Inspired By.

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“The stars were quiet. The river spoke in some other tongue, some vernacular for fish.”
- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

I’ve just finished Miller’s spiritual memoir (in preparation for seeing the film adaptation in a few weeks!) and I really loved the heart of it, and the writing was so good; this small passage is one of many that I found absolutely delicious. The words latched themselves to my memory instantly. I continue to roll those phrases over and over in my mind like candy on the tongue, savoring their flavors. That’s why I lovedthis post from him about using verbs versus adjectives. His sentence is a perfect example of that principle at its best.

While I pick up the pages of this novel, here are some good reads for you to explore.

“…to the seedling on the sill. I am the small, green heart, all bud and shoot and tendril.”
(Poem discovered thanks to Sam‘s tweet.)
Worst movie of all time? Hard to narrow it down to just one.
Good advice from a dad and a grandpa.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I always knew the woman I wanted to be.” – Diane von Furstenberg via The Everygirl.
[Photo and excellent reflection on Blue Like Jazz here.]

Paris : A Recollection.

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In a quiet moment at the Musée D’Orsay, I sit on a bench and watch a painter make his peace with a replica of Latour’s La Nuit. In strokes he layers pastels over the soft concave and convex curves of her body, wraps her in a cloud of lavender and gray.
Patrons tread quietly on marble tiles, stand arrested by the colors of Cézanne, Degas, Delacroix, Klimt. They peer out the second story windows at a brilliant sky. By my eyes, the clouds are different here than anywhere else in the world, brilliant white cotton and silk spun mountainous over sacred monuments. And the sun shines bright across twinned balconies, long bedroom windows, blue rooftop after blue rooftop.
By no surprise I am in love here, and with here. I am unsure if it is the expected or unexpected that raptures me, the idea or the tangibility. As with art and life, romance and relationships, idealism and realism beg conversation.

So it is with memory – was I really there? I’m glad I wrote it down.

[Best friend returns from Paris tomorrow. Oh how I wish I could go back.]

Poem : The Memory of You.

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Recent past eclipses healthy memories,
those days when your smile and skin glowed happy,
what do we remember from before?
all of us were young and unaware of a soon and threatening after,
of a life later,
when the living room is empty of you,
when sad, silent objects sit in your void.

Tears come, a slow tide of grief in the dark,
or in a swell surrounded by a sea of strangers,
an angry rock of grief grows in my throat as I flee
to bathroom, closet, closed door.
I drive apologetic and repentant all the way to work each morning,
all the way home at night, mascara running along the road with me.

And when I think that faith has failed me,
“Take a deep breath,” you say.
The sun glows bright against glistening pavement,
a sparrow flies fast and free above me,

I breathe.

“Until I see you again,”
I whisper,
“Beatific, wholly holy, alive and well.”

Prodigal : “Facing Grief and Finding Faith”

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This article was originally published on ProdigalMagazine.com.
I stepped quietly into the room where my mother lay sleeping and walked to her bedside. I took her hand, thin and bony, and held it to my face. Struggling not to cry, I leaned down and kissed her forehead.“Mom,” I whispered, “The nurses are going to put a tube through your nose and into your stomach to drain it. It will help you not feel nauseous anymore, okay? So don’t panic. They’re here to help you and as long as you hold still, it won’t hurt.”

At first she didn’t respond. I didn’t think she could hear me, but then she opened her eyes and turned to me and smiled. “I just saw Jesus,” she said. “He told me…”

Whatever insight Jesus had made my mother privy to, it was lost in a garble of sleepy syllables, but her thin hands arched above her as she tried to explain. She laughed quietly and smiled at me, happier than I’d seen her in days.Then, for reasons I still cannot articulate, I felt moved to sing to her our favorite hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

“Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
there is no shadow of turning with thee…”

I made it through the first line before tears choked my voice, but she, who had barely talked in days, smiled at the sound, and proceeded to sing the rest of the verse and the first chorus back to me. Her voice was clear and unhindered, the way it used to be when she sang solos at church. She was even mostly on key.

And this thought popped into my head, “I’m closer than you think.”

And along with those words an image : Jesus, gently and patiently and lovingly coaxing my mother away from this world and into the next. In that moment, a peace and a joy descended on me, something that I had not felt in more than a year.

She died five days later.

After 14 years of fighting against breast cancer, her body had had enough. I watched her vomit several times a day for months before that, watched her abdomen distend not with fat but with fluid, while the rest of her body withered until she was Auschwitz thin.

Forgive my graphic description. There’s something about terminal illness that strips us of our preferred pretenses, the things we wish we didn’t know.

And there is something about watching the people we love die that kind of death that shifts our perspectives on life, on the eternal. It’s an experience akin to staring, nose-to-paper at a stereogram until suddenly, Bugs Bunny’s giant face emerges three-dimensional from empty, chaotic design.

I had always had faith. I had always believed in Christ and proclaimed Him as my Savior. I had always believed in Heaven as a real place, a place I would go to someday. But I believed in Heaven the way that I believe in the quadratic formula; it exists somehow, but I just didn’t get the logistics. I believed in Heaven the way that I believe in six figure incomes; some people have arrived, others are on their way, some are working their asses off to make it, some claim they’re ambivalent, and others just don’t have what it takes.

How foolish I was, how flat and empty and selective was my concept of God’s grace.

In the days before and the days immediately following my mother’s death, life took on a distinct and urgent spirituality. The gap between where I placed God and Heaven and the spiritual world and where I lived my every day life, down here on this tiny planet earth, grew smaller and smaller as I listened to that still, small voice, “I’m closer than you think.”

It didn’t ease the grief of our goodbye. However, my hatred for life, my distrust of God, my self-perpetuated isolation from His Spirit was not something I clung to anymore.

I wasn’t ready to be motherless, but I was finally ready and able to pray that impossible prayer, God, Please take her Home.

Inspired By.

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Le sigh. I just drove my best friend to O’Hare so that she can catch her plane to Paris for an international pastry-making competition. I die of jealousy, but I’ve had my turn already, nearly four years ago. It’s her first time traveling internationally, so I’m happy for her. I’ll go back someday, right? Right.
Meantime, I sit in the quiet of my little apartment in the Chicago suburbs as the sky begins to fall in big white chunks – a late winter snow storm that I could do without. I hate the Midwest in March for the hangover-like feeling it leaves on dreary afternoons and its unpredictable swings in climate. It was fifty degrees and sunny only two days ago. I’m ready to bare my legs in a gauzy dress and go without a jacket and feel sun on bare skin and sit outside on my porch late at night.

For now, I guess I should use it an excuse to brew an extra mug of earl grey and settle in with my current read. Yes, that sounds like a good idea… Happy weekend, loves.

There are few things in life as romantic as dating your spouse.
Not Heaven someday, when we get there, but right now, right here.
Praise God for transition.
Beautiful words about my favorite city.
Doesn’t this book look like a juicy read?
Then trying to get back in… which makes me want to read this book.