Two Years Ago Today

We all learned how to say the hardest goodbye we'd ever had to say.

It's funny, how at unexpected moments memories still catch me by surprise. Real and honest, yes, but sweeter somehow, the kind that make you smile instead of tense up inside.

So much has happened.

I wish you had been there to be part of it all.

I wish you had been there.

Father's Day: 2

Once...

...and then a second time. God has good timing.

Writer

"I just finished your fiance's book!"

I was on my way out the school doors when she stopped me. I haven't talked much about the man at school. I'm too private for that. It's enough that everyone knows I'm getting married. I had no clue how she even knew he was an author, let alone tracking down his book to read. 

But this friend? 

I've been to her house lots of times and sat with her family around a campfire just Being. We're close, and I think when she first heard that I was getting married she was just a little worried, a bit protective. What's he like? Will he treat her right? Who is this person waltzing in to steal Debbie away? 

So we talked in the hallway about the man and his book.

"My mother-in-law works at the library, and when I showed her your wedding invitation she said, 'Rundy Purdy?!! I know that name! He came and spoke at our library! He's really handsome, too! Here...' and she proceeded to go get his book about taking care of his grandfather and showed it to me. 'Isn't he handsome??' she said."

I shouldn't be surprised any more at the smallness of the world.

"It's a good book," said my friend. "He did a really good job describing what it's like--the hardness of it, and the goodness. It was heartwrenching, yes. But it was beautiful, too, how he described the closeness with his grandfather." 

I assented.

"Now when I showed my daughter the book, the first thing she said was, 'Man! Look at his arms! No wonder she's marrying him. I would, too...' I thought you'd appreciate that."

She went on talking about the book, and her daughter's judgment of a man by his biceps. As we talked back and forth, she finished with what I think was the whole reason she'd stopped me to talk in the first place.

"It takes a special person to do something like that. I was telling my husband about the book, and saying, 'Debbie's got a good guy! She's got a really good guy.'" 

And my heart was so warm, because she understood. She understood just a little bit of why I'm marrying him and how good it is. 

I am so grateful. 

So grateful that I don't really think about his arms. 

I'm too busy thanking God for his heart.

As Promised

I did--kind of--promise that I would trickle out more about this man of mine.

I'm caught in a bit of a conundrum, though.

I dearly want anyone who reads my blog and doesn't already know Rundy to have the chance to hear the story in all of its quiet beauty. But I am afraid. I don't want to overshare. I don't want to somehow take something glorious and cheapen it by constricting it with words that are too small to contain it.

There is so much to say.

Then there's also the problem of dignity. (Ahem.) Select members of Rundy's family read this blog, and as many of them already take such keen delight in embarrassing me I hesitate to give them more ammunition to use for nefarious blush-inducing purposes.

I will leak things out bit by bit, though, starting with this first taste. It is a good story, and I suppose Rundy and I will always be the only ones who know the whole thing.

When Dad died, one of the countless threads of thought that floated hazily inside my head was how anyone could get to know me, really know me, without knowing my dad. I couldn't imagine getting married after God had named it right and good for me to walk that road without a husband.

Here's where God caught me by surprise, completely.

Long ago--before I was born--Rundy's family went to the same church as mine. When they moved on to a different church, my dad with his insatiable curiosity and relentless sociability (that word choice only makes sense if you're either in my family or Rundy's...) made intentional efforts to stay connected. All growing up, I'd be trundled into the car with Mom and Dad and we'd all go over the the Purdys' house, where I became fast friends with Cadie, one of Rundy's younger sisters.

Year after year we would go and visit, maybe four times a year. Cadie and I would tromp off in the woods and play games with her younger siblings; I never once gave a thought to her Scary Bearded Brood of Older Brothers (except maybe to avoid them).

In order to understand this next part, you have to understand something about the family I grew up in (at least during the era I was part of at the tail end). You don't talk about the opposite gender. You don't really tease each other about romance. You don't tell anyone who you have a crush on. You are as silent as a stone.

Which is why it was so odd, really, that just about the only people Dad ever really teased my sister Abigail and I about were the Purdy boys. After she got married, Dad says I was the only hope. It was up to ME now... I was mortified by this, and vehemently protested that this would never, never happen. Not because of any fault of the Purdy boys whatsoever, but because I wouldn't be caught dead thinking about them that way. Sheesh, they were my friend's older brothers!! So, through no fault of their own and entirely the fault of my dear Dad who caused me such mortification, the very last name I ever thought I would take on was Purdy.

I'm pretty sure we have a God Who's not above laughter.

When I graduated from college and moved to Bainbridge to teach, within a couple months the Purdy family moved to a town just 15 minutes away. I was able to spend a lot more time with Cadie, become friends with her older sister Talitha, and start getting to know the whole bunch of them a bit better.

At this point, Rundy was away caring for his grandparents. He took care of his grandfather with Alzheimer's for three years until God took him, and then he cared for his grandmother an additional 4 years or so until she passed away, as well. (A lot can be understood about Rundy if you understand what 7 years of caregiving means. He's a gem.)

I can be an awfully quiet person. I think a lot and don't say much when there's a crowd of people around that I don't know intimately. I've always been that way. We don't have to go into all the reasons and do a complete psychoanalysis of Debbie, but the truth of the matter is that my comfort zone is listening.

Rundy's told me since that my quietness used to make him think that I was fragile; if he talked to me, I might break. It wasn't until Cadie shared one of my old blog posts with him a few years ago that he realized that I wasn't all quietness and fragility. That must be why when he was at home during some of my visits to his family after his caregiving days had come to an end we could talk. I didn't know he was reading my blog at that point, but it didn't really matter either way. God had brought me to a point where I was slightly more willing to open my mouth in front of Cadie's family, and Rundy and I had shared interests to talk about. Mostly literature at that point.

I hadn't the foggiest idea what was coming. I didn't even think about Rundy in any way except, "Oh, yeah, he's one of Cadie's brothers" until it was forced upon me by the man himself.

It started slow and soft.

When Dad got sick so suddenly, Cadie and Talitha weren't the only Purdys giving comfort. Rundy sent me songs and scripture. He checked in on me. He prayed. He's a man who knows grief by name and has had to walk in step with it himself more than once, so he knew how to walk through hurt alongside me. The odd thing is, I didn't even consciously know that he was doing it. But there he was, steady. As the weeks grew into months and the rest of the world started turning again, as it moved and I stood still, Rundy stood still with me. I don't know how to say it other than that. It isn't as though we talked often. He would send a message once in a while, that's it. But without quite knowing how it happened, we became friends in our own right. I trusted that heart, the one that stood still with me.

And you know how I said earlier that I couldn't imagine how someone could know me without knowing my dad?

God gave me even that.

Rundy knew my dad. He even got up to say a few words at the funeral.

And boy, does he know me.

I don't feel like Dad's been absent from all of this. He's actually been part of it all, but in the funniest ways.

I keep feeling God laughing.

It wasn't until September of this past fall that Rundy started talking to me a lot, just a couple months short of the first anniversary of Dad's leaving to be with God.

It's a funny story, really, how it began in earnest. Rundy messaging with Debbie online for a couple of hours nearly every night, and her thinking, "Man. Does he realize how this is coming across? He's probably just really bored every night and thinks to himself, 'Huh. Maybe I'll talk to Debbie.'" After a great deal of agonizing, and a very bold-for-Debbie questioning of Rundy, I finally realized that yes, Rundy did indeed know how it was coming across and was doing it on purpose...

And we talked. We talked about God and about grieving, about faith and life and where our hope comes from. We talked about hard things that don't have easy answers, and we tried to find words for things that I'd never put words to. We came to know each other.

The first time we met in person just the two of us as People Who Are Interested In Each Other, I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to talk. We'd just stare at each other awkwardly until he left.

(We talked for six hours straight.)

This post has mostly been the back story, but I could go on and on about Rundy. Not silliness, not fluff, not infatuation. The real and good and true of being best friends with someone who knows you by some sort of instinct God Himself gave them. But perhaps he can be in the spotlight by himself another time.

But for now?

For now,  I will tell you that being loved by Rundy has helped me know what it means to be loved by God. And loving him back? Well, God's in that, too.

I am learning so much, and it is so good.

I am glad for a future of learning about the Father Who made him and made me and brought us to this place. 

 

Mugs compliments of one Sarah Johnson, who gave them to us before we were even officially engaged... :)

Mingled

How is it 

that the deepest pangs of joy--

pangs because the deepest joy

makes you inhale sharp,

 breath catching in your throat--

are mixed and mingled, 

swirled into oneness

with the heart-stabs of losing?

How is it that the birth of a new love

comes hand-in-hand with memories 

of an old love that stretches

from earth to heaven now, 

 where there is no need of a house

of flesh and bones 

to keep the spirit tethered? 

How is it that there is death in birth?

As the hands give comfort 

to one strong with living 

they remember the patterns 

they traced on the back 

of another weak with dying. 

He spoke of my hands 

softly, slowly, with a voice 

that could barely pierce the air, 

lungs finding the act 

of breathing in and out 

more than they could bear.

How is it that the deep reservoir 

of loving holds the strength of now

and the fragility of then, 

and how is it that a heart 

can find itself 

so full?

Truant

You faithful few who check my blog during its droughts as well as its plenty may have noticed a gradual thinning out of posts.

You see, it all started back in September.

I’ve been a confirmed spinster since I turned 25. I had determined that age 25 was the age of no return; if I had not been wooed and won by then, I would live singly for the rest of my days holding orphans to my breast and doing all sorts of things that require going over the ocean and feeling heroic. (Yep. That’s pretty bad, I know. No need to tell me.) Regardless of all of the spiritual flaws in that determination, it was an unspoken handshake I had made with myself. Twenty-five with nary a romance in sight? Go crazy. Fly across the ocean. Be used by God for Something Important.

Problem is, I catch myself in these weak arguments pretty well. I get myself in a corner and the game’s all up. I know as well as you that contentment is not geographical, nor is it vocational. Contentment is Christ, and everything else is dust in the wind. Knowing this was different from always feeling it, of course, but I gave myself good sermons.

July 2014 I turned 25. July 2015 I turned 26. And this July I’ll turn 27.


I was supposed to marry young, you know.

Do as my sisters did--graduate from college, teach for a year, marry, have children, make a home. It was so unsettling to find that my life didn’t match theirs, not the living by myself in an apartment, nor the teaching for going on five years now, nor the... Well, a lot of things. The roots I longed to put down stretched into earth tentatively, not sure when they’d be pulled back up, not wanting to stay where they were.

And Dad? He wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to stay indefinitely.

But things often don’t happen the way we think they should. Some of those who don’t marry wish they could, those who do find that it doesn’t fulfill all their empty spots the way they’d hoped, those who work realize that jobs don’t make good identities, and those who love realize that death is the thief of all.

God is a gentle teacher even when His lessons don’t feel gentle.

I’ve never been good at writing vulnerability down with curves and angles so others can read me. I’ve been doing it bit by bit here and there, giving space to some of the words and continuing to hold others back.

These particular words I’ve been holding back for months now--not because I was afraid to speak them, but because some words are sacred and some thoughts don’t really have shapes that words can wrestle with. Some of the most beautiful joys have the deepest uncertainties trying to choke them lifeless, and some of the most agonizing pains are imbued with a beauty which strikes one dumb. And so this paradox we live and breathe and know to be the life God has given puzzles and confounds, even as we walk forward step by step.

So, these words I’ve been holding back.

By some mystery of God’s own working, I love someone and he loves me and we are getting married this summer. I could say more, oh, so much more. And at the same time? I couldn’t. I couldn’t say more.

Perhaps one day I shall feel ready to tell more of the story, piece by piece.

But for now I feel just a bit like Mary, treasuring up all these things and pondering them in my heart.

With Our Exits and Our Entrances

Take 1
Take 2

Just as before, I stand in half-light that fades into patches of black, script in hand. Behind the curtain all is hushed energy, the tenseness of muscles ready to walk quavering out into the brightness and the sight, the light that focuses all those eyes on them.

The girls fuss silently with their makeup, mouth for me to check their hair for the third fourth time. The boys sit quiet on the wooden casket not yet in use, shoulder to shoulder, sober and noiselessly hysterical in turns. The French mustache is perfectly curled, the case of crumbling cigars lies askew on the table, and the last of the three pocketwatches ticks incessantly to mark the time before it is put inside a pocket as a finishing touch.

This year is different somehow.

There is still the boy who taps backstage, who quakes each time he walks through the curtain. This time around, his words snap the air like firecrackers--hang frozen for a moment, then fade, the most insistent punctuation. Each time he comes off our eyes meet and I nod, smiling. He smiles back usually, a small smile, but once he came back triumphant, laughing unabashedly as he clapped a friend on the back.

He has grown.

Then there are those whose steps on stage this time around are the first scrutinized steps they have ever taken for another's entertainment. They worry, they whisper, they are afraid they'll wilt. One of them, small and birdlike, walks onstage in her finery to shout in Mandarin to the crowd, only to come running back and bury her head in my chest, collapsed in nervous giggling and trembling like a sparrow who's just escaped a hawk.

We are the few who wait in the dark for our chance in the light. We quaver, we throb, we breathe heavy. We are brave, and we are afraid. We exit and we enter at all the right times, we put on a good show and we make the people laugh.

But in the end, the costumes are off, the makeup is rubbed away, and the hair comes down. Who we are was merely borrowed and put on, someone else's voice and face and way of being.

When we leave, we leave with ourselves, those selves with cracks and scars, with buttresses and barricades and we step onto a stage of another sort. Still quavering, still throbbing, still breathing heavy. Still brave, and still afraid.

The Windhover

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
      dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
      Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
      As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
      Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
      Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

      No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
      Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Peace

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, 

Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?

When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite

To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but

That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows

Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu

Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,

That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house

He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, 

He comes to brood and sit.

January Day

It had been months since I had seen either of them. So unlike each other, so unlike me.

I could share more--the color of their hair, the clothes they wore, how they've changed since college, what they do every day. It would all be interesting, actually.

But really, what it comes down to in the end is that we could talk about God.

It is a mystery how unlike can navigate unlike until they find the center. And there at the heart, God gives them a common tongue to talk of truth and of hardness and of hope. No, the threads that make us up are not wound the same way; they are not the same hues or textures or types. But in seeking God we find kinship.

One golden moment is captured, a freeze frame in my memory. One girl on the floor, the other in the rocking chair, both singing an old Nazarene song from their growing up in different keys, furnace blazing hot air on their backs.

Two voices singing homespun praise as I listen, humming along to a tune I've never heard but somehow know the sound of.

Child

You're ganglier than you used to be, you whose clumsy feet tromp up my wooden steps. You fumble at the door and come in with a shy grin.

Two years ago is not so long, Boy. I still know your heart, and you know mine. I know the way you joke and the way to help you clamber over the walls in your head, I know that chocolate is a sure way to help you understand algebra, I know the sound of your voice humming off-key and your foot tapping off-beat as your pencil moves to the music coming from my laptop.

And so you sat and hummed and tapped as you nibbled on peppermint bark and found the equations of lines, and in the middle of all the quiet goodness you looked up and grinned.

"This is fun!"

I don't think you realize you said it.

My heart broods over you, Child, you who grow so awkwardly towards being a man.

God go with you--go with you down the steps, go with you next week and next year. Go with you into your full height and your old age.

All the Way

Listen. 

It is good.

James

It is easy to feel as though you've walked far when you're marking progress by time spent moving forward rather than the distance from here to there.

God's been pulling me up short lately, reminding me that I've not walked as far with Him as I thought I had.

It's a good reminder, and a humbling one.

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. 

I find myself wondering about patience. How I've asked for it before, and God has brought me through hard things to teach it.

But clearly I'm not done learning that particular lesson.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

It is both a comfort and a challenge. I know I lack wisdom, and I have a generous Father Whose stores overflow.

But asking in faith, nothing wavering?

Ah.

Like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Yes. Wavering and all. Yes.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

Is it possible to be too swift to hear, too slow to speak? I suppose if it leads to wrath it's not good in either case.

The surety is that God's righteousness has no part with the wrath of man.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

How do you make sure you're hearing right? I know that when I see Debbie looking at me in a mirror, I don't always see right. How can I have confidence that I am hearing right so that I can do right?

I long to do, not just hear.

But sometimes I get stuck at the hearing part.

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!

We are so many sparks, you and I, trusting God that we won't burn the whole place down.

The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?

We bless God, our Father; we curse His sons, made in his image. We bless and curse with our sweet bitterness.

I wonder how God changes us so that even the bitter begins to run sweet on our tongues. I know He does change us. But the wait seems long. But again--patience is a lesson I'm not done learning.

Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.

Our words matter. Wisdom speaks well. But it also speaks meekly.

What is the meekness of wisdom?

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

This. This is it. It is pure, and peaceable, gentle, and easily intreated. It is full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy.

And peace blooms out of it all somehow.

But He giveth more grace. Wherefore He saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

We are to be a subtle alloy of submission and resistance. We are doubleminded, and I sometimes don't know when to submit and when to resist.

Cleanse your hands, sinner, God says.

Purify your heart.

But how?

Draw nigh.

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time,  and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

Sometimes my life feels like a waterfall. But God is the waterfall, and I'm just the barest bit of hazy mist.

If the Lord will, I will live, and do this, or that.

Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

Teach me to know how to do good. I want to know how to do good.

Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

Patience again. And waiting.

Stablish. Root. Ground. God knows hearts are not meant to be tossed about.

But only He can keep them from it.

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

I have many faults. I have pride, and excessive self-concern. I want to control, I want to manage.

And yet God has given us prayer, and a promise of healing. I don't know what healing looks like. It might not look like what we think it does.

But prayer still avails much.

But even that?

It is the prayer of a righteous man that avails much.

Sometimes I am struck silent by how humility is all bound up in taking even one step toward Christ.

Take a step, and thank Christ for being your strength to walk.

The road stretches long, but the strength of God does not wear thin.

And so we walk.