At Least They're Committed

It’s a good thing that it’s only the mental scars that carry over from one generation to the next, otherwise we’d all be wildly unappealing in appearance. Yet, if the external ugliness did carry over, I wonder if we would then better accept it and find beauty in each other anyway?

♪♪♪ Ohhh, life, it’s bigger. It’s bigger than you and you are not me . . . ♪♪♪

It seems to me that everything in life is cyclical, each in excess the same as the other. For instance, just as fire burns so does ice. Kindness becomes condescension. Something appearing angelic is often demonic. The best friend in every predictable movie is your underlying enemy.

Thank you in advance, Lord, for getting me through this day. Thank you for getting me through the next two weeks, for that matter. Life is filled with interesting juxtapositions, isn’t it?

♪♪♪ The length that I will go to. The distance in your eyes . . . ♪♪♪

I’m leaving in a week for London. I’m grateful that my youngest will likely be working there at the same time. Oh, the adventures he has! But as with fire and ice I’m also apprehensive for him and me. Can you ever truly have one without the other? Will we be able to meet up? Will we not connect with each other abroad?

Is it irony that when I reach a place and age where I am able to keep chickens and work from home and spend time with my family and my dog, I’m then called to travel? I believe it might be. Michigan. London. D.C. Cleveland. Florida. That is 2024. Then 2025 starts with the Caribbean (at least that one is a vacation). I’m in no way complaining, I’m in awe, I suppose. I don’t complain much, really, I just say, “Well, OK then.” And keep going.

♪♪♪ . . . Oh no I said too much. I haven’t said enough. ♪♪♪

I sip my coffee and look out the office window in front of me. The tree is leafed out and happy, all save for a few branches. Why do my eyes wander to the dead wood as I try to focus on the beauty of the foliage? Many a day and month I sat in this chair promising myself that the seemingly dead of winter I was beholding would come back to life. Cyclical. That someday I would be looking out this window and it would be spring and there would be blue skies peeking between the flushed out hickory? It’s here! Thank you, God! It’s here and I will continue to focus on the life and the Light. If only I can get those dead branches taken care of.

♪♪♪ That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the spotlight . . . ♪♪♪

Gabriel, help! I feel so lost this morning. I can feel you all around me, but I just can’t shake the overwhelming isolation crowding me. I am not losing my religion. It’s still very much here, it radiates from me as I weep internally and send all the joy I can muster outward.

The cross that was my mother’s and, before that, her mother’s fell off its stand. I wasn’t around, and I found Jesus knocked off having been sent flying under my bed. I do not collect crosses with Christ on them. I focus on the risen Christ, the crosses being only a symbol of his death and resurrection. The cycle. And so it was that I could not and would not nail The Son of God back on the cross despite it being a family heirloom. Not knowing what to do, I superglued Him back on.

He fell off again. He will stay off. I just have to determine how I will preserve the cross and Christ without one being nailed to the other.

♪♪♪ Every whisper, of every waking hour, I’m choosing my confession. ♪♪♪

Oh, life. The beautiful memories this R.E.M. song conjures! Of sitting with D in Clancy’s with his friends, with Bill Mullen singing that song as we all sang along. Of dancing to the video arms flailing in rhythm with Michael Stipe’s around the living-room with my two young children on my days off in the house on Kayenta.

Yet always being worried about money. Not making enough to pay rent. Knowing full-well we shouldn’t go hang with friends because we couldn’t afford it yet doing it anyway. Having a job where a messianic man obsessed over me and me praying yet not having a clue what to do.

♪♪♪ Oh no I said too much. I haven’t said enough. ♪♪♪

Or maybe I have said enough. Time to face the day. Thank you again, dear God, for getting me through it: For allowing me this evening to sit in our beautiful sunroom appreciating the rain and looking back on all of this and for an hour or two just to be grateful as the cycle starts anew.