Holy Ground

I miss it sometimes,

The shiny-smooth faith of my youth.

Heady with the experience of a near-audible voice, I knew I was God’s and that I was on mission for him.

Everything felt so clear back then.

I prayed for my classmates’ salvation with fiery confidence.

I polished my two-minute elevator pitch for Jesus and wasn’t above invoking a little fire and brimstone when it felt right.

I did my best to avoid every appearance of evil.

Like U2. And spaghetti straps. (A post for another day, my friends… a post for another day.)

It was real, this faith.

And if you asked me then, I would have said with confidence that I knew God as good and faithful.

Because I did.

All my life You have been faithful.

All my life You have been so, so good.

With every breath that I am able,

I will sing of the goodness of God.

I sing these words with gusto this morning, but not with the shiny-smooth faith of my youth. And when I look around, I see the faces and hearts of dear ones with the same kind of well-worn, dog-eared faith. 

The kind of faith that has bumped up against pain and fear and great, unspeakable loss. The sharp points have been rounded, polished by wrestling with real doubts and learning that it’s ok to grow. To know better and do better. To apologize when we realize that we’ve used our elevator pitches for Jesus as weapons.

This faith is not better than the shiny-smooth faith of my youth.

It’s just different.

It’s a faith that has withstood the storms of life and held steady.

It’s holy ground, this.

This messy group of people in various stages of hurt and healing.

Who disagree about a lot of things and choose to keep talking, keep thinking, keep listening to understand.

As we bring our faith… shiny-smooth, well-worn and everything in between

And sing

All my life You have been faithful.

All my life You have been so, so good.

With every breath that I am able,

I will sing of the goodness of God.

Holy ground.

On triggers and grief

Mama, come!

His words sound urgent, but they always do. His mind is in constant motion, so I have no idea what he wants to show me today.

All I know is that we are awake before the sun.

Lights flash outside the window of his newly painted room. An ambulance.

Mama, it’s Ms. Emma!*

My boy has just watched our neighbor be wheeled out of her house on a stretcher.

We’ve been worried about her for a while… trying not to be nosy as we watched her go from feisty independence to the whatever comes next that comes along with hanging around on earth for a long time.

And, for a moment, I cannot anymore. I have to hide under my heaviest blanket for a few minutes. To catch my breath and slow my pulse before I can do anything else.

It’s not the flashing lights that trigger me. He spent his last days at home.

It must be the urgency. The helplessness. The panic of oh, Jesus, no. 

Don’t make my kids see this, feel this.

Don’t make me! No!

It’s been five months since my dad died.

My mom, sister, aunt, uncle and I circled the wagons those last weeks.

Looking back, I am certain that what we did was right.

Watching it, living it through sleepless nights was also traumatic.

At first I shrunk from this word. But it is the right one. The precise one.

Another day I will write about the village that rose to support our family during those horrific weeks. But today, I want to speak how I feel.

Friends, I feel like all of my insides have been scooped out and the exposed skin has been left raw.

I can dissociate, of course. My delightful foray into trauma informed parenting has taught me all about this one. And some days, some moments, it is the best I can do. I curl into denial. Or flash hot into anger.

But in my quest to let myself feel my feelings, most often I hobble around, favoring my raw insides like I would a bum leg. Looking mostly ok. Trying not to complain. Walking tentatively, gingerly. The pain is tolerable until it bumps up against something too familiar. A word. A song. A picture. A memory. An idea. And then I am undone. My raw insides have been pricked and I am not ok.

I hate this for all of us.

For my mom– who lost her true love and safe place of 43 years.

For my big girl– who had to think about wedding dances at 14, whose heart had to process another loss, another leaving too soon.

For my little one– who will never get to show his Papa the fullness of who he is becoming. Who hopes, still, to make him proud.

And for me.

I hate this for me too.

And so.

I lean hard into the God who is near to the broken-hearted.

I say yes to your offers of help even when they make me feel like a charity case.

I crawl out from under my heaviest blanket and will the sun to rise after a night of soaking rain.

And I drag my grumpy little family to church and breathe deep for a minute or two, filling my lungs with the air of just being.

I still my mind for a second and let it all be true.

That my insides have been scraped raw.

That none of us are really ok.

And that is good enough.

*not her real name