Letter to Arielle

Your sister and you (in 2008)
knowing that I was going to take a picture.

Good morning sweetheart.

It dawned on me last night before bed that I didn't write on your wall yesterday - for the first time since we learned of your accident ... on October 22, 2013. 

But ... I know you don't mind, because it means that I'm starting to heal. Just a little tiny bit. A friend shared with me yesterday in a way I could understand inside my heart ... that you want me and your dad and your sister(s) and everyone - ALL who love you - to comprehend that you are supremely happy and safe and at Home where you now are. Deliriously happy... beyond human understanding. And that you still want us to be happy, to look after ourselves, to look after each other, to enjoy every day of our lives. Every. Single. Day. Like you did. 

Even when things were tough.

I remember how just a few weeks ago,I texted you as you were living in your car, like I did several times a day. That week, I was SO not looking forward to Thanksgiving. It had always been a family meal, with you sitting across from me at the table and stuffing you mouth as full as you could get it, as full of as many parts of the meal as you could get in there, until your cheeks were puffed out ... that I just couldn't get into the holiday now that you were homeless, running on empty all the time, waking up freezing every morning. :(  

I told you I was seriously considering cancelling Thanksgiving. 

You wouldn't hear of it.

"Oh Mom. Don't give up your Thanksgiving spirit. I'm here and I don't have much. But I'm still thankful for what I have. You and my family and friends. So don't give up on Thanksgiving. Please." Your attitude gave me the strength to at least do a chicken up and have someone over for a meal.

And now you are gone from us.

You KNOW that I ... we ALL ... miss you. You KNOW that. You have watched us as we've been broken, shattered because of losing you from this earth. But as we are learning even more how incredibly amazing you were while you were here, we're starting to see life, and people, the way you do. That's your legacy. What a tremendous gift! I wanna thank you, princess. So. Much.

Here's what we're learning.... SO far. 

It doesn't matter whether a person is "red or yellow, purple, green, black or white or in between" as we used to parody "Jesus loves the little children of the world". (And you'd roll your eyes, teasing us.) It didn't matter to you if someone was gay or straight, male or female or something else, overweight or rake-thin or anything in between, Christian or atheist or Buddhist, wore a 3-piece suit or a thong.  You accepted people. ALL people. You loved them - you loved us all - just the way we were: warts and all. 

You hated it when people took themselves too seriously, more concerned with appearances and protocol than they were about compassion and mercy, about celebrating who somebody was. You hated hypocrisy and condemnation; you'd gotten too much of it in your short life and you knew how that felt. Thank God there is no condemnation at all where you are. 

You gave of yourself until it hurt; you seriously went without ... to the point of giving up food, clothing, toys, money ... so that others could have. Over and over I am hearing the stories now. The lives you touched. The hearts you mended. Your deeds - done in secret - are now being proclaimed loud and long.

And now it's YOUR turn to be given to. For all eternity. Although ... I am pretty sure you'd find a way to give it all back. ;)

I saw a new post on your Facebook wall this morning from one of your old crew here - Anthony - his first time on your wall since the accident. He told you that he remembered how you were there for him after he had a bad motorbike accident last year ... an accident that made him unable to walk for quite a while. How you went to see him in the hospital ... and worked so hard to get him outside of himself (and his house) after he went back home and got into physiotherapy. 

That's so typical of you. 

You inspire everybody who knew you. You inspire me.
I only hope that someday I am worthy of the lessons you are teaching me.

Love,
Mom

Born to stand out

Chameleons can change color to blend into their surroundings. It's a protective mechanism. It keeps them from being targets, so they don't get devoured. 

I know I've called myself a chameleon before, in the past tense, you know: before and after recovery and all that. But lately there have been some changes happening in my life, some of which feel good, and others that don't. I'm being transformed even more. And mostly I like what I'm becoming, because mostly, that is happy.

Still, there is a part of me that tries to blend in, to fit in to what's expected. That tendency is so insidious ... wanting to be liked, validated, affirmed. It puts me in a position where I end up not being true to who I really am, sacrificing myself to the siren song of people-pleasing. Especially to pleasing people that won't - or are incapable of - approving of me or my accomplishments in any way. I've already written about that in previous posts, so I won't go there right now. Suffice to say that not everyone in my life is supportive of the decisions I've made. Yet I still try to win their approval. I still try to fit in. I still try to change who I am to be accepted, even now that I know who that person is.

That fact confronted me one evening recently. I was watching a movie, and the leading man turned the his girlfriend and said, "Why are you trying so hard to fit in, when you were born to stand out?"

It kind of took me off guard. But it also gave me pause.

The pull of wanting to fit in drips constantly like water wearing away a rock. One drip isn't that much, right? but one drip leads to the next, and the next, and before too long it just wears away and crumbles the rock; it kills the soul by millimeters, diminishes the very things that make the individual unique. 

I know these things, but still I find myself trying to conform, to disappear, to hide. Make all the right noises. Lie about how I feel. Put on that hypocritical mask - or any mask for that matter. Pretend to like certain activities because that's what I'm supposed to like in this situation or that one. 

I am afraid that if I were to stand out, I would stand a better chance of being abandoned. I hear it inside as if it's my own voice: "Show-off." "Brazen." I was always taught that it's wrong to call attention to yourself. That it's somehow sinful, or selfish (which I guess is the same thing.) 

But slowly, ever so slowly, I am learning not to 'hide my light under a bushel' ... and I'm encountering more and more people who are so glad when I take that bushel-basket off and let my light shine. 

And someday, I might even stand out.

Always enough, always more

One of the wonderful things about the Christian life is that just when you think you have it by the tail, God reveals even More of Himself - and it blows you away all over again.

I was thinking of Moses this evening. He first met God in a way that cut through all his objections, all his baggage, and brought him to the place where he was willing to be the Deliverer that was promised. Although not a word-for-word rendering, the way Disney's Prince of Egypt renders that meeting (click on this bolded text to see it) is pretty potent. The first time I saw it, in the theatre at full volume, it left me breathless, my face soaked with tears.

The Bible says that Moses spoke with God as a man speaks with his friend. He had several meetings with God. The first was in itself a powerful experience. Life-changing!

But he went even deeper while seeing God's wonders being done in Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, and getting the ten commandments.

He might have believed that he knew God as intimately as one could possibly know Him. Yet - God had other things to teach him and the most important one was that one can never fully know all there is of God. There is always more.

Moses desired so desperately to know God deeper and deeper. He asked Him, begged Him, to show him His glory. God told him that seeing His face was impossible to survive for human flesh - but He would let Moses see His back parts. When Moses came down from that encounter, his face shone so brightly that people had to ask him to wear a veil over his face when he was with them. He only took the veil off when he went to meet with God again.

That brilliance rested on him for weeks afterward.

After God gave Moses the instructions to build the tabernacle (a tent that would house the Ark of the Covenant when they were not traveling), and it was built, the Levites took the Ark into the tabernacle for the first time and left it in the Most Holy Place. God's presence came down to rest in that enclosed space. Moses thought he could go into the tabernacle and meet with God as he had on the mountain.

But he could physically get no further than the door; the shekinah (glory) presence of God stopped him in his tracks. The manifest presence of God was so great, so powerful, that not even Moses - who had spoken with God as a friend - could get near.

He learned that God is so incredibly great that it is never possible to fathom the depths, the widths, and the heights of His awesomeness. There is always more.

That is a most humbling experience. It is a warning to those among us who would convince themselves that they have a monopoly on God - that He only speaks in this or that way, that He only acts in this or that prescribed manner. He is so much bigger than that. Moses learned this through the things he went through in the wilderness, through years of getting to know God in ever-increasing intimacy.

And he wrote about his experiences so that we would know that there is never an end to the possibilities of going deeper and deeper into God by the power of His Spirit. There is never an end to His love, to His grace, to His patience, to His kindness, to His power, to His integrity, to His justice, to His faithfulness...and so much ...more.