cut back to barely nothing

 

Before a year had passed, we moved from the house you died in .

Or maybe you died while I stood in the street getting the mail, or at Trader Joes, picking the kids up from school. I don’t know.

But you are gone and so is the rose bush that threw white petals across the wall while I sat on the couch and bled you out. Because spring comes in February in California. They are singing hymns in the dead of winter cold in Indiana, but nothing is religious here. Not even the seasons. All is sacred, the ocean washes  all the earth’s holy water and we walk barefoot the sand and streets, but there is no rhyme or reason or religion. I think that’s how the Keeper of time who flings planets into orbit would like it. Waves and rhythm, but no religion.

So they cut the rose bush back to barely nothing, when we moved. We tried to bring it with, to carry everything in transition. Suburban nomads, but the roots were too deep. I walked the few blocks back and told the new residents of our home of four years that the thorny branches barely peeking up from the soil look like nothing right now, but if they only give it a chance they will grow more than they could ever imagine and fling petals like snow in February spring.

That house sang full of baby’s laughter and children growing. But we were losing our way. They grow tall and each magic moment races on towards the fearful future, and all it takes is a breath of wind for the petals to fall. Like snow across the ground. A chill.

And now we are here – a new house, new spring. Does anything ever begin anew, or we just racing on from that one single moment when He spoke? I wonder what the word new sounded like when His lips, human flesh, curled round that word. I wonder if it made the universe tremble, did time loop back or at least skip a beat?

It’s March practically and I don’t know how that happened. How could time so audaciously move forward? How have I lived a year without you and learned absolutely nothing? How could everything my hands have touched to turn your name into a legacy stink so brilliantly of my humanness. We are one gaping wound, we hold each other’s hands in the fall and fling arrows at each other reckless.

And angels wish to dream as us, they wonder at our bravery and brokenness. They see the Father hold us as He never does them, and they lay out stars when our hearts are dark. A beacon home.

Because every light will go dark, and all that will be left is beyond. Beyond our ridiculous failing futility. Ridiculous we are.  We buy the groceries to buy them again. We speak to say the wrong thing. We play the games and sink into our thoughts. We go where angels fear to tread… into sin and brokenness, into loss of even ourselves. Into Him.

Loss is emptiness right through to where you don’t know if you’re there anymore. Loss is walking the house trying to remember what you’re looking for. Loss is an angry screaming out of everything that doesn’t matter because you’re too afraid to look at what does – because it isn’t there. Loss is a rip, right in the middle of reality.

How did I forget that it had been a year? How did I waste day after day? And how did I live – we are a victory each day.  How did time sneak up on me? It’s the fabric we’re imprinted on, but still the elusive bit of our story.

Like petals blowing across the wall, covering the ground, a winter spring. And the rose bush chopped down, a new home, a year gone. Words spewed out and chores done tedious and us ridiculous and the angels looking on.

Just trying to sort it all out, til we make it back to the start of forever. That’s where I’ll see my love with all the wounds healed and he’ll see me, that’s where the life will be. And we’ll drink deep and walk further in with angels and children traveled before us, our sins and despairing stories wiped clean.

images from my last walk with Beacon quiet inside of me, someday everything will be sorted out