.  i think the third Christmas in a row on the equator, far from family, in the heat and dust of the dry season, got to me.  i missed everything.  i missed cold air that shows your breath, i missed fireplaces and the one sided hotness that goes with them. i missed cousins and games and holiday M&Ms.  i missed real eggnog and parties and Christmas oreo's.  i missed caroling and snow and sales and eating seasonal starbucks mint brownies. yes, this year, i missed america all of it, consumerism and all.  i missed old friends and tradition.  i missed our church's candle light service.  i missed the preamble and the post-amble and the get ready for new years amble. so first of all, i was thankful that Christmas is over and the new year can begin.

yesterday i walked up monkey hill and i was thankful for the morning.  that zoe had gotten up and breakfasted and showered and brushed and ready with minimal argument but still assistance.  i was thankful that i had kept my calm.  that we were done before noon.  that it was relatively smooth sailing.  i was thankful for the clarity of the sky, the brightness of the sun, the five different electric colored flowers i could see in one view.  i was thankful for lake victoria.  for the wiggling shadows of the banana leaves beckoning to me, for the perfect-even-though-not-decemmberish weather.  and i was reminded in being thankful, that life is lived in these moments, in these small spaces joy comes, we can turn things around when we stop and appreciate, when we value what is all around us, and each other. 

i get easily overwhelmed.  i look at zoe especially, and become easily discouraged that she still doesn't fully know how to wash her hair.  i look and see all the years past and all the possible years ahead of her need and her lack and her dependence and in that place, i become hopeless. i become swallowed. i become lost in my life.  but when i can see the little victories, when i remember to see the smoother bits as smooth, and the easier times as better than it could be- that is when i feel hope, and joy.  and in the hope and joy, i can behave better.  in the hope and joy, i can encourage and support and be strong and provide. in the hope i can be who i want to be for her, and for me, and for all of us.

right now it's beautiful. it's quiet except for distant thunder.  the sky is white with clouds and the yard is littered with fallen leaves that tapped along the tin roof all afternoon.  things are still. children are far. birds are always and forever in song.  there are swimming clothes drying on the line.  i am on my porch. alone. thankful for this moment.  these minutes. 4:52 on a friday afternoon, two days after Christmas, almost to the new year.

i will keep holding on to these bits.  i will keep looking to savor the sweetness- to see it and love it and appreciate what is good in my day. and i think 2014 will be full of hope and joy- because it's there- it's in the color and the air and the sound of thunder and small voices. because it's in remembering to stop and look and be thankful for these things, and for each other.

finding

sometimes God speaks to us on a bumper sticker.  on a license plate.  in a poem.  in the light at the end of the day. in a painting. a song.  the smell of the sea on a day you needed it more than anything- its salt and its calling. sometimes it's in an orchestra of things all together- the ocean, the light on the water, the feeling of the cool sand on your feet, the pungent smell of dead things and seaweed- the sound of the gulls and the crashing water- the rhythm of it's pulling and pounding.  God is everywhere- how often we miss her.

in today's reading buechner talks about needing a word in a time of great trouble and a truck driving past him with the license plate 'TRUST'.  i remember driving madly to zoe's psychiatrist once when her meds weren't working and crying and seeing on the car in front of me the bumper sticker "walk by faith, not by sight". it was a time when what i saw terrified me. when walking by sight caused me to trip and fall and cry- but everywhere i looked- all i could see was what i saw.  my faith was tucked behind, my faith was hidden behind the mess i was looking at.  then i saw that beautiful reminder and i knew how i needed to walk. i knew that i needed to close my eyes and walk.  to be bold. to let go. to stop fearing and start trusting- because faith chooses to know that someone else is in control, that we only see part of a whole- that we are small, so small and held, so held.

i've been looking back on my life. on my year. especially because i do that when one ends and another one begins and my computer was down so i picked up the words of another who was reflecting on some of her years and as i read, i began to cry because i could feel my own absence.  i could feel my lostness and my forgetting. it was God speaking those things to me through her words.  it was God getting my attention and saying- i'm here. wake up. come home.

as i read i began to remember.  i began to remember who i was and in the remembering i became so aware of things i've forgotten. some things that may seem small and unimportant but that matter.  things that were part of me- that brought joy -carnal things- like tasting peaches and really good cheese and cooking and caring for each other with good meals and the time and attention of preparing and eating.  i have lost this here- this part of life has become for me unnecessary and expensive and hard to do, but behind it, is me lost and skinny and eating whatever is easiest, just getting something on the table.  but i'm missing God in the figs and balsamic. i'm missing sharing that bit of creation with the people i love.  and it extends out -it's metaphoric-  i'm missing some of the passion, i've forgotten the joys in the small moments- in the goodness of life.

there are ways that i have lost myself this past year in the hardness.  that i have been swallowed up by what is in my sight, walking in that line of vision, not in the expanse of my faith.  and it has become narrower and narrower and suffocating and tasteless.  that is not who i am.  that is not where i want to be. so today....

today is my birthday. today i get to start anew. today i get to begin again and it started early with me breathing into the dark of my morning- help me find myself in You this year.  because that is enough.  that brings the taste- all of it.  sweetness and salt and bitter and fullness- it brings renewal and redemption- it brings life back into the corners that have collected dust.

so i will try to be here. still. today. to taste my days. to savor small things. to appreciate. to listen. to wait. to hear and see and smell and taste the goodness of God all around me. and to remember who i am, to close my eyes and walk in the wider place of faith. and to eat something besides a samosa.

in the words of another

Swimming, One Day in August

It is time now, I said,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit
among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean, the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be time, again,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.

----------mary oliver

hope

one week ago lilian sat on her friends couch, with her huge pregnant belly, watching her neighbor loudly mourning her just lost son timothy. she sat there holding her stomach, her own kicking child inside. she sat there as the hope- as the future- her body full of life and promise.

yesterday she buried that life.

yesterday i rode back from another village, from another burial, with another mother who had just buried her first born son.  this son was only 2 days old when he died of complications from his delivery.  a preventable death. an unexpected and preventable death.

they carried the body from the hospital straight to the village.  i arrived to his young mother lilian in her traditional gomesi dress stained with her weeping breast milk. the baby lay covered inside the house beside the smallest coffin i'd ever seen.  women sat on mats all around the baby and the house in bright colored cloth like flowers- their faces, some young and wondering, some old and knowing. a baby is supposed to be hope and life and light and purity and future and joy and expectancy.  a baby is not supposed to be dead.

at the burial, i sat on an old cemented grave and looked away over the banana plant covered hills and i listened.  the people sang and sang in luganda. there is something about song that reaches the spirit in a way that only words can't - and that music carried me. it carried me to places of long ago and far away. places of beginning dreams and plans.  places of hope and wonder. here i am, where i always somehow thought i'd be, yet also swallowed by it. 

i love this place uganda. i do.  the red dust and the bumpy roads and the patchwork everything. the resilience. the continuing. the randomness. the always bright sun. the endless green. the intensity of color. the contrast. the quickness of laughter-- despite. the willingness.  the giving.  the ease of conversation.  the sameness of each morning.  the constancy of sunset.

but woven between the papyrus reeds and elephant grass is loss.  loss sits in the middle of all the beauty and all the mess.  it is a part of life.  it's acknowledged. it's accepted. even that part of loss that is a loss of control. this is still hard for me, and this past week i felt devoured - or at least chewed up and spit out. left in pieces. 

but like africa- your pieces get up and go on.  what is left, eats something, sleeps for a while and starts over the next day.  you suffer together, eat porridge and cry, and then you stay and sit and be.  you don't leave people alone with their loss- you band together- you feel it and hold it and share it- instead of isolating it actually unites. and that. is. beautiful.  that is what makes it bearable.

that is what makes it more than bearable but hopeful. because if there is no hope than why am i here? why are any of us anywhere, doing anything? and i do have hope- not in my ability, but in Gods love that reaches down.  hope that things can get better.  that cancer care will improve.  that babies and mothers won't die in childbirth. that roads will be fixed. that voices will be heard. that black and white won't matter. hope that i may be an instrument in those hands of love. 

because if there is one thing i've learned- it's that love is what matters- perhaps here more than anywhere.  if there is one thing i've learned it's that there are many things here i can't fix.  some illnesses are incurable, some treatments are unavailable, sometimes even the most basic things are just not. this feels really unfair and unjust and can make me really mad and i can use that to motivate me  to work for change and betterment.  but at the end of the day- what matters- is how i loved.  what matters is how we love each other.  do we turn away at the injustice of it all? or do we pull up a mat and sit?  do we just show up and be with each other when the hour is so dark- even when the darkness is unfair?  yes,  because that is love, that is what we are called into, that is what we are all capable of.  that is what brings the hope.

goodbye part 1

i am back from the village. back from burying my young friend. from throwing dirt on this coffin while holding on to his younger sister. back from weeping with his mom as she said goodbye to her only son. back from the hills of his fathers village where his mother will leave the body of her boy.  back to where? back to what?

i'm not sure.

this week has been a blur as it always is when death is involved.  death unroofs us.  it undoes time and calendar. it upside-downs our days and our priorities.  it calls us to the very important things only.  it cleans off the lens that we see our lives through.  it focuses. it slows. it quiets our madly spinning worlds. 

15 year olds aren't supposed to die.  they just aren't.  little girls shouldn't have to lose their big brothers, parents shouldn't have to bury their children, especially the ones who aren't grown yet. it's just backwards. it's just not right.  four days ago, mugisha timothy died of the lymphoma that his been in his body for over 2 years.  the week before, he'd turned 15. 

four days ago i was writing here, waiting for mike to come home with the kids and the car, so i could go see him- he had something to say.  but just before they arrived, his mom called - "come! timoth is dying!" and he was.

when i got to his house it was crowed and hysterical and he lay in bed mouth open, and those half closed far off eyes that i've known so many times before.  he was going. his chest didn't rise.  his heart didn't beat. his body was quiet and still now- but his soul was flying. 

 "move!" the crowd shouted. "get him to the ambulance! he needs blood!"

"no. let him be. he is gone. bring his mother. send the ambulance away."  

i hated saying those words.  i hated being the one who was saying them. the finality of them.  the endness of them.  the permanence. the hopelessness in them. gone. gone. away.  but they were true and i should have been the one to say them. i, the same one who'd said, 'it's cancer.' in the first place.

this ending was what we'd been praying for.  it was a good answer- as good as you can get when you are talking about a child dying.  i had been praying that when he went, he would go quickly and with out fear. i know him.  i know he can even handle pain, but fear, he didn't want.  and those were both answered.  he was weak but walking that morning, and that afternoon, he died in the arms of his mother.

the arms that first held him when he took his first breath.  the arms that walked through life with him. arms that embraced him when he fell down, when he did well in school, when he'd had a bad day, when he'd found out he had cancer, when he could no longer make it to the bathroom alone, when he needed help to drink.  those arms held him as he left this world. perhaps that is the only blessing in the death of a child- that they might be able to die in the arms of their mother - there is not a safer place than that.

it's hard to be a doctor and a close friend to the same person.  it's hard to be a parent, and watch a child dying, it's hard to be a doctor and know there is nothing else i can do to make it stop .  it's hard to watch a friend losing their child. it's hard to know some small part of that pain that knows when the child is gone- that is when the deepest suffering begins.

the next few hours i sat as my friend poured out all the secrets of a mothers heart who just lost her first born, her only son. she screamed every bit of it- all the injustice, all the grief, even the guilt, all the anguish- but mixed with her unshakeable faith that her God knows best- that we see through the glass dimly- that His ways are above our ways.  she cried and she wailed and she beat the floor-she told God that she wasn't tired yet of caring for her boy so why had he taken him?  she buried her face in her hands and begged to know how she could go on with out him, her beautiful smart boy. and i cried and cried and felt it- all the awfulness of death- all the hardness of the last 2 years as the cancer ate at him- all the imagining of my own child lying only in body on my bed, never to hear his voice again. 

but i also watched as she climbed into those everlasting arms.  arms that can handle the weeping and the pounding and the anger and the calling out of unfair and wrong.  arms that filled that house, that carried tim home and held those of us left behind. i watched as she called out, "but God you are still good!"  i listened as this brave friend thanked God for her 15 years with her son, as she knelt beside his body.

now begins a new journey.  the journey of absence. and empty and no longer and not.  the journey of a space on the couch that wasn't there before. and of sorting clothes that still smell like the one we loved.  and reading messages from a few days before and not being able to delete them.  the journey of deciding what to hold on to, what to cling to, what to keep the same.  the journey of trying to figure out how to go on now, what to do with the time that was so full of someone who's gone.  the journey that while anticipated, was not planned for.  the one with no map filled with lapse and pause. the one with tears then slowly laughing and returning tears.  the one of remembering. the one of allowing the process.  of letting go of the grief but not the person.  of forgiving ourselves and even forgiving death itself.  a journey that will continue to ask and ask again, why?  for what?  how come?  the one that can fill us with deep sadness and longing, but can also bring us to new places of understanding and connecting.  a journey that can awaken us to the things that really matter, that can help us to let go of the small bits, to reach toward each other.  slowly we will feel the warmth again.  slowly we will see the light.

when we left the village yesterday, i hugged his mom goodbye and told her i loved her and cried into her hair. 
"someday soon we'll laugh again." i said 
"you are right- thanks for everything. i know how much you care."
"good because i do. and beas i'm praying for you."
"God is still good doctor."

that is what we are left with.  we are left with each other and the unchanging love of God. this is life. and death. real. being there for each other no matter what.  the good parts and the awful ones. pieces in each others lives. part of a plan that we may never know or understand. but carried in those everlasting arms.

i will try

sometimes you have to sit with sorrow and you don't even know why.  why you're sitting with it, or, what's worse, when you don't even know what you have to be sorrowful about. that second one is way harder.

we are all pretty good at finding reasons to be happy- or making them- that's how we get up in the morning- because generally life is good, or good enough. but... then there are those days when sadness is there.  i'll be honest, i'm realllyyy bad at this.  i'm awful at sitting with sadness. i just want to feel better- anyway- anyhow- anywhere. i want to go there, and do that - whatever there and that are. basically i just don't want to be still and hold something that doesn't feel good inside. 

i also don't want to be still and hold something that doesn't feel good for someone else inside- i want to rescue them- i want to help them to go there and do that.  today for example, rose was in a time out for taking mikes phone battery and stuffing it in her pocket (she is somehow involved in the disappearance of important things around the house). so after i had discussed with her why she was in a time out and that she needed to think about not touching other peoples stuff for the next three minutes,  i could hear her crying in her room.  my first thought was- 'go save her!! rescue her from feeling bad! don't leave that poor girl in her room feeling guilty for doing what she knew she shouldn't do!'  but the entire point of her being in her room in a time out was to feel that.  to feel it- to really feel it so that it would imprint- because our learning is highly correlated with our emotions.  i wanted her to sit with this little piece of sorrow for 3 minutes and then to know that she is forgiven and loved.  she needed to learn this- not just to stop taking peoples things, but that sitting with our sadness is okay. that feeling badly for a bit is not the end of the world- that feeling discomfort and dis-ease and that sticky feeling of bad and sad all mixed together- the feeling of unresolve- is alright sometimes.

because life is full of these moments, and we need to learn that if nothing else, they will pass.  we need to learn that there might be some things hiding in those moments.  because maybe if we learn to sit with them- we will grow.  maybe if we stop running away and covering up, or dissecting until we have full control, maybe if we just give in and sit for maybe for a moment-  we will actually become more understanding, or more patient, or more gentle, more forgiving.

i don't know..... maybe i can or maybe i can't. but i can try.  try to squelch the craving to avoid all negative feelings.  i can try to be with what is given me in that moment. to suffer the growing pains to reach a higher place.  to hold on to my faith that i'm not alone in those moments- but watched over- guided- even sometimes held.

 i leave myself with the wise mary oliver again....

I will try.
I will step from the house to see what i see
and hear and I will praise it.
I did not come into this world
to be comforted.
I came, like red bird, to sing.
But I'm not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles, 
but a woman whose love has vanished, 
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again and--
but wait. Be still. Listen!
Is it red bird? Or something
inside myself, singing?