This Day

I rise before the sun.  Mass for Phoebe at 7.  I've rested well, so different from years earlier ...where sleep meant nothing and those hours of darkness gave me a chance for stillness.  I wept my way through the night for the first two years, waking with eyes crusted shut ...it became a way.  I didn't care that sleep was fleeting, I only cared that for a little while everyone else slept, and I knew they were safe.
  These past six years have been hard.  There's the obvious loss of Phoebe and with that the nuances of her life entwined with ours from space to noise to laundry, food, shoes, movie preferences, tooth brushes, shower times ...everything changed.  And as mundane as many of these things are, when they're altered you recognize the root they have in our life and when they uproot, balance and basics of everyday become unfamiliar.  It takes time to right the ship ...time to learn to sail without the mast ...time to learn how to move ahead without the sail.  It takes time ...still is taking time.
  So what's the difference at six years?  Chronic agony does not have to be managed.  It still overwhelms and envelopes me, but not quite like it did when this whole journey started.  Yesterday, during our usual routine I could feel the uprising.  I wanted to flee away from where I was, away from the tidal wave of memory and pain that charged at me.  Eyes caught me, a familiar face, laced into our life in a unique way only God can do!  She knew ...the time, the who, the why.  Because every spring she steers her way gently and cautiously through the raging waves of grief.  No words, just a millisecond of a gaze "I know!" was enough to catch my breath, get through the task.  See how amazing God works!
  Six years ago I was thrown into a raging, churning ocean, crashing against jagged rocks.  I was cold and alone not knowing how to swim.  And that ocean is the same ...but today, I swim strong.  Every once and a while a wave catches me and carries me towards those rocks, but I graze them, knowing how to kick and move away.  Sometimes I go there, but mostly to whisper into the ear of a newbie thrashing in the terrifying, deadly waters.  Follow me, I say.  Just like someone offered us in those early days and years.
  Phoebe's death is the obvious loss, but there is so much more that nipped at our heels.  Its exhausting being around someone in devastating grief.  Ours was not familiar to anyone we knew.  It's not the same as losing a mother or father.  It wasn't like any of the miscarriages I'd had.  It's just not.  And its terrifying because it challenges what we like to consider impossible, controllable even.  We want to manage the course of our lives, making just the right choices to maintain a certain path, keep our kids safe.  People like me and my family surely must have done something wrong, or else Phoebe wouldn't have died.  And who wants to catch that cootie?
  And so my kids lost people who were a big part of their lives, and for children that's a really hard thing to understand ...its another loss.  Most people just quietly drifted away, but others created stories and reasons why we (me really!) were terrible, cruel people, freeing themselves from any kind of relationship with us. Today, I'm glad for it, because I know who our friends really are and I learned so much about my family, myself, humility, sacrifice, patience, forgiveness.   God teaches us everything we ask him too, often in ways that are enormously challenging and costly.
  We lost our common step, our way.  For a time.
  Today, six years later, I look at these six children of mine ...plus a new one in my new daughter-in-law ...who to me, is just a plain out daughter!  And I am in awe of them.  Each. One.  Amazing.  Our lives could have detoured in all directions.  But it is just where I would have it ...ready, with open arms to welcome Phoebe home.  It's as if she were still here ...my sweet, challenging, dynamic, witty, intelligent, vibrant girl!
  I brought Olivia home from school after six weeks of being away.  We arrived to an empty house and I could see her disappointment.  Why wasn't everyone awaiting her return?  Shortly after two cars pull in the driveway and the front stairs pound.  There is laughter and yelling and fighting over who gets there first.  By the time I come out of the kitchen, all my kids are fused together in one big hug.  They are holding and rocking, laughing through the welcoming of Olivia.  How different this might have looked; how we might have wandered off, each fighting to survive.
  God stayed at the center of this wild journey.  I've trusted God since the beginning, even before I said goodbye to Phoebe.  And I am so grateful for where we are today.  I am so grateful for the people in our lives who've stayed and tended.  And I'm grateful even for those who left, they gave what they had while they could.  I'm grateful for new people who've entered our lives since Phoebe's passing.  I know she had a hand in picking them.  I'm grateful my husband is the man he is, with the passion for his kids and family he shows every day.  I'm grateful to all of my 'Compassionate Friends' both ahead and behind me in this journey of life after such a loss.
  But most especially, I am grateful to God's generosity and His invitation to draw closer to Him and trust in all things.  He brought me Phoebe for a time, her time.  And if you knew her, you'd know what a blessing that is.  God has not left me.
  Please pray today for parents who've lost a child.  Beg they are surrounded by people genuine in their care.  Pray they find God and rest in His plan.
  On this terribly rainy Sunday ...we're off to the state championship regatta with both Hannah and Lucy rowing!  Phoebe would consider this a great race day, more so because of the rain!  The more elements to contend with the better; so today's weather is fitting, shows she's still in the mix.
  Looking for a victory ...and something tells me ...we've already won, no matter!

Finding Agape

Agape is selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love, the highest of the four types of love.

I look out my kitchen window, the afternoon bright with sun, leaves falling, a slight chill in the air. I think back to Phoebe's last Monday six years ago.  I remember that week well, her last days here on earth.  And I want to capture this moment ...because it is sweetly heavy.  Burdened but light at the same time.  I think from seventeen to twenty three ...who might she be?  I think of everyone I love and where in six years they will be.  It's funny to pause and think about time and change.  How life looks over the span of time ...how it moves to something different than what we knew.  Dinner hour changes, because we have.  Kids march on towards adulthood, and I watch, waiting.  Missing her, wanting her to be part of it all.  But I don't beg God anymore, I don't deplete the way I once did.  I grab hold of anything that speaks of the glory she might be in.
Six years of missing is a long time ...too long.  But it won't be forever, because one day...

In the time I've sat down to write, chaos ...the rough and tumble of big family life has thundered back in.  Three different kinds of music are playing, while the piano plays an altogether different tune.  Order is what I always chase, but it's not meant for here, in this home most times. Because life is dynamic and fleeting.   But I want to cling to remembering Phoebe while everyone else pulls at me ....and dinner is needed before heading off again to meetings and activities.

But just before all this electricity ignited my home, my phone jingled ...from my sister.  A reminder, a fence post and invitation to something that will root me in the chaos and see it more like ballet ...it gives me a lens to see the beauty and perfection of it.  Agape.

My nephew has been chasing Agape for months.  Waiting and wishing, hoping and praying that it will claim him,  He is a very special young man, and his burning quest for this has filled my heart more than once.  Someone had shared their own experience of finding Agape with him, someone he admires, and since then ...he's been after it.  And today, he believes it found him.  Amazing how God works, because that message to me set me on the right course in so many ways.  Agape ...selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love.    My nephew likely won't understand that his discovery is mine too ...and that's ok.  Most of what we give to others we never know.
And so the over stimulation of sound and movement I see as a gift only because of my nephew's discovery.  

Phoebe was not quiet.  Her presence was obvious ....and so I pay attention and notice ...all the humming and buzzing ...the life that teems through this house.  Life here did not stop when Phoebe died.  And it might have. We might have curled up, shriveled up and become something other than who we were. Phoebe would recognize this place ...it still moves as she did.  Her entry now would be seamless ...the door still open to her.  Still, it's her home.
So my quiet, my desire for stillness to be with here is in my own head ...because that was never who she was.  Phoebe was this life in motion of sound and movement ....constant ...alive.  

To set the point home (because God knows I need lots and lots of help in seeing His ways), my friend arrives, arms full of food.  Makings for a salad, home made bread and lasagna.  She is tired after working all night, catching up on laundry, racing her kids around during the day.  She brought us dinner ...when it should be the other way around.  My friend leans against my counter and we laugh with our easy banter.  She has seven too so we often share the struggle.  
We share faith and laughter mostly ....she found her way into my life just weeks before Phoebe died.  Another thread woven into my life so perfectly for what was to come.  And she hasn't left. 
And this friend likely won't understand that she arrives as the physical definition of Agape ....and again, most of what we give to others we never know.  How could she know how she punctuates the moment?

Phoebe's last Monday ...her bags thumping at the entryway, shoes, sweatshirts dropping behind her as she moves, passing the piano and banging away, cabinet doors open and close, jumping on the counter to be swatted off by me ... She could be here  ...she is here for me.  God does not separate us from each other ...only we do! These kids moving through now echo her own noise and activity ...they live and move as she led them to ...fully invested in the moment they have.

Finding agape for me isn't finding an incredible immersion in peace, having order all around me ...in essence, everything going my way.  Finding agape is immersion into the moment, accepting it as perfection, uniquely designed and delivered by God's own hand ...letting go and noticing ...the mystery of life spinning all around.  Maybe there's more, but I'm pretty simple ...

Hey there, sweet daughter of mine,  you belong here always ... And I am reminded to step back, get out of my own way and let it be as it should.