Missing Parts

I can't find my boots.

It's 3:30 am and I can't sleep because I can't find my boots. My brown boots from Charlotte Russe that I got on sale. I can't find the black ones either but it's the brown ones I need. It's cold out and I'll need my boots to wear with the green sweater dress because I don't have any brown flats. Not that I really wear flats anyways. I need those boots.

It's so silly that I can't sleep because of boots. It's not like I need them right now. I just can't find them and it's bothering me. I ripped through my room looking for them.

Then I thought... Have I worn boots since I came back home? Did I leave them at the apartment? What else could I have left there??

I haven't had time to get in the right train of mind to deal with these things running through my head (running, mind you, without their boots on). There are too many things to do and there's too much white noise in my ears.

I'm just not sure why it is so disturbing to me that I may have left my boots. Perhaps because I may have also left a large portion of myself. That... that is what I am truly afraid of. Boots... however loved, can be replaced. There's a coffee colored pair in my mother's trunk waiting for Christmas. My heart... My heart is another matter all together. I can't buy a replacement on sale at the mall. There's no catalog to order from or site to store delivery. None of my friends can check my online registry and check the gift wrap box. Things like that you only get once, at the very beginning with your soul and your pink or blue hospital wristband.

They say "Time heals all wounds". I think they give time too much credit sometimes.
Christ can heal all wounds, I'll believe that.

While you're at it... Can you find my boots?

Another Grief Observed

From C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed"
"What pitiable cant to say,'She will live forever in my memory!' Live? That is exactly what she won't do. You might as well think like the old Egyptians that you can keep the dead by embalming them. Will nothing persuade us that they are gone? What's left? A corpse, a memory, and (in some versions) a ghost. All mockeries or horrors. Three more ways of spelling the word dead.

... But there are other difficulties. 'Where is she now?' That is, in what place is she at the present time?...

...Kind people have said to me, 'She is with God.' In one sense that is most certain. She is, like God, incomprehensible and unimaginable...

...But I find that this question, however important it may be in itself, is not after all very important in relation to grief. Suppose that the earthly lives she and I shared for a few years are in reality only the basis for, or prelude to, or earthly appearance of, two unimaginable, supercosmic, eternal somethings. Those somethings could be pictures as spheres or globes. Where the plane of Nature cuts through them — that is, in earthly life — they appear as two circles (circles are slices of spheres). Two circles that touched. But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me, 'she goes on.' But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get...

...If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to 'glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild..."

Jack, too many of us know all too well what you went through. There are so many questions that come with loss. They spin around your heart like a hurricane. It seems easier sometimes to let the winds of fear and rains of uncertainty whip you around like a forgotten piece of laundry on the clothesline. No amount of cold or dampness can will your weak spirit to walk inside.

It's hard to tell if memories and dreams make anything brighter. Some are warm and comforting, like amber sunshine on your skin, but others are far less merciful. There are dreams that cut like icy daggers. Sharp "What if's" and jagged "maybe's"...

But you've got to hold to truths. Things like "God loves His children" and "God is good". You have to remember those.

Grief is painful - grueling. But with Christ there is hope, there is a future. There is a home to look forward to.

We're all just wayfaring strangers here. Some of us are just taking the long way home. I think it'll be like Christmas, everyone trickling in the front door like leftover raindrops off a tree branch. Separate during the trip down, but together in one big puddle at the end.

I like the way that sounds...

How He Would Have Said It

Everyone has their own little traditions. Some people put marshmallows on top, others prefer crunched cereal. Boys like football and girls cook and play with babies all day. I had a friend who used to go to a nursing home and sit with her grandmother's old best friend.

We skipped mine this year. I don't know if it was because everyone was so full or if we were deciding between an ornament swap or handmade things for Christmas, but we skipped it completely. I'm sort of glad because I'm really just not sure how I would have possibly answered it this year.

So because I don't know how to answer the question that was never asked or even mentioned, I'll let someone else answer for me.

Tonight's Prayer by: Mattie J.T. Stepanek
Dear God,
Thank you for brothers, and
Thank you for sisters,
and thank you for friends when
Brothers and sisters die. And
Thank you for feathers, and
Thank you for seashells, and
Thank you for babies that
Come from mommies' love.
Thank you, God.
For all these things.
Amen.

Safe In the Arms of Jesus

I don't know you
I never could
But if I'd held you
Maybe that would have made a difference
Some kind of difference

But now you're gone
And it's not fair
That I can't even
Go back there and make a difference
Some kind of difference

But you're safe
In the arms of Jesus
Yes you're safe
In the arms of Jesus
And of all of the things
I could have done
I'm glad I can't make that any different

Who knows what you would
Have done with life
If you'd been given
A chance to try and go the distance
So great the distance

But you're safe
In the arms of Jesus
Yes you're safe
In the arms of Jesus
And of all of the things
I could have done
I'm glad I can't make that any different
oh, noone can make that any different
No, noone can make that any different

(Simile)It's Like A Metaphor

There come moments in our lives, like this one, that we're so numb-- so blinded to what is actually happening -- that it's impossible to respond in a tactful manner.

It's like when you curl up to watch a movie with your legs tucked underneath you. You're sitting there enjoying yourself just along for the ride... and then the movie ends. The lights aren't dimmed anymore and you can see the popcorn you spilled everywhere and the carmelized Coke products on the ground. You have to stand up now. But your legs are all numb and it hurts to move. An inch off the orange moldy seats and it feels like a million needles have been simultaniously injected across your lower extremities. But you're in the way and the theatre smells weird so you really have to get up.

You have a few choices.
Do nothing. Be in the way. Don't solve any problems. Stay in the messy smelly theatre.
Stand up. Be in sincere pain and walk it off. Figure it out. Face things head on.
Let somebody carry you to the car. Depend on their strength to save you from pain.

My legs are tingley...

Need You Now

Picture perfect memories scattered all around the floor
Reachin for the phone cause I can't fight it anymore
And I wonder if I ever crossed your mind
For me it happens all the time

It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now
Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now
And I don't know how I can do without
I just need you now

Another shot of whiskey can't stop looking at the door
Wishing you'd come sweeping in the way you did before
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind
To me it happens all the time

It's a quarter after one, I'm a little drunk and I need you now
Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now
And I don't know how I can do without
I just need you now

Guess I'd rather hurt than feel nothin at all

It's a quarter after one I'm all alone and I need you now
And I said I wouldn't call but I'm a little drunk and I need you now
And I don't know how I can do without
I just need you now

Page 33 of a Book I Never Finished

You're never very far. No matter where I turn you're around the corner in some song I wrote or blurb I hid away in a notebook.
I used to run from these reminders, but these days I need them. I'm lost in a sea of what "if"s and "maybe"s.

What if I had called about help.
Maybe I'd still have the connection.
What if I hadn't given up.
Maybe I'd be there now.
What if I hadn't parked the car to cry.
Maybe I'd have gotten that phone call.

I don't know if questioning the past is worth very much. Just hope for a second chance at not missing out, that's all I can do now.

I miss you. Writing makes me feel closer to you now. It seems I've almost stopped completely.

I should really finish this book. Maybe I'll just write 32 pages of a new one instead.