Day 21

Grief spotlights time’s relativity. It’s been three weeks since…

It feels like three years, or sometimes three days. The days are all different but the heartache remains the same. Feelings. They’re just that — feelings. They’re aren’t good feelings, and there aren’t bad feelings. They are just feelings, each one with important messages and memories.

Sadness, I think, we feel most acutely. We feel grief, sadness, and trauma with all of the senses: it leaks from our eyes, it steals our taste, it stuffs our smell, it quickens our heartbeats, it deafens our ears. It makes us painfully aware of our thoughts and processes and it highlights both past memories and future dreams. We’re somehow the most vivid versions of ourselves in deep suffering, because it fractures our capacity to be anything else.

We’re raw, exposed, and in need of help, love, and compassion. We need all these while happy, but we feel the need for them most in sorrow. Our walls crumble in hardship because our defenses are broken — we no longer have the energy to organize thoughts and feelings and responses in a tidy manner.

Perhaps we are most ourselves when we allow sorrow to guide us. When we do, we are sensitive both to the more painful emotions but likewise sensitive to gratitude and awe. In the years to come, I will remember this deep and sacred pain, but I will remember your kindness too. I will remember the friends and family who joined me in my grief, who sat with me while I mumbled, who kept checking in, who brought me food, who gave generously without expectation. I will remember all the good as much as I remember the horror, because, at this time, I am most sensitive and most receptive to it all.

That is the beauty of sorrow and heartbreak. That is the beauty of love. This heightened sensitivity opens the core of who we are and allows others to love the deepest part of ourselves.

I Run

away, away, away

I run.

far from you,

it’s far from fun.

I run for fear,

into the dark.

The distance growing us

further apart.

I push & then pull,

So afraid to draw close:

What if you see me

at my lowest of lows?

So I run, so afraid

of what I have done.

How can you love

What I have become?

Yet there’s mercy

in Your eyes

And a tenderness

to your touch.

You declare over us,

“What I have done is enough“

You gave Your Son,

despite our being rough.

“It is finished,” You cried

as you freed each one.

Without question or prompting,

yes, you gave us Your Son.

How could we understand

the price that You paid?
It is You, O God,

Who gives & takes away.

In my vileness,

You come & say:

“My grace has won.

Your sin has been undone.“

away, away, away

I run,

Far from the hurt

that has been done.

Declaring Your love with every step,

Redemption takes shape

as I ponder where to run next.

I long for Away,

I long to run–

into Your arms

and straight to the Son

The Reset

And it was the end of an era I was not ready to let go of…

Two-Thousand and Eighteen: a year that completed four years of alteration.

– 2014 –

We moved to Virginia days after I graduated high school. I was sixteen, driving from Arkansas to Virginia with Shadow as my copilot, and leaving everything familiar behind except my family. We knew nothing of Virginia nor the East Coast, but I was supremely excited for the anticipated adventure. Though I had many dear friends there, I was ready to leave Arkansas. June 4, 2018, we arrived at our new home and a series of changes rapidly ensued.

[Journal Entry, dated July 25, 2015, italicized]

Sometimes I stop myself and take a breath and let it sink in; this is what I wanted, and this is how I imagined it. I have lots of friends who love me…we stay out late and stay up even later. We laugh and cry together, and I’m independent. This is what I always dreamed of. Yes, it’s horrifying, but if I’m really being honest, I’m in love with the constant chaos of everything around me.

Somehow, it’s terrifyingly beautiful.

I love my life, and I’m so thankful for where God has placed me. This past year has been a year of healing that I never could have dreamed of, and of rejuvenating that I didn’t know I needed.

I was exhausted when I left Arkansas. Now, being here has helped me so much. I love it, and I’m not ready to leave. But God is preparing my heart, and He will be with me. I love him, and I love my life. I am mortified of what will become of me, but I’m not afraid of who I will become. If I keep Him centered, what is to fear?

I wrote that a month before I left for Liberty University in a leather-bound journal that Laura Denson gave me. Thanks to the community God provided me with, Hampton was everything that I prayed for when I left Arkansas. I thought that going to LU would terminate many of the friendships I had made over the past year. While some naturally faded, others wonderfully strengthened.

[Journal Entry, dated December 11, 2017, italicized]

By the end of 2017, few people remained in Hampton whom I had met in 2014. Much of what I had grown accustomed to slowly faded away, and I no longer spent ample time with a majority of the people in these photos due to peoples’ moves, church changes, and/or other miscellaneous life transitions.

I was growing restless.

This season pains existence. Questions never cease, and answers never come. The twenties are so much harder than everyone tells you… Unpredictability characterizes this stage. My heart rips between here [Lynchburg] and Hampton… I’m exhausted from being alive. I need something new. I’m not even sure how I’ll make it next semester. I am so burnt out.

And thus, I drove home for Christmas break, and my friends and family reminded me why I held Hampton so dear.

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– 2018 –

[Journal Entry, dated January 1, 2018, itlalicized]

I began the year by running away to Europe—I specialize in running when I’ fear reality—and came back with a refreshed perspective.

The Lord reveals things, not in our timing, but in His; yet He laces hints in unlikely moments. My stubbornness falters me, yet He gives perfect grace to woo me to Him. He called me out from the wilderness of my own mind and brought me back softly to His presence. He’s reminded me of His sovereignty and His plan. That’s right, God has a plan for me. It’s a truth I’ve treated as a lie for quite some time due to my sin of disbelief.

– – –

Walter was with me during my first year in Hampton, and he was the last person from that stage of my life that remained close. When Walter died, so left the last consistent reminder of 2014.

Thus, it was reset.

[Journal Entry, dated January 1, 2018, continued]

I allowed my ignorance and frustration to warp my mind; so I looked to my known God—a good God, a creator, an assigner of work, a loving Father, a sovereign king—and ascribed to Him all of my anxieties…I embraced negativity and ran from my Savior because of the pain in my heart. I hurt, deeply, and I blamed God for it.

Yet, all the while, it was He who spoke kindly to me. It was He who whispered truth, even when I barely listened. All the while, He was stirring up my affections, burdening me with trivial matters, exposing my heart slowly… Slowly, softly, gently, because He knew I could not take it all at once.

I lost Walter, my mini-cooper, the familiarity of Lynchburg and college life within two weeks. My family moved the day I graduated, I quit a job I enjoyed a month later, and Shadow passed away shortly after that.

I’m ready for 2019. I’m excited to see what God will do. He’s growing me and He’s healing me. 2018 made me realize the depths of my weakness, but I am relearning to abide in God’s strength. I feel stronger and braver than I have felt in quite some time.

It’s like one of those movies that ends where it began—when I returned to Hampton in May, everything I became familiarized with in 2014 was gone.

2018 was terrifyingly beautiful.

I moved to Hampton days after I graduated college. I was twenty, driving from Lynchburg to Hampton with Spotify as my copilot, and leaving everything familiar behind except my friends. I grew to love Virginia and embraced the East Coast, but I somberly and optimistically anticipate the next adventure.

Exposed