C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Monday, February 04, 2002
As I drove down to South Eastern FL on my visit after Christmas, I decided to stop in on a good friend and his mother before the rest of the trek to my brother's house. Jon wasn't home, I was told by the gardener, because he and his mother had gone to the doctor's. So I left my car there and walked two streets up to Elise's, where I planned to visit with a mutual friend and her family. When Elise and her mother got home, we had a long catching-up conversation during which she told me that Jon's mom had been diagnosed with cancer at some point during the fall.
Of course, this took me very much by surprise, as I hadn't heard anything about his mother so much as having a cold. Jan, Jon's mother, was an incredible woman, and I was really upset to hear that she had been fighting such a viscious disease. When I stopped by to see Jon a few nights later, he told me a little about the many cards they had recieved and about how he's figured out how to make a high-calorie shake for her to drink. I didn't see her that night -- she was very tired and not really ready for visitors at the moment, but even just being in the same house felt good. A few nights after that, I was at Aleksandra's house and was going to be going to my mother's to finish our game of monopoly, then back to Aleks' to stay the night there. Aleks had been invited to spend some time with Jon that night if she could find a free hour, so I just told her I'd drop her off and pick her up since Jon's was right on the way. When we went to the door, Jan was sitting in the family room and heard Aleks' voice. So she called to Aleks to come in and say hi, and I followed. Seeing Jan sitting in the chair with her legs propped up and her scarf off for the night, I realized I hadn't really been prepared for this. I've seen pictures of people (some friends-of-friends and some I had no known connection to) with cancer, but never had I seen someone I loved during the time they were undergoing the chemotherapy and radiation treatments. I attempted to shield my reactions, since I'm sure she's seen enough of them already, and to keep conversation normal rather than saying everything with the grim voice humans naturally turn to in times like these. But there she was. As she spoke, my mind attempted to remember the woman associated with this voice, but my eyes saw a living shadow in her place. I'm sure I blinked more than usual, because the disorientation of hearing something so strong in my memory and seeing something completely different was a new experience, something I had never really thought much about. I guess in my naive mind, I figured that as people's bodies changed due to cancer and its treatment, so would their voices. It just isn't that way, though. So as I drove from there to my mother's, I cried a good deal. And I thought about everything she had been to me over the past 6 years. She was the first one that I talked to from the church I later called my home. She was organizing a divorce healing weekend for adults and, as part of that, the accompanying sessions and fun time for children. My mother had somehow heard about this weekend and had called for information, and I just happened to get to her office while she was on the phone with Jan. Knowing that my brothers and I didn't think we needed to attend any sessions to learn about divorce, she insisted that I talk to Jan so that Jan could convince me that I would enjoy it whether or not I needed the information. When we got to the church that weekend, she was the first person I was introduced to, and she then introduced me to Jon, who happened to be in my grade and also happened to have a number of his friends there that weekend. Thus, I was suddenly accepted into this group of really great people who became very close friends over the next year. Throughout that year, my mother attended a divorce care group at Jan's house every couple of weekends, and I went with her and spent time with Jon, Aaron, Regina, and other children whose parents were in this group or who just came for the time to hang out. We'd take walks to the beach (a block away), play games on the computer, swim in the backyard pool, and watch Jon hone his acting skills. I moved to CA just after the first year of knowing Jon and Jan and all these other folks, and didn't have a great deal of contact with much of any Floridian friends while I was there. When I moved back, though, it was as if I'd never left. There were new people to get to know and some of the old friends weren't around anymore, but for the most part, I was back into the same group of friends. That summer, Jon, Aaron, Aleks, Elise, and myself spent a lot of time together. there were times when Alek's high school friends, Aaron's musician friends, or our mutual church friends would also be involved, throwing or attending parties and such, but the five of us could be found together at almost every event. Many times we'd just spend time together at Jan's house, watching movies or talking for hours over whatever delicious meals she had made. She was the one I talked to for hours when I found out my mother had decided to explore her sexuality. She listened to my story about how things had gone in CA and about why I was going to drop out of school. She helped me work through my decisions about moving up here, she loved me, she cared about me, she was a great impact on my life. She allowed me to stay on her couch when I visited for my brother's wedding almost two years ago as well as when I went just to visit about 6 months before that. These are some of the things I thought about that night. She had already gone to bed when I got back to pick Aleks up, but I had figured she would and had said goodnight before leaving earlier. This past Saturday, I went to Wake Forest University to see an Andrew Peterson and Derek Webb concert with a group of friends as well as have sort-of an extended birthday celebration during the meal before the concert. Jon had been going to Wake Forest for two and a half years before staying home this semester to be with his mother, so I asked some students I met there if they knew him. Yes, in fact, they had been very good friends. "His mother actually passed away last night," one informed me. On the very evening I was celebrating my birth, laughing, enjoying life so much .. one of the greatest examples of compassion and love I've ever met passed from this world. I really am glad that she's not suffering, but I also mourn for those of us left without her for the time being. We will, many of us, be worshipping God with her again someday. For as long as this mortal world continues and we continue to live on it, though, there will never be anyone to fill the gap she has left. There will never be another woman quite like her. More than that, though, I grieve for Jon. To have been with her, to watch her suffer, to have to go through one of the many experiences we were never meant to go through .. I cannot imagine the pain he's experienced over the last couple of months. Perhaps it's a good thing for him that it didn't last as long as it could have. The fact that it happened at all, and that he will now no longer have her there to visit and to nurture him and everything else .. Jon, I am so sorry for you. Like everyone else in your life, I'm sure, I really wish there was something I could do.
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Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
