father time, john the baptist, double helixes, and my dear gram anne

Time is interesting

and often confusing.

Feeling is beautiful

and often painful.

.

A date passes, an anniversary of a new beginning, a marker of a blissful memory.

This is a beautiful thing.

A date passes, an anniversary of an ending, a marker of a tragedy, an aching memory.

This is a painful thing.

I am incredibly blessed to be in relationship with Pastor Judy Peterson.

We kick it usually three times a week and have the opportunity to pour into each others lives and walk together through the good, the bad, the ugly...

the dark and twisty, the bouncy and giggly, the honest and difficult, the simple and joyful.

Life, as it is. 

Lately we have spoken a great deal regarding loss.

What does it mean to lose?

What does it mean to mourn?

How do we mourn? Alone? Together?

How can we identify what we're truly mourning and then care for it appropriately?

What does it look like to live amidst tragedy rather than to merely survive it?

She often refers to time as a double helix, much like DNA.



Along the edges of the helix passes your life, and the view you possess of your life.
This is time.
Or rather, this is our understanding, our perception of time.

As you twist and turn, twirl and spiral onward and upward you meet people, you build relationships, you trust, you love, you succeed, you inspire, you are inspired, you laugh, you smile, you do silly shenanigans and you create beautiful memories filled with joy, peace and warm, fuzzy feelings.

As you twist and turn, twirl and spiral onward and upward you meet people, you loose people, you break relationships, your heart is ripped to shreds, you lose life, you fail, you lose inspiration and motivation, you mourn, you cry, you leave comfort, you loose comfort and you create painful memories filled with hurt, ache, and cold, bitter feelings.

Thankfully, due to the design of the helix, we are not in view of all of this all of the time.
But as we pass certain points, we can look down and see perfectly the connections.
The feelings, we've felt them before, but when?

When I smell jasmine flowers an incredible thing happens.
As the sweet, calm fragrance is inhaled it fills every corner of my body and my soul.
I feel the stems spreading through my veins, the branches shooting out along my skin, the leaves springing to life, bursting into color and finally the tiny white flowers bursting into full bloom as they shine light throughout my body and fill me with a reminiscent joy that relates me to my childhood home in Ventura, my mother's perfume, the walk to my grandparent's home and the unique and fanciful vision that only a child understands.

The smell of jasmine flowers aligns all of these memories,
and I smile.

At this season in my life, this corner of the helix, events of death and loss are heavily present.

Moments of despair, pain and great hurt are in full view.

This week was a week of throbbing remembrance. 

This pain that once was acute, now lingers as a constant, a thud.
thud.
thud.

October 14, 2014 marks the death of my wonderful grandmother, Anne.
That day pierced my soul and sent shocking pain through every particle of my being.
It rocked me thoroughly and continues to linger as a pain without felt remedy.

This date passes and in full view is the loss of a brother, the loss of love and relationship, the loss of homes and comfort, the loss of friends and community, the loss of being known, the loss of reliance on what thought to be true, the loss of childlike trust and optimism, the loss of motivation, the loss of family who I thought would be forever, the loss of loved ones to the world beyond and the loss of any certainty or solid ground.



One of my wonderful mentors, Jessica, asked me a pensive question the other day.
She said, "If you could pick one character, metaphor, story, verse, theme, etc. from the Bible that you think mirrors your personal faith story, who or what do you think it would be?"

I had to take that one home with me.
So many options to review!

After a few days of scatterbrained thinking I decided that James' story is a close reflection to my own.
(We can unpack that more at a later time.)

A few days later, I was walking home a sweaty mess from the gym when I realized how miserable I was. I was tired, disgusting, had heaps of homework waiting for me at the apartment, was ticked off at God, catching a cold, bogged down with work stuff, mourning the loss of the above mentioned list, and generally super unhappy with where I was and what I was doing when I heard the voice of God.

This voice, though not audible, convicted me profoundly.
With the question Jessica has posed to me still lingering, I said out loud (like a semi-crazy person) as I was walking "I wish my faith story mirrored that of John the Baptist."

I don't really.
I mean, his life...
He wore camel skins, ate locus and wandered around in the desert.
Granite, he got to baptize Jesus, which is cool.
But still.
He wandered around wearing what I can only imagine would be super itchy clothing, ate frickin' bugs and lived in the ridiculously hot with sand surely in nasty places.
He spent his whole life serving God and in the end got beheaded in a dungeon with no recognition.

But really, I do want my faith story to mirror his.
I mean, his life...
He wore camel skins, ate locus and wandered around in the desert and was beheaded in a dungeon all the while proclaiming boldly the name of Christ.

His life was anything but ideal and yet he lived it so incredibly committed to the Lord that none of the terrible mattered.
He confidently sang of the coming of Christ while living in conditions that nobody in their right mind finds joy in.

I guess this is the "peace that passes all understanding" of which Paul writes to the Philippians.
It just doesn't make sense.
But it's God.

"peace that passes all understanding"
the peace that allowed John the Baptist to proclaim the goodness and the coming of Christ while eating bugs, wearing itchy terribleness and sleeping in the sand.

I wish that my faith mirrored that of John the Baptist, "restore to me the joy of your salvation."

This week I have spent remembering.
Gram Anne was the most incredible story teller. She actually recorded herself reading fairy tales for my sister and I when we were smaller so that we could snuggle up and dream together. She made me a beautiful quilt that keeps me warm every night. We exchanged letters consistently until she became too tired to write; she would always sign them "MMM", Mad Madam Mim. We would imagine together, reality had no need to be reality.



In all of these ways, she is still with me.
Dreaming, creating, imagining and inspiring are not only of this world.
For every point of sadness on the helix of my life, for every corner I turn which begs the mourning of Gram Anne, there is a point right around the bend, a memory of great beauty and power that brings me to a point of imagination and with every dream,
every creation,
every wonder,
she is there, and she creates with me.

Father time has his ways.
His twisty, turny, curvy, helixy ways...

But God has his ways too.
Time does not take form with God, He is present in it all.
He breaths life into every memory, every moment, every minute to come.
He walks among the joy, the pain, the beauty, the misery and he gives life.

"In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory."
J.R.R. Tolkien