Thoughts on Mortality

My 7 year old son told me that I was not immortal yesterday.  I think he thought that was going to be big news to me.  But in fact, I have known that someday my physcial body will expire and I will be released into glory.  Of late, I have thought about mortality a lot.  It seems many people around me are fighting battles with the wear and tear that happens to your physical form.  Some of the battles are more aggressive than others.  Some are nearly transparent. Many are battling cancer and cancer is winning (like it generally does). 

My father has cancer.  And when I say that I automatically tear up.  His fight is one that is transparent.  So easy right now that I often forget he has it.  His prognosis is good, and he is healthy.  But when I say that word I have to face the mortality of one of my rocks.  My dad is a great dad! He screws up and does things wrong and hurts my feelings and loves me all together.  He loves the Lord and he taught me to love Him too.  He has faith and hope and courage and anger and maybe even regret.  And no place on this planet will ever smell, feel or comfort like his arms.  When I got divorced, I didnt see him for nearly 18 months.  And all the pain that went with letting go of my former marriage dissolved with his 1st hug when he saw me.  He is my first hero and my first love. And today he is winning his battle with cancer.

Jean is the mother of one of my favorite people in the world.  Her daughter Meg brings life into dark meetings at work and makes me smile in spite of myself.  She is bright and brilliant and wonderful.  Her mother has cancer.  I can't say that without shedding tears.  Her mother's cancer is winning and for the last week or more Meg has been by her mother's side to watch her pass out of this life and into another.  How do you provide comfort for that.  How do you say good-bye to the woman who carried you into the world and taught you to be brave when you scraped your knee and  fearless when the boy you liked, liked someone else. Mortality...it is hard to face!  It is hard to understand...why would a loving God place us here for a finite amount of time and let us grow so attached emotionally to each other.

We think it is an issue that comes at us with age...as we face our own mortality...but my 5 year old worries about his.   He worries he will be left alone...just him and Karl and who will love him if we are all gone?  I think that is the heart of the issue of dying...who will love us like the one we are losing.  Who will fill that void? 

I believe the void is what makes us above the animals.  The fact that it is not something we can fill, not something we can heal, not something we can fix....it is what makes us human.  And in being human we have the greatest gitf of all...the capacity to know pain is the final pathway of love and to chose love anyway!

Girlfriends

My whole life has been a parade of men.  Now for some women that means one thing but for me it simply means it has ALWAYS been easier for me to befriend a man than a woman...at least until lately.  In the past 3 years I have found great solace in having girlfriends.  What fun it is to sit with someone who completes gets your need to just chat about nothing and everything all at once.  Someone who finds humor in the oddities of life and can joke about the crazy things that cross a woman's mind during PMS.

My girlfriend collection has grown recently with some wonderful additions.  Adding to my collection of great girls a wonderful, challenging and delightful women named Shanti or "peace" has forced me to think outside my normal parameters and into a limitless world of possibility.  Another great keeper named Gina has spent hours sharing her life with me in the full richness of the "broken road" that led her to my doorstep last Thanksgiving Day.  I am eternally grateful to the boy who brought her along.  What a lifeline she is!
And then there are some who have been with me through the mud and muck of my divorce and the joy and exhilaration of my new marriage. Pam and Abbie who lit a path in the darkest nights and who without knowing saved my life are both heroines. Then who can forget my great coffee and bootcamp girls Heather and Melissa...both of whom have turned around and come back for my slow butt on numerous runs.

I guess that is the best part about all of them...they never leave me behind. They are there in the moment making the best of every situation. Making the best of me! Each is a diamond that fell out of the sky and into my pocket.  And because of them I am a very wealthy girl!  I love having girlfriends!

Broken

I am a fixer.  I come in to clean up others messes and put Humpty back together again.  I have been a fixer all my life.  In early childhood, I could fix with my tears or my antics.  As an adolscent I fixed by listening and loving.  Now I fix by sticking to the facts. I cut to the chase.  If it can't be fixed I freak out.  I make lists, I establish timelines, I fix things!

Today when my sweet husband pointed out that he was just about sick of being fixed and managed and listed, I had to admit that is me.  I acknowledge I am a fixer.  It is how I control my world.  If you dont like the way I fix you then don't get broken.  But that is what we are.  All of us...broken, scarred, flawed and not one of us perfect!  So how does a fixer function in a broken world?  Grace.

Unmerited favor.  Grace. Given and received...it is the potion.  The elixir of healing.  I cannot fix you.  I cannot fix world hunger or even the scratch in my car.  But I can offer grace to each broken situation. I can see that others are just as scared, traumatized and worried as I and I can extend grace.  In the moment when I most want to hand you a self help plan with milestones and checkpoints toward unbrokeness I can instead lay in your hands a packet of magic grace potion.  In that moment, I can allow you to be what you are and can give the power of healing back to the healer.

So Humpty fell, Humpty broke. none of the kings men could fix him...but the King himself...the healer...the one we call when we offer up packets of magic grace elixir...He can put us back together!  He can bind wounds, heal hearts, set us free.  He can and He will and most definitely He wants to! But magic grace packets have to be offered and have to be accepted.  Unmerited favor only works if you accept it!