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.

Memorial day

Ryan used to be annoyed when people would said “Happy Memorial Day” or when they thanked him for his service on Memorial Day.  Memorial Day is not a happy-welcome-summer day - it is a somber day in which we remember those who died while serving.  It is also not a day for those currently serving or for previous Veteran’s - those each have their own days in which we should acknowledge and thank them.  But today we remember those who are no longer with us.  For us, we remember Ryan on Memorial Day.
🇺🇸 

The poppy on Memorial Day represents the first flower to grow after the ground has been disturbed.   It became a Memorial Day symbol after being mentioned in John McCrae’s 1915 poem, “Flanders  Field.”

Kate’s water color painting of poppies she gave to me. 🌺 

We love and remember Ryan today and aways. 💕 🇺🇸

Charlie got to meet Captain America last week at Disneyland.
He was Ryan’s favorite Marvel character, and so now Charlie’s!

TAPS at Ryan’s funeral 🎺 

Air Force honor guard at Ryan’s funeral 🇺🇸 

holistically dualistic

This month my assignment was to read about the idea of “dualism,” or the duality of the mind and the body, and then write a response about how I see these ideas play into my personal Christian spiritual formation.  Just a brief background - the idea of dualism asserts that reality is composed of two independent, often opposing, principles, usually labeled as “mind and matter.”  The philosopher Plato saw the mind as “pure” and matter as “evil,” or at the very least saw matter as being an imperfect and corrupted copy of what the perfect mind could conceive of.  But as children of a God who created us with both mind and body, how do we respond to that?  Are mind and body “opposed” to each other?  Or are they even separate, independent parts?  And of course did the incarnate Christ himself demonstrate a duality, coexisting as both human body and divine mind?  These thoughts in themselves are both intriguing to me but also kind of leave me wondering where to go with it all...

So here is where my rambling thoughts went during the crazy month of May… I really, really like dwelling in the knowledge that I am God’s “ceaseless spiritual being.”  After Ryan’s death two summers ago, I really needed to hear that my spirit/heart/soul require ongoing transformation because they are the “part” of me that carries on into eternity. The reality of that not only brings me hope, but it provides the motivation I often needed to “keep going” and to “do this grief thing” right.  Thoughts of my presence and Ryan's presence in the eternal Kingdom also gave me fresh motivation to trust that there is a way to “do life” correctly on the days I did not “feel” it.  But the idea of bringing my physical body, which is temporary, into this thought process of my own spiritual transformation were met with much less than enthusiasm...  In fact my first thought really was to simply settle into Plato's view of duality - good spirit versus evil matter.  I mean, I can work on my spirit and then kind of “ignore” my body and the physical reality I live in because they will all at some point perish away, right?  But I just do not think that is the way that God wants me to see it all...

So I started with death.  I really could not begin to contemplate and wrestle with these ideas of physical body without thinking about death.  And all this in a month – May - in which a wedding anniversary, Ryan’s birthday, and Memorial day fall within, followed by the anniversary of his death.  May is a heavy month when it comes to realizing and acknowledging Ryan’s death.  So as I prepared to take my children to visit the cemetery last week, our annual visit on his birthday (daddy day), I had to help an eleven-year old and a fifteen-year old acknowledge once again that their daddy’s physical body was put into that ground. Even as I struggle to grasp these “big" and weighty ideas, I also feel the full weight of guiding my children towards an understanding of the body/spirit relationship.  I know in my mind that God made our bodies to honor him and yet I have the blatant reality before me that our bodies do not last.  My children’s daddy is not physically here.  My spirit and soul seem worth “working on” because they are the parts of me that will go into eternity but I know my physical body will one day be put in the ground as well.

In thinking about death, I can easily see my eternal heart/spirit/soul as the center of all importance, simply due to its unceasing nature.  That is THE part that will matter as I pass into eternal life.  “At ‘physical’ death we become conscious and enjoy a richness of experience we have never known before” (Dallas Willard).  And I really needed to focus on how important my eternal soul is at a time when it would have been so easy for me to become entangled in the sorrow of my physical reality or be consumed by my loss of Ryan (him in the “seen” world), all these past 23 months.  I needed to hear that Kingdom life (life in the spirit) is available now and that my spiritual, non-ceasing soul is the focus of that life, even as I was consumed in grief and now as I am busy with the demands of the physical and social reality in which I live.

But God is quickly dismantling any idea of mind and matter being opposed to each other.  Yes, I needed that “eternal” focus for a time.  It served an important purpose.  In a lot of ways it saved me from pain and trauma that could so easily have consumed my person.  But there is also a danger when we focus too much on the spiritual, at the expense of seeing the physical as “corrupt,” evil, or simply unimportant due to the fact that it is by nature perishing and passing away,  “One can immediately see all around us that the human body is a primary barrier to conformity to Christ.  But this certainly was not God’s intent for the body” (Dallas Willard).  I think the point is that both parts – spiritual and physical – are completely essential to each other.  And essentially good.  Essentially good.  Our spirit/heart/soul and our bodies that extend into the physical world, were both created by an intrinsically good God.  That alone is reason to place value on our whole selves. 

And I think to move forward with life I also needed to see the value of my current, physical reality.  My physical body IS important and the care of it is intensely important because it is so intimately tied to the formation of my spirit and my heart.  I could easily get “stuck” focusing on the eternal and miss out on the blessings of the others all around me right now.  My temporary body has value partly because is it where I find and am found by others.  It gives me five senses so that I can speak, write, and read these words before you right now.  It is how I find you.  It is how you find me.  It was how I found and knew Ryan.  Just the fact that my physical body is the means of my interaction with  you and other children of God gives it enormous value.  But also, my body is the created container, the crucible if you will, where spiritual formation takes place.  The habits that I choose to indulge or rid myself of are bodily actions that can bring me closer or further away from my loving God.  I needed to realize how my body plays the active role in placing my spirit in a position to interact with the Kingdom of eternity now.  “The body is not just a physical system, but is inhabited by the real presence of Christ” (Dallas Willard).

So I think if I had to use a philosophic label for all these rambling thoughts, I would say that we are created to be “holistically dualistic.”  “Dualistic” in that the spirit (our heart and soul) and the body (our presence in the physical and social world) are two distinct parts of our person, but “holistic” in that these two parts are so intimately interconnected that neither can be referenced without understanding the other.  Neither can be valued without valuing the other.  In fact neither can function without the other, they are like different types of threads that are woven together to form a whole person.



saw this cool sun halo last week

41st birthday

Today would have been Ryan’s 41st birthday.  I would be a lot more emotional but we have a busy day of writing class, appointments, schoolwork, field trip with friends, and then a clarinet concert tonight.  But I want to continue our tradition from last year of celebrating a “Daddy Day,” so I think we are setting aside Friday to celebrate Ryan, visit the cemetery, and then do his favorite things and eat his favorite treats.  Charlie especially needs to see this happen and I think Kate does too, but without showing it as much.  And I think keeping track of Ryan’s birthdays is also helpful to me because it just occurred to me that on my birthday this year, in October, I will turn 39 and that was the age Ryan was when he died.  And then about six weeks after my birthday (40 days after it to be exact), I will then be older than Ryan ever was.  It is weird to think that as I age, Ryan will always kind of stay about in his late 30’s to me because I can’t picture him older than that.  But then if you go back and listen to the podcast I shared in the blog entry just before this one, I picture the idea of all of us all being in our early 30’s for eternity - that being the age when our bodies kind of “peak” from growth of infant to our “best” adult self  (physically, not necessarily mentally or spiritually or emotionally but we get take most of the mental, spirit, and emotions with us into eternity, so those have the opportunity to continue to “grow” from now forward, unlike our physical bodies).  After 30ish, our bodies begin to deteriorate back down.  I love the idea that our eternal selves would be the “peak” of what we have on earth because eternal life does not have deterioration.  I could write much much more on those thoughts but for now, and probably will at some point, but for now here is a picture of my beloved Ryan in 2013, when he would have been about 35 years old.

This is how I choose to remember Ryan because this was taken
at a time when he was happy and “well,” before depression really
took over and perhaps what he will be/is for all eternity.  :)

lessons beyond the grave

I had the privilege of attending a conference hosted by my Renovaré Institute program at my alma mater, Westmont College, in Santa Barbara tonight where Richard Foster, author of the book Celebration of Discipline, spoke.  Richard Foster’s words are always so straightforward, thought-provoking, and yet filled with love and grace-infused wisdom, just like his books are.  It was also a nice evening to just reconnect face to face with some of my beloved fellow students and faculty from Renovare.  I will not see most of them again until our third semester residency in November of this year.  I also got to reconnect briefly with two of my instructors tonight, Nathan Foster and Chris Hall. And on the drive home I decided to listen to one of the older Renovaré podcasts to fill the time during the hour drive.  I randomly picked a podcast from May 2015 simply because it had Nathan Foster interviewing Chris Hall and it felt like familiar friends to listen to their thoughts and conversation as I drove.  Most of the Renovaré podcasts are great and thought-provoking to listen to but I just had to share this one in particular tonight because anyone who has suffered a loss would find this conversation both intensely thought-provoking , but also abundantly hope-filling.  It’s a discussion about heaven, or life in the eternal Kingdom, and I found myself intrigued by the ideas and pictures Chris Hall paints of our life with God for the 10,000+ years.  It is worth the 25 minutes to listen!  Enjoy!

Podcast Link from May 2015:
Lessons Beyond the Grave

a picture I took on Saturday from Grass Mountain hike

mothers day

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” (Jer. 31:3)