new year's eve, 2016

It's the last day of 2016, y'all. Hard to believe we've made it another trip around the sun. A friend just asked me whether I was going out or staying in to celebrate, and I told him I was staying in - but not to celebrate. I just don't feel like it. It's not that I'm not glad on some level that this filled-with-tragedy year is coming to a close, because in many ways, that's true, but this morning I had a stark realization: 2016 is also the last calendar year when Clara was still here with her mom and dad. She was here for almost 25 days of 2016, which feels, in retrospect, like the blink of an eye, but SHE. WAS. HERE. Still full of joy and hope, still happy and silly and goofy and kind and smart and amazing. 2016 started off with her in it, and because it's ending without her, I just can't bring myself to toast to something new right now. I need one more day (at least) to remember a year when her parents carried everyday burdens like everyone else and not the profound sadness and heartache that they struggle to shoulder now.

No matter what happens this year (or any other year ahead), I will ALWAYS keep Clara's memory alive. I will ALWAYS treasure that precious girl. I will ALWAYS love and support my dear friends in whatever way I can. This year has taught me a lot, but what it really reminded me more than anything is that LOVE is the only thing worth investing yourself in, and if you see it in the actions of others, then you know the feelings are there to back it up. Just as faith requires deeds/evidence to demonstrate its authenticity, so, too, does love.

So tonight, I will watch the clock quietly wind down without fanfare or champagne. I will say goodbye to 2016, with both tears and thanksgiving, and I will turn the page to the next chapter and get on about the business of real love. To all my friends and loved ones: In good times and in bad, may you know this kind of love every day, all year long.

And Clara, sweet girl, you are missed and loved as much as ever - for always 

Love is.

To quote John Mayer, "Love ain't a thing. Love is a verb." I think about that often, especially on Valentine's Day when sentimentality runs high and there is this notion of 'the loving feeling.' No disrespect to those who are giving cards, chocolates, and flowers or writing sonnets or limericks on construction paper hearts. I'm all in favor of love, but it's the feeling part that always falls flat to me. Besides, in the midst of all of Cupid's arrows being slung hither and yon, I think about people I love who are out there in the muck of life enduring the hardest moments you can comprehend. In the midst of tragedy that hits close to home, your mind starts shedding dead weight and getting down to the heart of the matter. And in between the tears, you begin to formulate a plan for how you can make a difference...how you can take what little you have and try to bring some measure of hope or happiness to your loved one. Flowers wilt in a matter of days and cards get packed into boxes, but real love? It has a chance to flourish in the midst of what feels like emotional ruins. 

In my mind, love is palpable. It is proactive. It is the choice to put in work. It is presence, support, and hugs. It is grief and sorrow for another's pain - and for your own. It is generosity and patience. It is remembering important moments and the random, mundane ones as well. It is swallowing pride and selfish ambition to see another happy and successful. It is protection. It is safety. It is knowing and being known. It is laughter over drinks and dinner. It is giving advice and lending a listening ear. It is choosing kindness over anger when you're in a bad mood. It is organization projects and peanut butter sandwiches and picking up band-aids at the drugstore on the way home. It is acceptance. It is telling the truth, even when the words are hard. It is nicknames and birthday presents and inside jokes. It is the tears running down your face and onto someone else's lapel. It is sacrifice and joy. It is filling up and pouring out. It is admitting when you're wrong and being gracious when you're right. It is the song that sticks in your brain for weeks on end. It is prayers breathed into the wind. It is beach vacations and long drives with the windows down. It is trips to Target and heart-to-heart conversations in a quiet office at work. It is the promise that, even when things are messy, you'll stick close by. It is also moving on and letting go if/when the time comes. It is wishing someone the absolute best and extending true forgiveness after years of anger and frustration. It is celebrating every miracle, big and small. It is light for the path when all around feels like darkness. It is the quiet whisper of birds taking flight in a field. It is the gentle touch and the tight squeeze. It is the strength to keep trying. It is the signs that follow you everywhere you go. It is the push of labor that brings you into this world. And it is the grace that, in your last breath, leads you home. 

'So you gotta show, show, show me.
Show, show, show me
Show, show, show me
That love is a verb.'

some things i've learned maybe even this very day

love is brazen. it often shows up unannounced and, sometimes, at the most inopportune times. it leaves deep marks on your skin, on your heart, on your mind. it must weave itself into your DNA, because there's no other reason why, when it goes, its leaving is so particularly painful, so utterly undefinable, so seemingly impossible in every way.

sadness, i've realized, is often love's less than lovely twin (or at least sidekick) and possesses properties that are very much the same. in my own life, i have seen it dwell in places i didn't even know existed. and depending on your circumstances, it may very well hang out in all of the places love frequents. it feels indelible....and sure, it may fade, but i find that it never really goes away somehow. there are always traces of it. and you can be living your life, unaware of a shift in the emotional sands, so to speak, and there it is, ready to deliver a one-liner so brilliant and seductive that it slays you all over again.

the human heart - my heart - really IS so very, very fickle. so confused. so often misguided. so in need of reminding where it belongs (and where was that again?). i guess i say all of this to say that i've been going through some rough patches over the last few months. my times of respite have been due mainly to some little people that i don't even know but with whom i've been connecting in subtle ways.... the best thing in the world is to focus on someone OTHER than yourself. the rest of the time leaves you swimming about in your own situations. too often i find myself drowning in them.

it would be easy for some people, perhaps, to allow their emotions to be dictated solely by circumstance. i'm not really there anymore. it amazes me, actually, how some things in my life can be 'working out,' or at least moving in that direction, and how i can still feel utterly desolate...trapped under the thumb of a grief that is greater than myself. feeling like the only one who really DOES get it is God, and He feels entirely too far away from me. so it's easter and i'm alone, and sadness is luring me with its siren song, and i'm aware of feeling about a million things at once. and i wish it weren't true, but what i really feel i need right now is some cool sheets to surround me and maybe some advil to ease the pounding behind my eyes. i've gotten nothing figured out except that i'm teetering on the edge of something that feels good and something that feels bloody awful.

and maybe tomorrow i'll be able to stop the madness and know something real for once and maybe, just maybe, love will be brazen with me again. i've got a chance. i really have no other choice but to take it.