No Matter Where I Am, Healing Is In Your Hands

I didn't mean to, but I looked up. Though I had been sleeping in a room with a full-length mirror for almost five days, I hadn't looked yet. I didn't think I wanted to look. And I didn't mean to, but I looked. What my eyes took in made me think that a look of horror should be on my face while I was looking, but when I glanced up and met my own eyes, there wasn't one.  It was just of simple grief. A delicate, frail, deep-purple-eyed, pale expression. As I slowly removed more of the clothes on my body from top to bottom, my eyes were locked. It was everywhere. They were everywhere. My arms from shoulder to elbow were stained with big, round bruises from needles that injected medicine to keep my blood flowing while I was trapped in a bed. From elbow to fingertip, more small puncture wounds than I could even try to count from attempted, failed, and a couple successful IV sites. And on my fingertips themselves, small red dots from being poked over and over and over, day in and day out for the duration of my trial so I wouldn't go into shock. This was just the beginning. My eyes then turned down and saw the massive purple hematoma on my lower abdomen from the stress that was caused inside my body, and over to each side of it were small spots trying to heal from where I had been cut open. As my gaze kept going, I zoned in on the huge bruises at different levels of healing that were on my inner and outer thighs from injections that had to be administered to keep me safe from my own body. Beyond that, there was just one more lone bruise on my right foot from a 4am blood draw that took an hour to be successful, and unfortunately will never be forgotten. To add insult to injury, there was stuck-on adhesive all over me from heart and lung monitors, reminding me that I had been much more sick than I had even realized. As I had undressed and watched my beaten body be revealed into the mirror little by little, I hadn't watched from my own perspective…I had watched in the mirror as I gently and painstakingly placed my fingers over each spot on which such pain had been inflicted. There were so many of them. So many…

 I love scars. I always have. I think they tell stories and I think they are necessary for us to see our own strength and what we are capable of enduring. Unfortunately for most of us, scars come more often from the inside than they do from the outside. We are never truly fully broken, but man, we sure are cracked. At those moments when I saw how damaged my body was, I realized just how hard it had cracked me on the inside. I'd never had anything even relative to a near-death experience, but when you lay in a bed in a cold, empty intensive care unit hospital room, mostly alone, for days on end just staring at nothing in the silence, it gives you a little perspective on just how valuable this earthly life is. This place is not our home, and oh, did I long for home during those days and the few immediately following, but I knew which Home I was longing for, and it isn't the one with a street address. The Home I longed for was the Home where not only did the light shine through all the cracks, but also that healed those cracks and made me whole again. All my many cracks. So many…

 It's likely that not many of us know what it is like to come to the edge of existence in the middle of the night, and once was enough for me. The great fear that has consumed me since I came home and all the bruises faded is relentless, and it haunts me in my sleeping and in my waking. To confirm my greatest fears, my records shared with me after I got home had the word "septic" written in them. Sepsis…that's where you die, right? I could have died. I could have died? How? Why? What if I had died? It was so quick. Is that how it happens? Is that how you die? I had and have so many questions. So many…

 I have a friend who faced a life-threating health issue just a couple short years ago. A very, very scary issue. I reached out to her in the days following my terrifying experience in desperation as to what to do with these hard questions that I didn't know the answers to. It was both frightening and comforting to know that she didn't have the answers to the questions either. To know that even if she did, her answers would likely have been different than the ones I might could muster up. However, she challenged me to the thought that we could really die at any minute…any second, even, totally unexpected. That's a hard one to wrap your head around. Her words made me cry tears of gratefulness. I had been given another chance. I had been given more time to do the work I was sent here to do. I was still alive, and I wanted to be ALIVE. I wanted to be a light. I wanted to be a story. I wanted to be so many things. So many…

 So, as I end this thought, I must share some words that my dear friend gave me, the words that helped me fall asleep that night beyond my wild imagination full of fear and wonder. She told me…"At any moment, any day we could die. I have no idea why we were brought to the edge and pulled back. I have to believe there's a reason but maybe I'll never know". And every word she said is true. We were pulled back. We tasted the end without even knowing it until later, and we were pulled right back where we left off. Maybe to be lights. Maybe to be stories. Maybe just to appreciate this tiny blip of time otherwise known as life on earth. When it's time to go, we will all be brought to the edge, but we won't be pulled back. We will fly. Bruises, holes, cracks and all. We will fly…and that day will be a sweet, sweet day, for so many reasons.

 Yes, so many…

His Love Is Fierce, His Love Is Strong, It Is Furious

I had a sudden twinge in my memory tonight of something I wrote on my trip to Brazil in 2008, and had to run and find my journal. It's not been a good week, and I don't only mean for myself. It was the last half that I recalled, but when I read the whole entry, the context of it also struck me. This is what I wrote:

(March 2, 2008, Garca, Brazil)
"This morning I rode the bus to church next to a girl who was sold into slavery for fifty cents at the age of eight by her own parents. What do you do with that?

I think we are all given our own hell to survive in life, and we all think for a moment that it couldn't be any worse. But for these children...these children have seen hell. And it renders me speechless.

Oh, help me love."

There is so much injustice in this world; both in our personal worlds and in the world as the big picture. SO. MUCH. Pain is all relative, none of us hurt more or less than others, but we all DO hurt. And that pain we feel? That thing that affects us? It often, if not always, makes absolutely no sense at all. People get sick. People die. People are treated unjustly. Animals get sick. Animals die. Animals are treated unjustly. Bad things happen to good people. Important things fall apart. Circumstances and people and decisions and events JUST DON'T MAKE SENSE.

So what do we do about? How can we fix it? CAN we fix it? I'll tell you this much: we cannot change it. We can change how we accept it. We can change how we approach it. We can even sometimes change letting it happen again. But...we can't change IT. We can't change the fact that we have felt and will feel pain. We can only change ourselves, by examining what it DID to us, what it did to others, what it did to the world.

My point here, my friends, is that last line that my naive mind managed to muster up while my mouth was speechless at pure horror:

"Oh, help me love."

That's what we do. We love. We love God, we love others, we love ourselves. It's that simple. We freaking love the hell out of each other. Love covers over a multitude of sins. Love heals, and love prevents. We don't hate, we don't judge, we don't lash out, and we are not cruel. We love. And that love that we were gifted with to be able to give to others and to ourselves....well, it conquers all. It doesn't erase the bad, but it writes itself all over it and it stops more from happening. Love. In that bold, dark thing called injustice, unfairness, senselessness, hatefulness, whatever word you'd like to use....we love. We just...love.

Go and love...

Everything My Heart Cries Out For

A good number of years ago, as I sat at the dinner table with friends on a Saturday night, I felt the familiar feeling of my mind and my heart wandering away from my surroundings and into my inner-most thoughts. I don't remember what I was going through at the time, but I remember my heavy heart. I broke the "no phones at the table" rule and sent a text message to an older and wiser close friend. I simply asked, "Does life get any easier as you get older?". I remember what her exact words were in reply: "Yes. It really, really does." And I believed her. If only I would have known...

Looking back over the five years since that conversation, I wonder how in the world I am still standing. I don't know how, in that short time, that that many things could knock me down, over and over. I suffered greatly, and every year, every month, every week, every day, every hour and minute and second, I prayed for it to end. Every New Year's Eve I wished and hoped and prayed that the promise of a new beginning truly would live up to its name. But it didn't. So many friendships lost, so much "starting over", so many disappointments, so many poor choices, and more tears and darkness than one should never endure.

Five years later, in a tiny house with strangers, with a new heart and mind, at a wonderful job, with less true friends than the fingers on one hand, the best family both blood and not, the ability to find the silver lining, new ways of thinking, developing trust and vulnerability with people I love that love me back, no more looking over my shoulder at what has already passed, with the relentless love of my God forever surrounding me, with no less tears than of years past, and with nothing short of a miracle, it did. It ended.

Never in my life have I ever had the ability to shed tears of pure joy and immense gratitude until this past year when the light broke from behind the dark, stormy sky. The beams has been hiding there the whole time, but under my shroud of covered darkness I had no idea how to look up and find them.

I still have the occasional hard time wrapping my mortal brain and heart around the ugly, unexplained terrors of this world, but mostly in the case of the hardships of others. I do truly believe that the bad, scary things of this life are suffered and endured in order to allow us to show our scars, no matter how deep, to others going through the same things. I always say, "There's a reason that God created more than one person". We are to pass on our hope and peace, the kind that surpasses all understanding, to the ones who desperately seek it.

I always have a vision when I feel compelled to reach out to others who are hurting and looking for the light. It is the vision of me holding out my hands, palms up, so that the one in despair can see my deep scars, just as Jesus held out His hands to show His disciples that He and His suffering were real and that He truly died and came back to save us.

I will strive to put the promises of my long-awaited year of hope, love, and joy into others who don't know if the night will ever end. It ends, my dear ones. Morning IS coming. Keep pushing through, keep holding on to the promises that we have been given. They're there. I promise that they are. Look left and look right at the people and the things that have been sent to you to hold you up, and grab ahold of them. Hold on tight. Then look up. Know that behind those storm clouds there are rays of bright, beautiful light streaming directly from the promise of every tear being dried and of no more death, sorrow, or pain.

Hold fast to the fact that you know another who has walked through the fire and come out only slightly burned. I have been bound by the chains of death, of immeasureable loss, of addiction, of a broken heart, of despair, of hopelessness, of fear, of unbelief, of giving up, of being blinded by the pitch dark, and so many other things.

But you know what? I have been given in return a new heart, the ability to love and be loved,  the great, glorious gift of redemption, unimaginable hope, a peace that helped me learn to breathe again, the blessing of some incredible people to walk next to, and the knowledge to pass on to others that it DOES end.

Just hold on. Stay alive. Ask for help. Let that tiny sunbeam deep within your soul carry you to brighter days. Know that you are loved. It will end. It really will. Take it from me. Keep going. Just. Keep. Going.