Living Phoenix

Tag: hope

  • (Are) We Are Stars (?)

    (Are) We Are Stars (?)

    I walked along the beach, some hour past midnight. The moon was low and red, the tide pulled high, the ocean vast. Where the water would end and the sky began was somewhere on the spectrum of imagination. Did I wander onto this place in company? No, I am certain I came here alone. My lonely footprints trailed behind the shifting sand. “Two footprints there beside my own, always within reach…”; the child’s prayer whispered at bedtimes everywhere came to mind. No, only one set of footprints chased my weary self. Though creations beauty mocked my brokenness, I did not feel his presence there. So, I went searching in the darkness.

    Eventually, my feet came to meet the waters edge. It’s slow push and pull, rise and fall, the sand rushing from beneath my ten toes. I felt the salted plea to walk into the sea. The hidden urge to swim toward the non-existent horizon until I could go no more. Then, diving down on single breath, deeper, deeper, deeper still, until the weight of the water pulled me home. A sudden deep breath reminded me I was still standing there at the waters edge. The moon was stunning before me, the stars were bright above me, but upwards the beach was black and void. So, I went searching in the darkness.

    My mind would wander here and there in violent sudden jerks of memories past and hopes future. My heart would swell in pain and mourn, each breath a seconds desperate relief. I talked a lot. To God and you. I suppose that is why I felt such company. My thoughts so deep I disappeared into the matching darkness ahead on the beach: a vapor. A dangerous place to be, to become my thoughts, my memories. Each step a falling leg of unconscious direction, I was just another empty shell upon that beach. Until the piercing pain of something sharp drew me from my stupor, I did finally stop. Uncertain of how I came this far, into darkness, along some quiet shore, I stood and stared.

    I looked up into the void ahead and watched: a dark blot, a soft something, an orb of black. Growing closer, getting bigger, moving. Perhaps, some other person roamed this beach some hours past midnight, too. Closer still in eery quiet, bigger even with every moment. Then it stopped. I stepped closer, searching in the darkness. He stood there, a dark black stallion, tall in confident strength, his mares behind him shifting in the sand. A warning breath from flared nostrils as I stared. God was here. No footprints in the sand, but his fingerprints everywhere around me. I wanted to share it with you. This moment. This experience. But it belonged to me.

    As suddenly as they came they raced towards me. My heart raced, too, but I was not afraid. I longed for death. Then, when almost in reach, they turned away and ran back up the shore. Once again transformed into their dark black orbs, growing smaller, darker still, until nothing. The darkness called me no longer. I looked up in that moment into the sky, hoping to see God or you. The stars were too many, bright and scattered, like spilled diamonds across a black felt cloth. They were beautiful and I was small. Insignificant to the stars, yet somehow still significant to the same Creator. I wondered if looking back the stars saw me shining in the same way I saw them. Are we stars to some cosmic eye? Shining bright, sharing light, burning hot, scattered about in service of the universe? So, I went searching in the darkness. Until light found me there.

  • My Yoke of Regrets: The hardest goodbyes

    My Yoke of Regrets: The hardest goodbyes

    “Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love”. George Eliot

    As often as this is the case, that we save our deepest look into love at the agony of our parting, I can honestly say it was not always the case for me. I found myself laying next to her feeling so deep, my love for her, I knew she must feel it radiating off my skin. I prayed for her. I celebrated her. I never thought I deserved her. But even still, the depths of that unconditional love for another person that I experienced once in a lifetime did not even scratch a shallow surface of the depths revealed to me in the agony of loss. It is an eternal abyss. We stare long into the darkness until their face fades away and all we see is our reflection.

    Of my anger and loss, the greatest of these is the hatred I carry for myself. For in the end, we have no person to blame but ourselves. The shocking dichotomy of knowing your heart for a person and the love you have and the monster you see in the mirror cannot be reconciled. You start to forget all the sacrifices you made, the acts of love, dedication and commitment and you start to see yourself solely in the few bad moments and mistakes. A yoke of regrets dropped heavy around your neck you plow the fields of shame. The memories you grow hurt. The footprints you leave behind share no company. The depths of love reveals how far it will go by taking your heart into the abyss as company. Falling.

    It is hard to say goodbye. It is impossible. Acceptance that every hope and dream is gone will come. But saying goodbye to a person you truly loved only returns to you as an ever present haunting ghost. Who are we to know if that even ends with the grave or will persist through whatever eternal life awaits. Maybe it is saying goodbye over and over again, head down toward the plowing of the field, bearing our yoke, feeling the pain, until each goodbye is easier. Or perhaps, as long as we continue to plow and seed that field we will continue to harvest the pain of loss. Without something or someone yoked beside you, you will only turn in endless circles. If there is any hope that God can deliver us it is in the hope that he may take up that yoke beside you and help you move forward and through the field- for as long as it takes. But even then, if the creator cannot take away the pain of your loss, how can we expect to ever truly say goodbye. Our penance is continually surrendering to God and feeling the pain of the hole left in our chest.

    This is the reality of life. That some will love little and go on to live relatively happy carefree lives through every loss. And that some will love great and never fully climb from the grave they dug for themselves. “I will never forget this pain” it says in Lamentations. Nor should we. If you are ever fortunate enough to remove that yoke of regrets, never be the fool who returns to that field of shame again. Remember how you suffered. The ghost that visits you. The pain you harvested for so long. I will never forget this pain. Or this shame. Or this sadness. Loneliness, grief, disappointment, anger, abandonment, heartache, hopelessness, exhaustion, hatred, fear. These are the deep waters on the other side of true love. Their depths can certainly drown you, and at best, leave you changed for the rest of your life.

    If this sounds painful, it is. If you have lost and don’t understand the depth of this pain then you never truly loved. Avoidance is not a long-term cure for walking away from someone or losing someone. It is the root infection that will one day bring you right back to your knees. It is hard to say goodbye when you still feel every bit of your loss. But, as it has been said, unsaid goodbyes and those left unexplained are the most painful. So say goodbye every morning. And say goodbye every night. Do everything you can to stop seeding that field of shame.

    “As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.” — Anna Brownell Jameson

  • Longing for Acceptance When Devoid of Hope

    Longing for Acceptance When Devoid of Hope

    As grief drags on, minute-by-minute, day-by-day, the constant torture of uninvited memories begins to fatigue the ounce of will that remains in a bleeding soul. The longing to not hurt anymore becomes the pain of an itch left unscratched around the nose. Pleading and begging, praying and crying, bargaining and changing: all fall on the deaf ears of a cold hearted person and a distant God. Anyone who says in those early moments of grief, God brings me peace, are suspect and questionable that they truly loved what they lost at all. They have not felt the burning iron piercing their side, day and night.

    The literature and devotionals are thick with the grieving in the silence of a Creator. Who has ever successfully explained this? “God’s silence does not mean his absence”. How I loathe those words now. Does this mean he sits near and and speaks nothing while I suffer? Does he stand over me, towering above, not reaching out a single hand of comfort? His ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. I understand. But still, how the longing grows from I want my person back to I want my God to be real in this moment. Eventually, we will break. Our will cannot remain forever beneath the weight of our grief. A crossroad has appeared and the options are narrowed. Which is the correct path, in my own personal suffering, I will not pretend to know. One path goes with God and the other we travel alone.

    I see God as the option that offers me the most hope. And in these moments, it is hope that is our rarest commodity. A precious metal, water in the desert, rumor of a cure for a horrid disease. If God is real, then he has not judged me for questioning him. He has not hurt me for throwing my punches in his direction. It seems, on the contrary, my punishment comes only when I direct my frustration on myself or others. Daniel wrestled with God. How we adore that simple quote. Perhaps, we do not understand the full weight of what is meant by “wrestle with God”. From the painful words he cast at his Lord it was not the playful tussle of a father and son. It was an angry child on the playground, hurt so badly he did not care the consequences of lashing out at something bigger than him. And yet, that was part of his pursuit of God. It was him becoming, and being, a “man after God’s own heart”.

    “Oh Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God! Restore the sparkle in my eyes, or I will die.” Psalms 13: 1-3. Or I will die…does that speak to the grieving heart?

    That is David sitting at a crossroad at the very bottom of life. That is David declaring he doesn’t understand, that he is in great pain, that he reaches out and nothing is reaching back. Sound familiar? But it is also his declaration that if there is to be any hope, in his hopeless life, it cannot come from anywhere but God. David cheated on his wife. He committed murder. And he is regarded as the epitome of the kind, loving, Godly, servant. He had shame. He had guilt. He felt as though he lost everything he had to live for. He had depression. He had profound sadness. He had anger. He grieved. And as he cast all of those emotions onto God, I imagine he finally fell exhausted with no will remaining but to eventually be picked up and carried by God to higher ground. And that gives us something to hope for.

    Hope still eludes me nearly every day. So much so, that I find myself longing for it, dreaming of it, willing to cut off my own decaying flesh to obtain it. Why? I do not know. I just know that I could use someone holding me close and walking with me, and no person will ever do the way they did again. So, I need something more, something bigger, something cosmic. I need a God that is willing to hear me, to tolerate me, to see me. David sang praises again after surviving the worse life had to throw at him. I suppose, I want that, too. For myself, and also for you. And while acceptance may remain in the periphery, this is a step in the right direction.

    “‘Hope’ is a the thing with feathers-” by Emily Dickinson

    “Hope” is the thing with feathers- That perches in the soul- And sings the tune without words- And never stops- at all- And sweetest- in the Gale- is heard- And sore must be the storm- That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm- I’ve heard it in the chillest land- And on the strangest Sea- Yet- never- in Extremity, It asked a crumb- of me.

  • Sunday Sidebar

    Sunday Sidebar

    Most often I find myself praying to forget. Despite them being my fondest memories in life, they are what cause me the most pain. Those treasured moments burn like hot coals in the morning and keep me from sleep. If only I could focus on the troubled times, the hard parts, the things that didn’t bring joy. If only the worse times with her weren’t better than the best times anywhere else. I would gladly have the operation to remove every memory from those years. To go on with a hole in my memory where all my hopes and dreams once lived. Unnoticed. Unaware.

    Grief is a sign that you loved deeply. And the deeper the grief the greater you loved. The greater you loved the more painful this unnecessary torture of life’s experience will be. There is no way around it but to feel it. And there is nothing good about what you will feel. It is too big to bottle up and hide in the corner. It is to grande, too much, to deal with in quiet rooms alone. It is evidence you are capable of huge love. And therefore, at risk for greatest loss. When love is in front of you the risk is worth every bit. When it disappears, and you feel the pain of generational loss, the gamble seems unfair.

    I grieve because my heart was honest about my love for a person.

  • In the Black Care of Grief

    In the Black Care of Grief

    “Black care rarely sits behind a rider who pace is fast enough” Theodore Roosevelt

    Though the luminary icon he was, Teddy Roosevelt, suffered great losses, as well as, great sadness. The history books are full of his wisdom, stories of adventures, and themes of perseverance and hard work. But the famous quote about outrunning the profound grief that plagued him was more a reflection of his hope to mitigate the pain than a success story of his escape from its prison. It did plague him his entire life, and it followed him into the mountains, down the rivers, into the plains, and at every turn in his personal and professional life. It led to feelings of insecurity, shame, and defeat superimposed onto his great victories. Depression is not a rider on a journey, it is the weather front we must ride through. We must ride through because there is no going back. The journey on the road of time has no turnarounds, no rest stops, only forks and bends, and ups and downs. What President Roosevelt illuminated in his honesty about his grief and depression, however, was the truth that the only real option is forward.

    We lost what we loved the most. We woke up outside our world and watched it burn to the ground full of every hope and dream that we held so dear. The driving force behind every step, the reason for every morning, the joy in every night- gone at once. Depression didn’t show up behind us and jump on the horse, depression is space that exists outside our collapsed universe. It is the black hole behind the galaxy of your hopes and dreams. There is no outrunning the air you breath. It just is. And the depression that comes with grief is the air you will breath, like it or not, and we are assured to not.

    In the initial moments of despair there is no way to find your bearings. There exist no compass for grief or this new world in which you find yourself living. Fear is unavoidable. It is scary. The air is heavy. It is dark. Chaos. During these initial moments, we have only a few limited choices in this regrettable life experience. First, we can try to stay put, roll up into a ball, stay in the moment, shelter in place. And we all do for a variable amount of time during the early moments of shock. But we might choose to stay right here hoping to be as near to that old world as possible. We accept our fate, so to speak, and wait for the monster to devour us. But the path of time will keep moving forward and every time you look up that old world, in its remnants of ashes and dust, will appear further and further away. You cannot stay near what was lost no matter how hard you try. Your reality is gone and what you replaced it with is not real- the world you will inhabit is the matrix of proximity to a world that no longer exists.

    Second, you can exit this life. People hate talking about this, avoiding it and condemning it, but nearly everyone has found theirselves in a place of pain so great it seems like the most passionate and merciful self actionable option. It is not weakness. It is not a sin greater than any other. It is a moment in time where the human spirit has been so badly beaten that any spark of life has been snuffed out and no hope remains. And it demands compassion. An attempt to deter someone in such great pain that ending their life feels like the only option with the fear of eternal hell as punishment is useless. We are in hell. It feels eternal. And God has already taken what seems like great pleasure in punishing us here on earth. How many have called out to God before pulling the trigger. How many times has God stood in the way of that bullet?

    We know that if we can get that rider back on their horse time will move forward and they will find enough hope to realize their belonging here on earth. We know that any persons absence in this world leaves a tear in the fabric of time that is severely underestimated by the suffered. And only love will help move them forward. And only moving forward will give them a perspective outside of the hell they are living in now and hope for a possible future. The person sitting in the ashes of who they were as a person is unrecognizable to themselves. They cannot see their value in this world. All hands on deck. Share your own spark of humanity with them until enough of their own light burns bright enough to see the path ahead. And if you, the reader, are in this place now- I love you. Truly. Do not underestimate what your absence would do to this world and to those that love you AND those who will love you. This option will fix nothing, it will only broaden the scorched earth that has befallen you, and pull others into the hell you will leave here on earth.

    The only other option is to be the rider in the storm. That heavy dark cloud of black care is relentless, but the only road available is time, and the only way through is forward. Be the bison, lower your head, and walk head on into that storm. The most difficult thing in this moment is to love yourself. But you need that the most now. And you deserve it. As someone who has had great faith much of his life, and searched and believed in miracles, and still fears God and is certain of his existence- I do not see God in these moments. I don’t say that to suggest seeking God for strength is hopeless. On the contrary, I think it is often our only hope. But I say this because those who find themselves here should know that now is not the time for a dissertation on God’s involvement with mankind. It is survival.

    I have no quote or scripture to end this essay today. I only have a heart for anyone hurting the hurt I have felt. The deep despair that is all consuming. The sensation of burning alive. Worse, watching the person you love burn alive and being unable to save them. No matter what, you have value and you belong in this world. You don’t see God? Look inside, there is a spark of creation there. You don’t see hope? You are the hope. You are loved.

    Might I suggest that there was one bullet God did take for us- on the cross. And perhaps, though it’s hard to see now, the scene of that crucifixion will appear on the other side of this forsaken storm.

  • We Climb with the Window in the Weather, But We Prepare During the Storm

    We Climb with the Window in the Weather, But We Prepare During the Storm

    “You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.” Rene Daumal

    Once, while married, happy, and safe, I lived my entire day for the promise of bedtime. That glorious moment when you gather the bedside waters, vitamins, and books. Fan blowing across the bed, dogs curled up, and your partner in her glasses reading, you feel your day melt away as you crawl beneath the comforter between soft clean sheets. I still remember how my heart rate would slow, her hair in my face, rubbing feet as an early but welcomed sleep would fall in a quiet dark room. A fresh morning would await. Enter the shock of grief: the grim serial killer of restorative rest. It isn’t merely the loneliness of the bed that once was filled with a covenant of love, it is the intrusive and unwelcome memories like ghosts haunting throughout the night. Sleep will allude you now, quiet will haunt, and rest will be a thing of the past like a fading childhood memory that you are unsure if you experienced first hand or simply heard the story so many times it seems like it was at some point real. Those nights of tormented sleep, hungover mornings despite sobriety, are when we notice the violence of the storm the most intensely.

    It is not only the early days of our grieving that plague our sleep. This sick disease goes on for months- sometimes years. God’s love is certainly not evident that one person can sleep soundly with their choices while the other one writhes in pain month after month. No more than the question of the ones we love who died whereabouts in the comfort of an afterlife. For that requires a little more blind faith than the miracles we will witness here on earth, or so it seems. None-the-less, we were designed to persist. And we owe the world our persistence. So we move on like the grittiest of endurance athletes. If only grit alone would bear our trials and deliver us to the other side of this horrific storm. What to do when our perseverance lets us down, and it will, and we fall back toward our last camp on Grief Mountain?

    Summits and safe descents are made on the planning and timing of the weather windows in our storms. With grief, we sit longer, we think longer and deeper, we find ourselves snowed in and enclosed from the outside elements. Everything we do to prepare for that short break in the weather makes the difference in our progress up and down the mountain. Who can command the storms and quiet the wind? To whom shall we call out when the waves threaten to overturn our boat?

    “The disciples went and woke him up, shouting, Lord save us! We are going to drown. Jesus responded, why are you afraid? You have so little faith! Then he got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm.” Matthew 8:25-26

    So often, in our most painful time, it seems that Jesus sleeps while we hold onto the boat for dear life. We scream out for him to awake and rebuke the wind and the waves. The grit we have is there to help us hold on while we await his awakening and take command of our storm. And for every break in the weather, every time God quiets the rain, we move further to the back of the boat where one day, we hope, we might find rest beside him.

    We are driven to the summit because we have seen it before. Though it’s beauty evades our eyes, it’s memory lives on in our hearts. We prepare for that window in the weather: we pray, eat, clean up our lives, slowly grow accustomed to the pain of the cold wind, in-by-inch, until the storm ceases and we emerge ready to climb. Knowing with every step the weather will again change, but stronger now because we prepared a little more with each passing storm.

  • Sunday Sidebar: My darkest parts

    Sunday Sidebar: My darkest parts

    Sunday sidebar’s are strictly for me. They are a moment I am not apologizing and owning all of the responsibility. A moment where I don’t need to connect to someone in need. A moment this is not a ministry, a project, a journey, a creation. Sunday sidebar’s are my moment to spill my feelings without second thought or edit. The silent and embarrassing thoughts that keep me from my sleep. They are for me. Remember me? The one who broke your heart? The one who you condemned without a second thought or single conversation. The one you publicly shamed. Stripped bare. Walked away as if I was nothing. As if I was living a lie. As if I hadn’t been an amazing person, friend, or husband. How easy to not judge the ones you call family and friends and strangers for their worse moments- a moment of need made opportunity of abandonment.

    Festering beneath the guilt and shame, like great tectonic plates shifting, sliding, grinding, carrying the weight of my faults and my mistakes- anger. The person who claimed to know me, who coaxed my most vulnerable self, who preached for sensitivity and emotional availability- what was actually needed was me to be there for her darkest self but be careful in sharing my own. Walked away as if I was a gum wrapper beneath a strangers shoe. Every hope and dream you set in flames and blamed every ash on me. Searching solace in every person, calling the peace you have in your heart from God- may God give you that peace despite putting your decisions on him. As if he brought me peace for my mistakes. No, that was wrath. Divine punishment. Not peace. And yet this anger gets but a second notice and my sadness at your absence owns my daily life. My prayers for your happiness out number those for my own. While you hate with a cold heart.

    Great pain does one bring who testifies their need for honesty while using self lies to bring about their own peaceful life.

    Closure? Closure is death for most human souls. Hope? Hope is an afterlife free from pain. But if God is so keen for us to suffer here how are we so certain suffering does not await? He is always faithful to his promises but no promise is earthly. So hope is only in what awaits that which we do not know.

    Anger is fleeting and overlies my fear. It vanishes as quickly as it came, but the fear remains. The desire to be whole again, the reality I will not, and my only prayer that the person that took everything that made me human will remain happy, safe, and whole- that is the reality of life. But the small glimpses of beauty- the stars, the trees, the approaching storm clouds, the sound of laughter- keeps my hope in God as my memory of what was the most beautiful fades away day-by-day.

  • “Nero fiddled while Rome burned”: Brace For Impact

    “Nero fiddled while Rome burned”: Brace For Impact

    In my younger years, I had a climbing partner who had a unique way of phrasing his encouragement when I would voice my trepidation of exposure on any of the routes he would inevitably be excited about. “It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s hitting the ground”, he would say confidently. In our formidable years of perceived invincibility the lack of connection to our frontal lobe unfortunately protects us from reason, and for some reason I would hear his mantra and think, “you’re right, lets go”. He is right, though, it is not the fall that ends our disastrous momentum downward, it is hitting the ground. With it comes great pain, disfigurement, death of our dreams, loss of our loved ones, panic, and fear. How about loss of identity? Is there a man who hasn’t heard the whispers of the devil attacking his identity? The compounding problem is that when we feel ourselves falling we reach everywhere to arrest our decent and control our outcome, grasping in desperation. Those things we think we can control, however, are untethered and we simply bring them down with us: ultimately, delivering the same impact to those we dragged along the way to lay in our wreckage. It wasn’t the fall that caused you all that pain, it was hitting the ground. But the further we fall, the greater the impact. Open your eyes if you are falling. Brace for impact. This is going to hurt.

    I was molded from the same ingredients as every one else. I had parts of my childhood that were beautiful and pure. There were other parts that were dark and traumatic. I lived life with an unprotected heart and threw myself into adventure, love, family, and every dream that promised me the fairytale ending. Men are not immune to the fairy tale complex. With every princess a fearless knight in shining armor is found nearby. I lived my ups and downs and took my valleys with my peaks in the same way as we all do. My undoing came much later in life. After a series of mistakes and unfortunate events I found myself in a place I didn’t want to exist. A marriage I didn’t want to be in and soon would leave. A career that brought more problems than the money seemed to fix. But I was a fighter and I put myself back together. If you read that last sentence carefully you will see where I am going with all this. The truth that alluded me in action, though I knew otherwise in my heart, is that I didn’t do anything for myself. Not a single one of us can pick ourselves up by our own boot straps and finish the war, perhaps only a few battles at best.

    No sooner than I had found myself in the valleys of my own doing had I climbed to the highest next peak. I found exercise, adventure, health, sobriety, my children, my family, and…her. The woman that stopped time the moment I walked through the door on that first date- a real life scene from Big Fish where everything froze, the popcorn mid air that I pushed to the side, as I made my way toward her smile. Sometimes, God makes it clear that this person was meant for you all along. For the first time in my life, I not only felt that, I knew that. That is a great height to find yourself navigating among the cliffs. And I only climbed higher. Sharing dogs, our children, a home, marriage, adventures that would make Huck Finn feel ashamed. Higher and higher I climbed. Don’t look down.

    I acquired everything I ever wanted. But I never acquired a sense of worthiness of her love and intimacy. My insecurities grew as my excitement over the decision to have another child came. My fears grew as the excitement over finding a new house came. My finances needed attention but how could I divert my attention from trying to be perfect and say yes to everything. Keep her safe from my ugly parts. After all, these were my dreams, too. Why was my fear and insecurity growing? Why did a simple angry response from her turn into the absolute rejection in my mind? Why was I craving self destruction again? The more I tried to pull the hidden pieces together to avoid her seeing the weaker me, the weaker I became- the more exposed I felt. I climbed, reaching higher and higher, while each hold became smaller and smaller. Until, suddenly- nothing, falling, grasping, desperation, loss of control. Faster and faster I fell with my eyes closed tight until bam- I hit the ground. I burst open wide, mangled and unrecognizable by the time I came too. Everything around me was from a perspective thousands of feet below my only recent reality. She wasn’t there. Nothing was there. Just pain. A pain of loss that with this series and ministry I will only barely be able to describe in the slightest bit. That would be a problem, if most of you hadn’t experienced it, too.

    When you find yourself in that place of impact you experience loneliness and pain that is only comparable to the biblical description of hell. It is a vortex, that sudden void in your soul, that cannot be filled by anything short of God. And even God is not done with you in that moment- the pain of all your useless parts burning away is on his clock and your desperation for control is the problem. It takes time to let go. It takes so much pain that you give up your own will and submit yourself to His. You are mourning the loss of your dreams, the person that was literally a part of you, the death of a love one, loss of your children, financial ruin, disgrace- whatever it is, your reality is gone and you are mourning loss. And if you were the conductor of that loss, then God be with you. Brace for impact. This is going to hurt.

    There is hope. There is peace. We don’t feel it right now, but like the gravity that pulled us back to the earth as we fell out of control, we feel it’s force around us now holding us together. To move on and ignore the destruction and pain is to play the fiddle while the city around you burns. That fire will consume you again. This journey doesn’t require you to submit to God up front and it doesn’t require you to feel hopeful or healed. It requires candid and honest conversation. Start with God. Cry. Yell. Scream. Beg. Sit in silence. But direct it toward God until his hope becomes a reality. Start where you are at and lets put one foot in front of the other until we can look up and see the hope that God has promised us that will never fail. There is unconditional love in a world that loves you conditionally. There is a God who celebrates your second chances in a world that condemns you.

    So begins our journey from ashes to soaring phoenix.

    “…he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory.” Isaiah 61