Wobbling in Place

I've had the great privilege of working closely with CH since going on full time with YL. She is so spirit-filled, composed, creative, visionary. We get down with how-are-you-really's and pray it out before gettin' down to business.  It's an incredible blessing.




Today I said I'm a bit turbulent, that it's Gramma's birthday today, and I miss her so very much. She was a mom and a friend to me.

CH said, you're kidding! It would have been her mother L's birthday today too.

It's not the only parallel in our stories. When we first met, we swapped stories of silence and speaking, truth to power.

Happy birthday to our dearly loved ghosts.

Hugs all around.

Thanks Abba.

Her mother who was murdered by her neighbor in a drunken brawl, when CH was 18. How the months before that, the Lord had orchestrated it such that nothing was left unsaid, there were no regrets. How they got their first and last photograph together. How she learned how crazy her ma really was about her.

How are you so brave and composed C? After all that you have lived through. It certainly gives me hope. I feel so wobbly all the time. Any surefootedness seems so tenuous, like testing the strength of ice on a frozen lake.

You are seeing the end result, girl. I wobbled most my way through the last three decades. You are right where you should be. It is okay.

every single story is a story about love

both the overflowing cup

and the painful lack thereof

****

P's match news this morning and re-considerations this week, reminders of perfect pruning, Your goodness, how You do not waste good faith. We talked about my N-approved choice of breakup tunes, how much it slays me, why I thought she should give it a spin (MDL & JLB also have steered her toward this album). Grieving and expressing love to someone so unfamiliar yet so missed and longed for.  The great paradox of her being everything you want and everything you can't have, everything she cannot be. You just have her, as she is, and that's what you have to and get to love. Carrie had schizophrenia. Sufjan slays me.