Daily 5 - Day 242

Today's Daily 5:

1. So glad that I subscribe to the services at Bethel - so refreshing to be able to load their worship or sermons anytime.
2. The crazy juxtaposition of life and death, joy and sorrow this afternoon, and allowing myself to be present with friends in each.
3. Still had the rental car, so it was easy to do errands.
4. My dad replaced the seatbelt in the car I bought last week, now I just need to get an inspection, insurance, and registration, and then I can start driving it.
5. Shared hugs with a few different friends today.

Juxtaposed

I attended a gathering of a number of home churches this afternoon, and am caught tonight by the juxtaposition of what I experienced.  Tomorrow I'll do the update thing, but tonight I'm caught by what I saw today.

I stood with my hands on some friends as they and the elders of the church gathered around their mom.  She is quite likely dying, as cancer works it's way through their body.  So I stood with them and cried out for a miracle of healing.

And then, a few minutes later, I smiled and laughed as the baby son of some new friends from my house church was dedicated.  I laughed as he tried to eat the microphone while the blessing was being prayed over himself and his parents.

Within moments the reality of death and new life were very, very near.  And I'm not even certain what to make of it, but this day feels oddly and deeply profound in my heart.

Still...

I am trying to be still.

But my heart is (still) moving in many directions.

I'm thinking about a family whose blog I read, having found it via the blog of a friend. Both mother and son suffer or suffered from cancer. The mother lost that battle tonight. The son fights on. My heart goes out to them, and I find myself praying.

I'm still thinking about so many of the things I mentioned this morning.

I'm sitting quietly.

I unpacked a little more tonight. The things left to unpack are mostly the ones that are deeply ingrained with memories. Beautiful memories, but some that just at present feel bittersweet. It's easier to avoid the pain when it's packed away in boxes where I don't see it. Where it doesn't surround me.

I hung a plaque over my bed tonight. It's hung near my bed for years. A list of promises of Jesus that someone did by hand in calligraphy and gave to my family when I was a child. Somewhere along the way, I inherited it. And now, no matter where I live, it hangs near my bed as a reminder and a comfort. I think the words are somehow appropriate tonight, to close this post, and move my heart again towards prayer.

I will never leave you
I will heal all your diseases
I will save you
I will not condemn you
I will help you
I will answer you
I will love you
I will guide you
I will teach you
I will forgive you
I will bless you
I will lead you
I will protect you
I will strengthen you
I will give you joy
I will give you peace
I will satisfy you
I will not leave you comfortless
I will supply all your needs
I will prepare a home in heaven
I will refresh you
I will empower you
I will be yoked with you
I will share your burdens
I will give you eternal life
- signed, Jesus Christ

May my still wandering heart be still in the midst of those promises, and may the same be true for each of those who are so deeply on my heart tonight.

Suicide...

I received an email today reminding me that it is "National Survivors of Suicide Day" in the US. Now, before you start laughing at that ridiculous title, they're referring to those who have survived the loss of a loved one to suicide.

Various suicide related headlines have been catching my attention the last few days. I linked yesterday to a headline about a Florida teen who killed himself while broadcasting live on the internet, and just a few minutes ago I came across a similar headline from Argentina.

You can find the Argentinian story here: Argentine Man Kills Himself on TV

and you can find a few links with more information about National Survivors of Suicide Day here:
Community Connects Suicide-Minded, Survivors

10th Annual National Survivors of Suicide Day

Saying Goodbye

If you read my blog regularly, you'll know that I spent Saturday morning in a local cemetery, not for a funeral, or because anyone I know is buried there, but simply because I'd long felt the pull to visit. It turned out to be an invitation from Jesus to find healing for a long-wounded place in my heart.

I woke far earlier than I'd planned on Saturday morning, having been looking forward to a long, lazy morning in bed. Instead, I found myself wide awake, but with little motivation to move from the warm cocoon of my bed. I grabbed my laptop from the dresser beside my bed, and turned it on, intending a quick check of my email, and then popping in a dvd and (hopefully) falling back asleep as it played.

Instead, while I was perusing my emails a friend on the other side of the country instant messaged me, and we began chatting. We talked about our various plans for the day, and I happened to mention that I was feeling a strong urge to visit this particular cemetery. (She been visiting a few weeks before, and I'd pointed it out to her.) She suggested that perhaps I was feeling the urge to spend time in a cemetery because some things in my life have been dying of late. Her comment brought to mind a situation from nearly ten years ago, and before I knew it I was sharing a story with her that I'd never before told anyone. Her response had many helpful thoughts in it, but what stood out in my mind was a succinct comment "And you wonder why you want to go to a cemetery?" It made me laugh and convinced me that that was, indeed, how I was going to spend my day.

Just over eight years ago my grandfather passed away. Our relationship was not a particularly close one due to many things, though he'd been a constant presence in my life since birth. He was from a generation of men that rarely if ever expressed emotion. He loved to tease, and during my teenage years I had a love-hate relationship with this man who drew seemingly great pleasure from making sometimes rude comments about my love for food, and my weight. When you are a woman with curves in a family of women who are rather slender, you can't help but feeling self-conscious, and Grandpa's comments did little to alleviate my teenage (and onwards) angst.

His illness was long, and drawn out. Congestive heart failure they called it. Over the last years of his life he was in and out of hospital, and there was even talk of him and my grandma moving into the home of my family (my dad is their oldest child) because the care required was becoming more than grandma could handle alone, while not enough to necessitate nursing care.

I remember that last week of his life in ways that are both vividly clear and completely blurry. It was becoming obvious that he would not be leaving the hospital this time around, and family members were beginning to stay nights at the hospital, taking turns, never leaving him alone. I'd visited the hospital with my parents and brothers several times that week, each time knowing that it could be the last.

On the Friday of that week, I came home from high school exhausted – completely spent, physically and emotionally. My mom and brothers were once again heading to the hospital, and though I felt guilty, I made a decision based in self-care, and chose to stay at home and rest, planning to visit the following day. It was a decision that I would regret deeply for the next eight years.

When I rose fairly early the next morning, and stumbled out into the living room, collapsing on the couch, I was greeted by my dad. No softening, just "Grandpa died last night. Your aunt and I went to the hospital when Grandma called, to say our goodbyes. We need to head for Grandma's house soon."

All I could think in the shock of that moment was that I'd put myself first in a moment of exhaustion the day before, and now I'd never get the chance to say goodbye.

As time wore on, the guilt of that decision weighed heavy. I knew it was irrational, and I never mentioned it to anyone, but I was unable to escape it, either, and it came up at the oddest of times.

I hadn't thought about any of this in months, but found the story spilling out of me in that brief conversation with my friend early on Saturday morning. Her words hit home, "You can say goodbye now. He can say goodbye too." I questioned her further, "He can say goodbye?" She reminded me that the Catholic church, which both of us have been exploring of late, believes that the saints – those who are believers – are still alive, and free to speak to us. Unsure what to do with that statement, we said our goodbyes, ended our conversation, and I dressed and prepared for the day.

Some quick research on the internet (the history buff in me wanted to know where to locate a few specific graves in what I knew to be a historic cemetery) and I headed out the door, praying the whole way, still stunned at what had suddenly risen to the surface in my early morning conversation. I'd quickly tucked a journal, bottle of water, my wallet and camera into a bag, and I was ready to go. I didn't know what to expect, or how the day would go, only that the Lord seemed to be drawing me to himself, and bringing to the surface long hidden wounds.

After arriving, I wandered through the cemetery for over an hour. Turns out that what is commonly referred to in our city as cemetery hill is actually composed of several separate cemeteries. I spent my time in Union Cemetery, and Burnsland Cemetery. I snapped photos, smiled at the wide variety of small animals that had seemingly turned out to greet me, and generally just enjoyed the peace of walking in a beautiful old cemetery – more like a park than anything. I located the graves of the RCMP Colonel who founded the fort that eventually grew into our city, naming the fort (and ultimately the city) after his hometown in Scotland, and of the first settler in the Calgary area as well. I visited the military burial grounds, walking through graves for soldiers killed in both world wars as well as the Korean war. I found the grave of a young woman, a rising local journalist, killed only months ago, in a brutal attack.

After walking for quite some time, I found myself wandering up a pathway

towards a building that I knew from my brief research to be the

old chapel and mortuary. I wondered what the orange ball lying in the pathway was, and as I drew closer and recognized the object I simultaneously began to laugh and cry. It was a bright orange giant marigold.

At this point I know you're all wondering why a large, ostentatious, and rather ugly flower inspired such a burst of emotion. My grandpa was known for his gardening skills. He'd built a few greenhouses in his backyard, and each winter started a bevy of plants from seed, that in the spring he'd then give to whatever family and friends cared to enjoy them. He was especially known for geraniums, tomatoes, and yes, marigolds. Each spring he'd bring my mom a huge flat of the giant marigolds – the sort that get a foot or two tall, and produce large, smelly, ant attracting flowers that are several inches in diameter, and are generally ostentatious and lacking in subtlety. Every year the front of our home was graced with these flowers, and every year my mom and I would have a conversation about how absolutely hideous I felt that these particular flowers were.

And so, finding one laying, completely out of place in the middle of a pathway, on a morning when I'd been grieving my grandfather, and had come to the cemetery hoping to lay to rest eight years of guilt and say goodbye, was a rather shocking experience for me. A quick perusal of the nearby area told me that there were no marigolds growing in the flower beds or on graves, and no flower arrangements that contained marigolds anywhere in the vicinity.

I picked the flower up, and, cradling it in my hand, began to hunt for a section of the cemetery that I'd been looking for all morning. It was time to say my goodbyes. Known as "The Potter's Field" (a reference to the field purchased by the priests, with the blood money Judas Iscariot had been paid for his betrayal of Jesus and ultimately returned to the priests, and designated by them as a cemetery for foreigners) this section of Union Cemetery houses approximately 1000 unmarked graves – the final resting place for the bodies of Calgary's earliest homeless, indigent, and a few executed criminals. Finding the spot, a narrow strip sandwiched between two sections with gravestones, and planted with large trees and shrubs, I climbed to the top of the hill and settled myself in the grass. Pulling out my journal I began to write, releasing the many years of emotion, and finally, addressing my grandpa in a letter of sorts, and saying goodbye.

The marigold now sits in a tiny glass of water on a bookshelf in my bedroom. It's wilting and fading, and within the next day or two I'll discard it. The memory it carries, though, will go with me forever.

On a day that I desperately needed release, to be freed from some things I'd carried far too long, Jesus met me in a cemetery. On a day when I'd spoken with a dear friend about saying goodbye, and she'd reminded me that the Lord would allow that to happen, I unexplainably found in my path the one flower that could open that well of emotion, and allow the release I'd longed for to occur. I said goodbye, and in that goodbye found great freedom. Freedom from guilt. From the silence that had marked this for so long in my life. From the grief that I'd carried unnecessarily past the time when the sorrow ended. I found life in a place known for death. And for that I am grateful.

Tight-Knit Community

I mentioned earlier this week that someone with whom I have some vague connections was killed in a car accident.

I'd forgotten what a small community the Young Life world really is, and I've watched and prayed this week as a wide variety of people I know and know of, spread across the country, have responded to this tragedy.

It's left me wondering what sort of ripple it would make if I were to die suddenly. I've been lonely and isolated lately. Not sure that's a healthy thing, and not entirely sure that I'm ready to come out of that isolation either. My soul still feels pretty bruised. But I'm hoping it will soon be time to emerge.

The obituary for Julian Dabbagh can be found here.