June 24

two years

Two years today.
I just realized that these two pictures are the last two pictures taken of the four of us together.  It was a day at Universal Studios where the kids wanted to see Harry Potter’s Hogmeade Village and visit the minions set before Ryan left California.  We had SUCH a good day that day!  It was a day of smiles and sweet memories together.

ready

death

If Death my friend and me divide,

thou dost not, Lord, my sorrow chide,

or frown my tears to see;

restrained from passionate excess,

thou bidst me mourn in calm distress

for them that rest in thee.

I feel a strong immortal hope,

which bears my mournful spirit up

beneath its mountain load;

redeemed from death, and grief, and pain,

I soon shall find my friend again

within the arms of God.

Pass a few fleeting moments more

and death the blessing shall restore

which death has snatched away;

for me thou wilt the summons send,

and give me back my parted friend

in that eternal day.

-Charles Wesley

Hawaiian mountain peak above the clouds at sunset

doxology

“Doxology is the only appropriate response.”  

I saw this phrase written in two different places this week, in reference to explaining God’s movements.  I found it a curious sentence - and when things catch my attention more than once I really try to pay attention.  Doxology as a response...  When I think of “doxology” I think only of the doxology we are taught to sing in church: “Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all creatures here below, Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.”  It has been set to music by some famous artists, like this beautiful version below, but it’s largely the same tune and words. Doxology by David Crowder

But what did the authors mean by “doxology as the only appropriate response”?  Am I to break out in song with the words to that hymn as a response when thinking about God’s movements?  Perhaps!  But I looked up the word “doxology,” realizing it probably has a meaning deeper than the catchy and comforting little praise hymn we conclude our service with.  

Doxology is defined as a “liturgical formula of praise to God.”  And liturgical is a formulary in which public worship is conducted.  So doxology is, in essence, a formulated praise response during cooperate worship - or a group proclamation of “praise God!”  The word doxology comes from doxa which is “an appearance” or “a glory.”  So in doxology we are publicly praising God’s appearance and God’s glory.  I love this.  This can be in the formulated hymn we know my heart, but I think it can also be in any way that our hearts can conceive to praise God out loud.  And I love that.  I may start using that phrase when God does something sweet or amazing or I sense his movement - Doxology is the only appropriate response!

Hawaii

I have not posted in awhile because I am in the middle of research paper month (two huge ones are due in just a couple of weeks) and because the kids and I have been traveling.  June has been such a roller coaster month for me.  I have stepped outside my comfort zone in ways that have stretched me immensely and I have also curled up with favorite books that comfort me.

School for the kids let out the first week of June and we flew to Hawaii for a week.  It was a somewhat spontaneous trip and I conquered a lot of fears in taking the kids to two of the Hawaiian Islands and exploring.  I had not been to Hawaii since Ryan and I were there in 2001.  And granted, I took the kids to two different islands than where Ryan and I were at, but it still was a trip that felt challenging to me and yet one I so wanted to do.  I overcame some anxiety about travel details in general - just all the craziness of driving to the LAX airport, 5.5 hour flight, rental car, hotels, etc...  Our vacation actually overlapped with a friend who was vacationing there too so it was nice to have the company and support during the middle of our trip.  And honestly, my kids are getting old enough that they help with planning and navigation and logistics more and more, so traveling actually becomes easier.  It’s kind of cool to see the transition from full time to parent to part-time friend with my kids as they mature.

Our time in Hawaii was amazing.  I felt such a sense of peace just disengaging from my routines of life for a week.  And I realized how much I crave adventure.  I took Charlie open water snorkeling and to see lava from the active volcano on the big island.  I took Kate to see sea turtles and shopping (her two requests!).  We all climbed through several miles of lava tube caves with our friends.  And on Kauai, the kids and I kayaked five miles up the Wailua River and hiked two miles through the rainforest to swim under a waterfall.  It was physically exhausting and amazing.  We stayed up until 10pm just building sandcastles on the beach under the stars, ate shave ice, threw coconuts in the sea, and swam in the hotel pools.  I loved every moment of our time in Hawaii and I enjoyed the time with my kids outside our normal routines.  I loved seeing the kids laugh and play and explore and bond with friends.  Charlie loves to explore and even Kate let go of her teenage attitude to just play and enjoy.  It was a week that is very precious to me, for a lot of reasons.

On the plane ride home, however, I was hit with a large wave of anxiety that really surprised me.  The intensity of it was almost overwhelming and very startling.  I think it truly was a grief trigger that I had not anticipated.  I still often have tiny triggers here and there that make me feel sad or teary-eyed for a moment or so, just acknowledging them and letting them pass.  But I had not felt that kind of overwhelming wave of intense grief for a long time now.  And it scared me the way it showed up, while I was in an airplane seat with no place to escape to.  My kids were on either side of me, both lost in a movie with headphones on and I felt claustrophobic and panicky sitting on that flight.  I decided to use the time to just pray, a lot like I did two summers ago when grief completely consumed me.  I prayed for comfort and help and I also prayed for clarity on where these intense emotions were bubbling up from.

The best explanation I have is that leaving Hawaii triggered a sense of grief in me - grief in saying good bye to our friends and grief in returning to my everyday routines of life.  I have had almost two years of a life that largely feels like I just go through the motions each day.  It started because I had to go through the motions and it continued because I haven’t known any other way.  There has not been any other way.  But something inside me changed as I kayaked and swam under waterfalls and jumped in the ocean - I realized I do not want to fly home to just pick up my life of “going through the motions” anymore.  I am going to live.

Ryan wrote in his last letter to me that he knew I would grieve, but that he wanted me to live again after that.  He wanted me to find joy.  Those words stung and hurt two years ago because I felt like the idea of living a life without him and feeling any joy were impossible.  And then I did start to live, in the sense of doing what needs to be done.  And I did let joy surround me.  But I have not really let the joy around me sink deep inside my heart.  But in Hawaii I felt like I stepped outside my messy and heavy life and into who I really am, by engaging in adventures there.  I let a lot of burdens go.  I lived and I laughed and I embraced joy and excitement.  I stepped outside fear, I did new things, and I found a part of me again that I had thought may never return.  I have had glimpses of that side of myself here and there but to just spontaneously immerse myself in adventure for a week changed something inside me.

So on that flight home, I grieved the sense of losing that part of me I had found.  And somewhere in the midst of my prayers I made decision not to return to a just “going through the motions” life.  Life is too short and too precious and too full to just live it from the sidelines.  I want to jump into it and I want to fulfill the whole of the personality God created me with. And if swimming under waterfalls brings that side of me out, I just need to find more waterfalls.

Wailua River, Kauai

Thirsty boy

Hanalei Bay

          

Island hop flight Hilo to Lihue

watching Kiliaea volcano erupting

 

Mermaid girl 🧜‍♀️

Snorkeling 

Rainbow Falls 🌈 

Black sand beach

Sea turtles!  

 

Black sand beach

evening sandcastle building 

 

 

 

 

 

 

balcony view 🌅 

 

gone

Two years ago today, I got up ridiculously early in the morning to drive my husband to the airport and say goodbye as he was flying back home for two weeks of work before returning to us on our vacation in California.

"It’s early and it’s dark out, you don’t have to get out of the car to say good-bye.”

"Of course I am getting out of the car, so I can hug you."

I stood by him as he got his luggage from the trunk.  I gave him a hug and a kiss.  

“I wish I could hold you one more time,” he said as he pulled away.  “I love you.”

“You will.  I will see you in just two weeks.  I love you too.”

Then he took his suitcase and rolled it inside the sliding airport doors.  I sat in the car and watched him walk up to the ticket counter for check in and then once he was out of view, I pulled away.

That was the last time I saw him.  

He flew home, returned to work, and died fourteen days later.  We talked on the phone and I “saw” him via computer screen on Skype during that time.  But that early morning at the airport, before sunrise, was the last time I really saw him.

Later that month I returned to our home.  When I unlocked the door and walked in I saw his uniform jacket draped over the dining room chair.  Just as I had a thousand times before over the previous fifteen years.

Later that evening, I gathered up enough courage to walk into our bedroom and I saw his boots by the side of the bed.  Just three feet away from the closet, but never ever in the closet.  Just as I had a thousand times before over the previous fifteen years.

A bowl and a spoon were in the sink, left from having had cereal for breakfast.  An almost empty jug of sweet tea in the fridge.  A Lego set on the dining room table, because it was for “the kids,” I am sure.  The TV remote on the arm of a couch.  

I was weird to realize I would miss seeing all those things out of place.  Or rather in the place they usually were and would be no more.

Or to realize he would never walk through that laundry room door, from the garage, at about 4:20ish ever again.  I could stare at that door over and over but it just was not going to happen.

When someone we love dies, they leave a vast void in their stead. Where a life once existed, now only memories. 

Those memories suddenly become our most precious possessions. We gather them close to our hearts and replay them over and over on a loop; like a movie reel of a life. We cling to them desperately, hoard them even, for they are all we have left of the person we lost.

We can’t help but think of all the memories that will never be made; all the should-have-beens and momentous occasions they will miss— graduations, weddings, grandchildren born. 

We think of all the unfilled hopes and dreams; the aspirations and plans for the future that are now all gone.

We think of the things they will never get to do, the trips they won’t get to take, things they won’t get to see. 

But gone isn’t just those big momentous events or the things they’ll never do.

Gone is so very much more than that.

Gone is a thousand tiny seemingly insignificant, ordinary things that we took for granted every single day. Things we may have even once complained about. 

Gone is no more cereal bowl in the sink, no more uniform jacket on the dining room chair, no more sweet tea in the fridge.

Gone is no more papers scattered all over the bedroom dresser with little notes from work.

Gone is no more PT gear or uniforms to wash.

Gone is no more buzz of a text on his phone.

Gone is no combat boots in front of the bed to trip over.

As I was cleaning up and vacuuming today, I paused in the bedroom by the bed. I stopped and I listened to an echo of a memory,

“Seriously Ryan, why do the boots always sit by the side of the bed?  The closet is right there.” 

I looked down at the floor. 

There was nothing there.

Just an empty space.

Sometimes you don’t fully comprehend the significance of something so simple in your life until it is no longer there.

All too often we don’t appreciate how fortunate we are until what we have is gone. 

Not that we are purposely ungrateful. We just get so caught up in the chaos of life, so busy hurrying from one day to the next, we forget to stop and be grateful for all that we have. 

And sometimes in all of the stress, all of the rushing to and fro, we don’t even see how much we have to be grateful for. 

We don’t realize just how meaningful a pair of combat boots by the bedside really are.

We very rarely stop to think about what gone actually is because, well, we never really think it will happen to us. 

Gone isn’t just some throwaway term or trite cliché used to define the absence of someone. Gone is real, and it’s enduring. 

And gone, it does happen to us. Randomly; unexpectedly. On a Friday June morning.

Two years ago today I didn’t know the true meaning of gone. 

I didn’t know just how hard it would be to start over at 36.

I didn’t know about the challenges of only parenting a preteen and a teen. 

I didn’t know about the long lonely years ahead of me. 

And I certainly didn’t know how profoundly sad an empty bedside can be. 

I finished vacuuming and as I turned, I imagined one brief, glance of the those boots returning to their spot. I brushed away a tear. Just as  I have a thousand times before over the last two years.

What’s gone is gone, forever. 

As I finished cleaning, I couldn’t help but wonder how many wives were muttering under their breath this morning as they tripped over a pair of combat boots. 

Or how many husbands were grumbling because their wife bought more garden plants.

It’s so easy to be annoyed by those things; to roll our eyes and shake our heads.

The inconvenience, the cost, the clutter. And why do your combat boots need to be there? Why can’t you put them away? And really who needs that many flowers in their garden? I don’t want to have to be the one to water them all.

It is only after they are gone that we realize their true value.

Gone.

In one heartbreaking instant.

This morning stop for a moment and look around you. Take it all in— the combat boots, the laundry, the dirty dishes, the phone that buzzes at the worst time possible, the plant assortment in the yard.

Stop and think about what it all represents. 

Appreciate it. 

Savor it. 

Now, while you still can, before it becomes but a memory. 

And as you do, know just how fortunate you are to have it. Every annoying, ordinary, lovely bit of it. 

Because someday you might just find yourself like I was this morning, standing by the bed with nothing but your memories, longing for the musty smell of sweaty socks and boot leather on a pair of combat boots that will never be worn again.

Be grateful for those combat boots in your way. 

You truly will miss them when they are gone.

More than you could possibly ever imagine. 

spiritual journey videos

I had to share these videos, they are really cool.  The link is a whole series of 3 minute long videos made by a Renovaré graduate that gives quick and easy practices for living a good life.  He made them short, sweet, and even humorous.  If anyone wants a quick snapshot of what my two years at Renovaré is mostly about, take 3 minutes here and there to watch Joe Davis’ little video series. Here’s the link:  Your Spiritual Journey video series

just a peaceful pic of my son swimming
across the pool at sunset yesterday
 🏊‍♂️ 🌅

June 1, 2016

Two years ago today I took this silly picture of nine-year old Charlie excited about packing and getting ready to leave Texas for a vacation trip to California.  I had no idea we would actually be leaving Texas for good and not returning to live in our home there.  The next few weeks of June that year were filled with the best happy and joyful vacation memories with Ryan, before he left California on June 10th, which was the last time we saw him.