Fall Reposting

Because I'm tired...but want to post something...I will repost...from last October. I am trying to learn again that life is not to be feared. I am trying not to expect tragedies and the other shoe to drop. As I look back on the last years...there have been a lot of shoes dropping all over my life and I don't think anyone can really blame me for expecting more. It's been a cadance I came quite good at marching along to. A new season...of a new job and new friends and views of the ocean. Instead of fearing more, I claim that God has been with me as I have walked along this road the last few years of watching a best friend replace her liver 3 times and of the pain of siting along side her bed holding her foot and wondering if she will wake up. Of attending funerals of friends like Ashley and of having surgery that left me in a process of healing for an entire year.

Perhaps this season is now followed by relief, and for that, I praise God. He is near in all seasons.

So, as I said...a repost...from last year

Pain and Joy and the Love Inbetween

Pain and beauty and the love inbetween
I was pulled over to the side of the road, on my way to a pumpkin patch in Carpenteria. I sat there in disbelief as I heard that my childhood friend, Ashley Barnett, passed away the night before.

My brother had just been married, on the beach to his wife July. It was beautiful.

Life is clearly full of beauty and pain, and all the emotions in between. I heard a quote the other day:

"Joy and grief are an inch apart. Those who grieve well are able to celebrate well."

I have found this to be true, and I have found that when my heart has broken, i become more compassionate and willing to understand the people around me. More patient. More able to empathise and mourn with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice. More willing to say "it's allright, I forgive you".

I know people who insulate themselves from the real life that is full of all of this. I understand why they do, because often life can hurt like hell. It can hurt so bad that you stop trusting the beauty to be real. You start seeing the beauty as a precursor to the other shoe dropping...to the pain that is lingering in the doorway like a threatening shaddow, promising to cloud the color and joy. Pain will come. Beauty will come. They will both exist in this thing called life that we find ourselves in. I have chosen to feel it all...and sometimes that is a difficult way to live. I walk on roads with friends who have painful stories, but in those real, raw, authentic spaces I find the most vibrant beauty that takes my breath away.

Many people google Ashley's name and this blog comes up because I processed some of my grief on here last October. It was therapy for me. I felt led to share even though I didn't want to. I wanted to acknowledge that there are many of you who might feel alone as you watch the 48 hours special this Saturday. It is unfair. It is awful. Loosing Ashley the way we did is the kind of thing that breaks your heart and changes you forever.

I do know though that knowing her joy and her laugh and her spirit was worth it. It was worth letting the beauty in. Because the beauty changes us too. It makes us know something deep. It makes us long for more. It has us hoping for the silver lining. I'm confident that Ashley is living in her beautiful eternal way. I'm not talking about harps and fluffy clouds because that is boring. I'm expecting life to the full, the way we were intended for, the life we were created for, and the life we will return to with Jesus. Beautiful radiant celebration and laughter and great stories and parties...nature we have never seen, beauty we only glimpse at. That's eternal life. It's beautiful...and it is worth the pain of living here to know the beauty that we can taste now...and live now...and live fully sometime later with Ashley again.

I will honor Ashley by living these days. I will go that day to Starbucks on Oak and Pass where we ran into each other before work, the last time I saw her beautiful smile and heard her say my name. It rings in my ears. It's funny how no two voices are the same. I remember hers in serious tones and silly tones, i remember it singing and I remember it excited. It was always, always, always full of life!

I will let myself cry. I will let it all in, because it's real, and it's sad and it isn't fair. i will remember it like yesterday all of the moments we shared and ways our eyes would meet and share a thought. And as the leaves change on my street and fall to the ground, I embrace that life changes, and it's beautiful and awful and in the midst of it all there is love inbetween, washing over me.

Comments

[Andrew Seely]

Praying for ya and your church community!!

[KC]

tell everyone our little church in littlerock covered you guys in prayer in worship this morning.