IT COULD MEAN EVERYTHING

On staying tender when life gets hard...

Dense fog advisory.

If I could go back and issue a forecast for the last 365 days of my life, that would’ve been it. Low visibility. Sudden disorientation. Proceed with caution—though caution, I’ve learned, is just a softer word for control.

There were signs, yes. A slow dimming. A heaviness in the air. But I didn’t see how fast it would roll in—how completely it would consume the landscape of my life.

One moment, I was squinting through the shadows, trying to make sense of what was ahead. The next, I couldn’t tell which way was forward at all.

I spent a lot of this year trying to find the path again. But grief has a way of rearranging the map. What once felt certain no longer made sense, and what once felt far away came barreling in, uninvited. And that’s the thing—I wasn’t prepared for how many things would arrive without permission. Just a slow slipping into a year I never could’ve prepared for. One where I couldn’t see two feet in front of me, let alone the way out.

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Not all invitations are the same, I’m finding out. Sometimes, despite all our scratching and clawing to avoid it, we are invited into moments, or perhaps long seasons, where we’re thrown straight into the jaws of disorientation. In these moments, survival is our only concern. The first stage of grief is shock; if you’ve ever been there, it’s a wild place to live. The very worst thing can happen, yet somehow, for some unknown reason and oddly long stretch of time, you carry on as if it isn’t that bad.

Call it cortisol. Call it denial. Call it your brain short-circuiting—unable to tell if a bear is chasing you or just living inside your worst nightmare. Either way, shock has a way of masking reality. Perhaps, for a short time, that is grace.

The shock wears off, eventually. And then you’re faced with reality, and what can seem like a never-ending cycle through the stages of grief. It’s true what they say: it’s not linear. It feels much more like how my four-year-old scribbles crayons over a blank page. There’s no rhyme or reason. One moment, you’re good, and the next—seemingly out of nowhere—there’s that bear again.

I’ve become well acquainted with these stages of grief in my life. Never quite like I have this past year, though. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—that’s how most places label them. Continually moving toward acceptance is the goal, but how exactly to get there is as individual as the person navigating the loss. I’ve cycled through all these stages more times than I can count, and I’ll be darned if I wouldn’t pay good money to arrive at acceptance and call it a day. I’m getting there. Or so I’m told.

Sometimes, those invitations split our hearts and shatter the containers we once used to hold all of life. Suddenly, nothing fits like it used to. Not our sense of safety. Not our sense of control. Not even the story we told ourselves about who we were. Everything is touched. Nothing is spared.

It’s in these seasons we’re put to the test. We either dig deep, forge ahead, and find some thread of resilience, or we go under. My counselor calls this period I’ve been in “hell time.” She’s not wrong.

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Around the beginning of June each year, as the day gives way to dusk, out comes one of God’s most whimsical creations. I call them fireflies. You might call them lightning bugs. Either way, lets both call them magic.

Last year, I could hardly see them through the fog—let alone feel that childlike wonder—as they lit up my backyard. This year, silly as it may sound, I’ve placed my hope in knowing I get another chance to watch them dance—appearing and disappearing above the grass—nature’s best game of hide-and-seek. I would have rather not had a tainted season with the fireflies. And yet, as the first ones emerged this year, I felt that wonder again. Not quite childlike—but reverent. Wonder shaped by a year of survival, like breath returning to lungs that forgot how to expand.

As a sort of stake in the ground, a way to make new memories for a time of year that carries so much grief, I booked a trip. I haven’t been to many places recently. Home has been my calling. But I felt an invitation to go for the first time in a while. I’ve been home, yet homesick. I suppose, in some ways, this time is a way of finding my way back home, God willing.

Gamble Sands, Brewster, WA. AKA, a place darn close to heaven

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This morning, I opened my journal and, quite serendipitously, landed on a few lines from a Mary Oliver poem, Invitation. It stopped me in my tracks.

These words came just after I ran into a friend at the airport. We exchanged stories from the past year. Her life literally went up in flames when the fires in Los Angeles took her childhood home. We talked about how fires change us. How they redirect our lives in ways we never asked for—but maybe needed.

She told me about how she lost everything. And then how she found love.

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Invitation
Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.

It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

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If birds can laugh and fireflies can light up the night, then I suppose nothing is off-limits. It’s worth mentioning that my four year old son laughs nearly every time he spots a bird. Maybe, just maybe he knows more than I do.

Over the next week or so, I plan to do a lot of something that keeps a beating heart going and maybe even helps heal a nervous system that’s been on high alert for far too long.

I gladly accept the Invitation—to not walk by without pausing.

My only hope is to attend as many of these rather ridiculous performances as a good God will allow.

It could mean something.

It could mean everything.

And maybe—who knows—

it could change my life.

Gently and tenderly, I shall go.

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Yesterday I sat down and attempted to process some of what I’ve been thinking about recently out loud. I thought I would leave it here for you. I much prefer to write, but I thought it might be good to include a little bit of me in real time. Forget that I’m not the most eloquent speaker—I just have a hunch some of you may be finding yourself in a similar place…

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