To Lose with Grace

The Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving, as I got out of bed, a word came to me: loss. Loss, I thought, is the theme for this new year (my theme years do not follow calendar restraints). It was a disconcerting word, but there it was, and it did seem to follow naturally from last year's theme of fighting fear, which turned out to involve accepting, if not straight out embracing, sacrifice in various forms (the theme is not mastered before it changes). I extrapolated from the single word "loss" to land on the theme as the processing of loss, beyond merely the actual experience of it.

Through the course of the day, lyrics and lines on loss popcorned into my head:

And you will see before the end
That every broken piece
Is gathered in the heart of Jesus
And what's lost will be found again
--from the song "Nothing Is Wasted," by Jason Gray 

Many things can be misplaced
Your very memories be erased
No matter what the time or space
You cannot lose my love
--from the song "You Cannot Lose My Love," by Sara Groves 

"Even these may forget, but I will not forget you."
--Isaiah 49:15a

I remembered a scene from a record we used to listen to as kids, called Nathaniel the Grublet, in which Nathaniel has found himself in the dark forest of Direwood and is beginning to turn "see-throughish." A voice speaks out of the darkness and tells him that he has to lose himself in order to find himself.

And then that night was the Thanksgiving service at Harvest. People spoke of the increase in the love of God that comes with a conviction of sin in a specific sense; of the C.S. Lewis contention that friendship is enriched when friends are not hoarded to ourselves; of the truth that God meets us in places we didn't expect to be, and blesses us there in ways we would not have imagined. Pastor Dale preached on "Greed Vs. Gratitude," that a spirit of thankfulness pushes out greed.

I needed to hear those things, all of them, and in hearing them on the same day as the word "loss," I felt armed against the coming year.

But "life comes in waves and makes its demands" (another Sara Groves line), and I have never been good at holding loosely. I have counted days like beads on a strand leading to inevitable ends, and I have grown harsh and bitter as each bead passes under my fingers. I feel it as probably my greatest thorn in the flesh, one I have often prayed to be taken away. If God's power is perfected in weakness, I don't understand why it seems like I am allowed to cycle through the same angrily self-protective patterns over and over again. (That doesn't seem like my idea of power perfected. Can grace really be sufficient when you don't see it accomplishing anything?) And then when people leave, for whatever reason, I am often sure it is because I didn't learn the right lesson first.

I don't believe this will change. I want to. I try to. But really I don't, really I see myself over and over and over both mourning and getting angry at being left out and left behind. I see myself thrown on that crazy idea of the sufficiency of grace.

"It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not" (Lamentations 3:22).

No matter how much loss there is ahead, no matter if I still respond all too frequently to real or potential loss by lashing out with protective and/or preemptive strikes, no matter if it feels like my heart is blazing destructively. In the midst of the burning, He is walking with me.

This morning, in looking up the reference for a God who doesn't abandon us, I saw that the author of Hebrews grounds contentment in this promise: "be content with what you have, for He has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5b). It is, in fact, the same reason Moses gives for the Israelites not to be afraid: "Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6). 

Not "never until you give Him a reason," or "never until He finds someone more interesting/attractive/worthy," or "never until..." anything. Just...never.

This is my manifesto, written that Thanksgiving week so that I could recall it:

I will not brace myself against all forms of loss. 

I will not hold tightly to people in expectation that they will leave me or be taken from me at any second and with the false notion that it is only up to me if they stay. 

As people leave or are taken (because it happens), I will remember that this is not the story of my life only, and that it is not for the character to rail against the story the author is writing. 

I will remember that paths may cross more than once. 

I will consider that while the future holds many losses, there is also much to be gained, and that some gains would not be possible had there not been losses first. 

I will not negatively anticipate my future, assuming the worst and living as though it has already happened. 

I will be grateful for the time I have been given, and make the most of it. 

I will count all things as loss compared to the surpassing gain of Christ. 

I will not be surprised by trials, nor will I be surprised when the plan of God includes gifts along with trials.

Help me to remember.

The Life That Was To Be and the God Who Led Me Elsewhere

The heart makes idols like that is its job (or used to be). In the church, we talk about idolizing self, idolizing other people, idolizing money and possessions and sex and relationships. I would venture a guess that most of those idols are serving a bigger one, the Life That Was To Be.

Because we talk about the sovereignty of God, too, but it’s a little grudging sometimes. God is sovereign, but I wish….

In this year of fighting fear, I have found that you can’t fight fear without embracing sacrifice. That’s what all fears boil down to, isn’t it? The fear of loss, in some form or another?

Cast your cares on God, we are told, because He cares for us, and if that’s true then we have to stop pretending we don’t have problems, stop pretending we aren’t bowed down under the weight of expectations that never came to fruition and dreams that have faded to shadows. And so yesterday, on the way home, I named names, traced out the sketch of the Life That Was To Be.

I was going to be married by now. My kids would be roughly the same age as my brother’s kids, and we’d all be living close by each other, and get to see each other a lot. My husband would have gotten along great with my dad (who would still be running and would have way more energy than most men in their early 60s have), and with my mom (who would be thrilled to have twice the grandkids), and with my whole family and all of my friends, and he would never have thought of me as a last resort he was driven to because the prettier girls were all taken.

Way down in the deep core places of my heart I believe that God has me by the hand, that He is leading me through valleys and by quiet streams and into green pastures, that He knows exactly where we are going and exactly what He is doing. But way down there, wrestling against the sovereignty of God, are the Balrog thoughts, the ones that speak in the language of the prince of this world: that single women are single because they are undesirable and unattractive and have something wrong with them; that people who are good Christians don’t ever snap at coworkers; that if nothing spectacular has been accomplished by the heady age of thirty-four, you might as well give up on anything spectacular ever happening, give up and just wait to be done.

But is God not better to me than ten sons? And isn’t a woman who fears the Lord to be praised? And weren’t Peter and John headstrong and too quick to speak? And doesn’t the Lord know all of the good works left for me to do? And should I put the Lord my God to the test?

So Sunday night (not for the last time!) I wrapped the Life That Was To Be in the shreds of my self-assurance and held them up to God as a grief offering, asking to love His plan and His purpose fiercely and fully, to find joy in them even on the days when it seems there is no fruit on the vine.

I was thinking of this tonight when I went for my church directory photo. I thought of it when practically the first thing out of the photographer’s mouth was a comment on how many young single people there were at this church. (Yes, I am alone for this picture.) I thought of it when he mistook the mole on my upper lip for a warty-pimply thing and then after being corrected that it was just part of my face still suggested that they could take care of that with photo editing. (No, I am not the most beautiful woman you will ever photograph.) I thought of it when the salesman tried to get me to buy another photo by asking if I have a boyfriend who might want it. (No, no boyfriend wants a picture of me.)

On the way home, I thought of how on Wednesday night I’d told a group of girls that I generally found that making big declarations to God one day led to confrontation on it the next, and it was like catching the smirk and the nudge and the lovingly sarcastic, “It’s all because you’re ugly and single, remember?” And I laughed, and I will take the Life That Is along with the Life That Will Be because God will never, ever let go of my hand or lose His way.

(And I haven’t looked that good in a photo in ages.)

I don't want to be that girl

This has been a good year for epiphanies.

Early this summer, I vacationed in Daytona Beach with my mom and some extended family. Our room overlooked the ocean and several pools. On the twelfth floor, we were high enough to see pelicans fly past our window at a regular basis, but not high enough to escape the constant noise from below.

Down on the beach and poolside, I marveled at how many different swimsuits the world produced. I have never seen so much skin in one locale. 

Now, most of my life has been spent negatively comparing myself to other women, and extrapolating from all those "men are visual" talks at church that I would only be a last resort candidate for any sort of romantic relationship. In the past, I might have seen some of these women on the beach as confirmation of this, and I would resent their existence and all the men who would doubtless pick them over me.

Perhaps it was the sheer over-saturation of skin that produced the epiphany: I don't want to be those women. Even if some of them have better-looking legs than I do.

And while I still don't believe I'm the fairest of them all, I did finally recognize that I do believe I am more interesting than most of them. There were a lot of women on the beach sunbathing, but I was one of the few out playing in the ocean waves. There were a lot of women around the pools, but I was the only one running around under the waterspouts at the kiddie pool with the kids accompanying her. I may not have been the only woman in the whole place who was irritated one afternoon when the music from the pool got loud enough to hear all of the lyrics from the twelfth floor, but I may well have been the only one irritated because it disturbed the reading of a book about North Korea.

The second epiphany came quickly on the heels of the first: I like being with me. I like being with people who like being with me. I wouldn't ever want to be with a man who was looking around him for the next best thing, I would want somebody who fell into that category of people who like being with me. And I don't want to waste any more of my life pining over men whose grass is greener on the other side of our conversations.

In the past, when I have been interested in guys, I have compared myself to other women and discounted all of my chances because I didn't measure up to them in one way or another. In Daytona, thinking of any future romantic interests, my attitude had shifted from "some poor guy could get saddled with me and my issues" to "some guy should be so lucky...and if none of them ever think so, I should be so lucky as to avoid entanglements with men with poor taste."

Underneath all that self-deprecation has been hiding a woman who believes she's pretty amazing, and that God is working on the parts that aren't amazing yet.

I write it down in case I forget.

A Dream Trilogy and Its Aftermath

Recently, I had a kill-or-be-killed dream which presented an epiphany when I woke, about my recurring dreams in this mold and my false “need” to take care of things on my own. 

Not long after, I had a similar dream that was slightly different than the usual model—instead of being alone, this time I had friends with me, and we made a plan to handle things together. 

Then, last night….

I don’t remember the dream. I remember a sense of panic, and a sense that I would be awake for a while, afraid of going back to sleep. And then I remember rebuking the dream, or something in the dream, or the fear itself, in the name of Jesus, reciting Scripture at it. The emotional response is vivid, but the details are a little fuzzy, and I don’t remember now if that last bit was part of the dream or something that happened in waking, because, if I was awake, I fell back to sleep almost immediately.

Several years in a row were “theme years”—years when I would think that “this year’s personal/spiritual growth will be focused on [insert quality].” It was never something I planned, it was something that just came to me, and then I would be thinking consciously about it for the next several months. I haven’t had that feeling for a while, not since I thought “this year will be about taking things as they come.” That was the year my dad died.

This week, I have been thinking that this year’s theme is going to be living in the moment, not waiting for people to leave me or bad things to happen. This morning, I realized that means that this year will be about fighting fear.

Oh Lord Jesus, may I invoke your name with increasing frequency, in sleeping or waking, and to the same effect in both.

A Matter of Love and Death

Melodic threads are meant to be followed, and Les Miserables weaves them together skillfully. If I were in college, I would listen to all of the available soundtracks repeatedly until I could tease out every thread and write a longer paper about them. As it is, I am no longer in college, and am still new to this musical, so I will just follow one and write a quasi-academic blog post on it.

The melody that reaches its apex in “On My Own,” Eponine’s ballad of unrequited love, is the same melody used in two major death scenes: Fantine’s (“Come to Me”) and Valjean’s (“Epilogue”). What does unrequited love have to do with death?

(First of all, I hope you can all acknowledge that that is a great essay question. To all of my theatre professor friends—you’re welcome. Secondly, I really miss essay questions, so let me jump right in.)

At the start of “Come to Me,” Fantine is a woman who has lost nearly everything and is at the point of losing the last thing remaining to her besides life itself: her hope of seeing her daughter again. When Valjean enters the room, he brings a different melody, but swiftly matches her mood, swearing to her that he will care for Cosette. Comforted, Fantine asks him to tell Cosette she loves her and will see her when she wakes—with the strong implication that she does realize she is dying, but that she does not believe that death is to be the end of her.

It is easy to see the parallel to “Epilogue,” the death scene of Cosette’s other parent. When Cosette appears in his room, Valjean slips into the melody Fantine used when speaking to her daughter in her final delirium, and Cosette replies in the melody Valjean first used in speaking to Fantine. He soon moves into not just a parallel melody, but a parallel lyric—whereas Fantine sang “Take my child, I give her to your keeping” and “For God's sake, please stay till I am sleeping,” Valjean sings:

On this page, I write my last confession

Read it well, when I at last am sleeping

It's a story of those who always loved you

Your mother gave her life for you

Then gave you to my keeping

In the movie, the scene continues with Fantine welcoming Valjean to follow her to heaven (“take my hand, I’ll lead you to salvation”), but the Broadway version has Fantine joined by Eponine, and then by Valjean himself, in a request that seems aimed higher than the dying man:

Take my hand, and lead me to salvation [emphasis mine]

Take my love, for love is everlasting

And remember the truth that once was spoken

To love another person is to see the face of God!

Considering that the same melody was used in parallel death scenes pointing to a life beyond suffering, one might expect that it would serve the same purpose for Eponine, who after all does have a death scene of her own. But while she has a death song with a similarly positive underlying theme (“rain will make the flowers grow”), it is not the same musical theme. Instead, the musical theme used in the scenes previously discussed reaches its apex in “On My Own,” Eponine’s ballad of unrequited love.

The song is prefaced by an acknowledgment that Eponine is living in her own head when she thinks of Marius caring for her as she cares for him. Then the theme we recognize from Fantine and Valjean’s songs begins. It is, in fact, most closely associated with Eponine, despite not being first sung by her. She sings of talking to herself, of being alone, of pretending. Pretending, in fact, is twice mentioned, and it is here that the themes of all three songs come together lyrically, because in acknowledging the pretense she is dying to a dream.

In a way, “On My Own” is Eponine’s death scene. In it, she consciously dies to the dream of Marius and her “forever and forever,” yet chooses not to turn away from him. She loves him only on her own, but she holds that love as precious in its own way. It is not her dream vision of love, but it is a real love, a love that will bring her to the barricades in an attempt to save Marius’ life by giving him a reason to continue. (Because she must know that while she is the type to sing “Without him / The world around me changes / The trees are bare and everywhere / The streets are full of strangers,” Marius is the type to sing “Black! the color of despair!” Which is taking it up a notch.)

The epilogue to the Broadway version of the musical has the advantage over the movie because Eponine and Fantine stand together. They are two women who each loved someone they could not be with in this life, but who attest that unlike this life, love is everlasting. Valjean joins in the assertion that “to love another person is to see the face of God.” Together, the three point to a purpose greater than mere survival, and to a love that is both behind and beyond any love this world has to offer.

Behind all this time and sand

When I read through Numbers this year, the ways in which the people complained hit me hard. They had been rescued from slavery and they were complaining about things like not having the right kind of food, or that maybe God was just leading them into the wilderness to kill them all more dramatically.

For over a year now, that has been me. I pay lip service to the sovereignty of God, but I have a hard time pushing that down to contentment. Instead, I still deeply mourn the loss of my father, and the deaths of dreams that followed his death. I mourn my life as I thought it was going to happen. I mourn the personal failures in the things I have said and done. I look around me and I see wilderness stretching as far as the eye can see.

(I have needed corrective eyewear since I was six. I can't see all that far.)

I haven't wanted to blog much. I don't want to spiral into self-pity, and I have been in more or less of a mental fog since mid-May of 2010, so writing has been more difficult. But maybe it is useful to shine a light on the demons that plague you, and then to turn that light onto the map to remind yourself that on the other side of the wilderness is the Promised Land.

Lately, my clearest dreams have been nightmares, violent, kill-or-be-killed. In trying to go back to sleep after one of those a few weeks ago, I looked it in the face first. It boiled down to Suzanne Vs. The World--I have always tended to feel like I have to have my own back, and the feeling has only increased with my dad gone. And I realized that such dreams presented a false dichotomy, two options when there was at least one more: 1) kill, 2) be killed, 3) let somebody else take care of the pursuing villain. I'm not good at killing the villain, anyway; the villain never actually dies at my hand. (Oh, my Lord and God, you are the one who has to do the slaying.)

And maybe the villains will be shaken off, or maybe they will be thorns in the flesh for the rest of my life. Even so, one way or another, one day I will be clear of them.

Someday, I will look back on my early 30's and think, "Oh, that wasn't so bad after all" or at least "Look, there were good things that came out of that time." Even if it isn't until Heaven. The challenge now is to embrace a White Queen sort of memory, or rather a New Testament sort of memory, and remember things that happen years from now better than this very moment itself.

Unimaginably great things have not yet--but already--happened.