Month: April 2023

Let Your Light So Shine

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Dad saw the world through eyes that had seen just about everything this broken and beautiful world had to offer and still thought life was great! He never walked away from a challenge – rather he did whatever he could to make every situation better even if it meant more work or hardship. I will never be able to fill his shoes or even his white socks, but I sure try.

It’s hard to believe I have been making my way without him for six years now. I miss his words of assurance and I still need his advice, but I know that his love is always here.

My dad died around 10 am the morning of April 29, 2017. I was blessed to be by his side. Watching someone you love slip the bonds of this world is utterly life-taking and exhausting. Later that afternoon, feeling completely undone and empty, I went for a long walk in the hills where I had always done my best thinking and dreaming.

As I made my way back to the pavement, there parked right where the path led me was a VW bus with this message from heaven. “Let Your Light So Shine.” (The title of this little blog of mine!)

The driver – an angel who seemed to know what my tears and incredulous laughter were all about – walked and talked with me until my smile had overcome my tears. I want to be that person for someone someday!!

Dad saw the world through eyes that had seen just about everything this broken and beautiful world had to offer and still thought life was great! I know he was telling me to carry on – and shine.

Thanks, Dad. I love you more than words can say.
Your light still shines.

Fading Away

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It has been six very long and very short years since I last heard Dad say my name. After the longest, fastest drive of my life across this great big state that held his heart, he knew, for a moment at least, that I had made it home. And with that his journey home began.

I will never forget the sound of his voice when I walked into the austere hospital room where he lay – at the edge of life. It jarred me so. It was not the voice I wanted to remember Dad by. But that aural memory of my father that I want to hold on to oh so badly – is slipping away into the ocean of noise created by THIS world.

And yet the things I do remember – I hold so dear – like the bit of scruff on his cheeks brushing mine and that all-encompassing hug. He could hug the high desert Wyoming cold right of me.

There are times now I know he is doing the same – hugging this cold hard world right out of me – and reminding me that no matter my present state – I am Neil and Evelyn’s daughter and I am loved. ❤

A Photo in Time

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May be an image of fog, lake and twilight

I took this photo on April 27, 2014. Life was so very different then.

Little did I know how much this moment of peace that pops up in my “Memories” every year on this day would come to mean to me.

On April 27, 2017 I received a call – the call- no one wants to make or receive. My poor brother, once again calling me home from across the endless miles of this vast state. The call that makes the world stop and changes life forever. The longest drive of my life was before me. Would I make it in time?

It was up to God now – like it always had been. Even though my faith is my foundation, it has always been very hard for me to not try to control God – make my ways His way. This ending, this sending – our story was not supposed to come to a close like this.

BUT – the amazing thing about faith is when I finally gave our Lord Jesus my will and fully trusted my Dad to my Him, a certain peace came over me. My heart quit pounding, my ears quit rushing, and while my tears didn’t stop flowing, my eyes could see clearly again. His grace is amazing. So was my Dad.

Montana is a big state and I spent the next day gunning it home – gritting my teeth as every slow driver seemed to find a place in front of me.

Sometimes it feels like yesterday. How is it possible it has been 6 years since I last heard my Dad say my name? It was the last thing he said – though we still have great conversations – I just wish the voice wasn’t only in my head.

Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you. ~ Psalm 143:8

Rising with the Son

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“What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.”

– 1 Peter 1:3-5

Winter came abruptly last year and its resilience has held a tight grip on my yard well into this year, laughing at the sun’s feeble attempts to break through its icy grip. But finally, on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, I was able to get to work on clearing away the remains of a summer and autumn that ended too quickly for my taste and schedule.

It was a dirty job, raking away piles of leaves and late summer’s last blooms caught unawares by the first heavy snowfall that perpetually covered my windblown neck of the world in feet of deep drifting snow, then ice, then more snow, and so on. As I raked away the layers of winter’s wrath, I’ll be darned if I wasn’t at once surprised and then heartened to see the first green sprigs of my cottage yarrow making an earnest attempt at life peeking out from the cold ground.  I paused, momentarily, and praised their hard work of making their spring-green presence known, and I felt the weariness of winter loosen its grip on me. New life had won the day!

New life has a way of surprising us, doesn’t it?  Often coming when we least expect it (as with those sprigs of green popping through winter’s leftover wrath.) As I returned to uncovering the rest of my yard, I pondered how easy it would have been to miss that resurrection moment in my fervent rush to get the raking done, to get rid of the death winter wrought on my yard.

We experience many deaths in our lives and they usually don’t go unnoticed – actual death, a life changing diagnosis, job changes, relationship changes (even marriage brings death to a certain way of being), children leaving the nest. Every day that we live a part of us is dying away.

But just as death closes a door on our lives, new life opens one.  How often do I miss these resurrection moments happening in my life every day?

As Father Richard Rohr writes:

“I want to enlarge your view of resurrection from a one-time miracle in the life of Jesus that asks for assent and belief, to a pattern of creation that has always been true, and that invites us to much more than belief in a miracle. It must be more than the private victory of one man to prove that he is God. Resurrection and renewal are, in fact, the universal and observable pattern of everything. We might just as well use non-religious terms like “springtime,” “regeneration,” “healing,” “forgiveness,” “life cycles,” “darkness,” and “light.” If incarnation is real, and Spirit has inhabited matter from the beginning, then resurrection in multitudinous forms is to be fully expected.”[1]

For many, many reasons, Easter is by far my favorite day of the year. Not just my favorite Holy Day but favorite day of the year. It is the one day I don’t hit the snooze button at least once – but rather bound out of bed anticipating the SON rise! It’s the day we “officially” celebrate Resurrection both of our Lord Jesus Christ and, if we are honest, of our winter and death weary souls.  But after the rush to church (and I do mean rush as sometimes I get carried away with my “son-gazing” photography at dawn), festive worship services filled with rejoicing among friends and family in the light of the Resurrection, Easter Egg hunts and eggsellent brunches – I find the quiet of Easter night every bit as meaningful. For it is then, as the day quiets down, that it is just me and my Lord sorting out what all this means. And just what does it all mean for me tomorrow and the day after?

Will I live my life any differently tomorrow knowing that nothing can separate me from the love of God; that eternal life is for me now, that incomparable love and belonging are mine now; that forgiveness and true freedom are mine now – just as I am?  AND that because of this living truth, I can share all this with anyone and everyone I encounter – in my current capacity – just as I am without fear, without judgment, without holding back?

Or will I fall back into the ways of this hard and weary world? Will I allow the deaths in life to obscure the opportunity of the new life they bring?

It’s a question I am faced with every morning – when the weight of the world presses in on me, when my faith, hope and joy are challenged by the news of the day, by doubt, uncertainty and darkness. Will I still be spring green and earnest and grasp the new life that continues to beckon in the midst of everything? Or will I hit the snooze button and let the storms of life and darkness pull me down?

I wish that I could say I live every day reflecting confidence that I know my Redeemer lives – and that I for certain know what that means for me in my very ordinary, often messy, anything but spring green life. But I don’t.

No, again and again I am shown the Light and choose to look away, I know the Truth and still choose mine, I know the Way – but still wander in circles.

Thankfully, every day we are given a new life – not just a chance at one. “(We) have been crucified with Christ and (we) no longer live, but Christ lives in us. The life we now live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us.” (Galatians 2:20)

New life is right there waiting for us to wake up – we are new every morning! Our old selves die away and we rise with the SON – with Christ – opening doors to new ways of being: knowing that nothing can separate us from the love of God; that we have life eternal in an incomparable love and belonging; that we are forgiven and truly free; and, free to forgive.  AND because of this living truth, we can share all this with anyone and everyone we encounter – without fear, without judgment, without holding back.

Just as the earth dies away each winter – bringing cover and nourishment for the new life that emerges each spring, we are resurrected into life to bring life to the world. Rise anew with the Son as the sun rises. It’s a gift and a reason to jump out of bed for – not just on Easter Sunday – but every day.

Let your light so shine!

[1] https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-resurrection-of-all-things-2023-04-10/

On this Easter Night

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Easter is by far my favorite day of the year. Jesus Christ is Risen today – how could it not be? It is the one day I don’t hit the snooze button at least once – but rather bound out of bed anticipating the SON rise! But after the rush to church (and I do mean rush as sometimes I get carried away with my “son-gazing” ) festal worship services, rejoicing and congregating with friends and family in the light of the Resurrection – I’m finding the quiet of this Easter night every bit as meaningful. For now, in this quiet at the end of the day, it’s just me – and my Lord- sorting out what all this means.

Will I live my life any differently tomorrow knowing that eternal life is for me now, that freedom is mine right now, that incomparable love is mine now, that belonging is mine now, that forgiveness is mine now – just as I am – AND that I can share all this with anyone and everyone I encounter – in my current capacity – just as I am?

Or will I fall back into the ways of this hard and weary world?

It’s a question which continuously begs to be answered – one I am faced with every morning. I wish that I could say I live every day in a manner that exudes confidence that I know My Redeemer lives – and that I for certain know what that means. But I don’t.

No, again and again I see the Light and still choose darkness, I know the Truth and still choose mine, I know the Way – but still wander aimlessly in circles.

Despite all this, tonight, I am at peace, I can rest, knowing that nothing can separate me from the love of God – not even me.

May it be so with you too.

May you carry Easter’s truth and light with you in all your ways and all your days.

Christ is Risen indeed!!

In the Shadow of the Cross

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Holy Saturday, the day in-between. Our Lord has been crucified and now we wait – wait for the celebration we know is to come – of resurrection, of life, of promise, and hope. But for now, we are suspended. Suspended in the grief of our Lord’s death – shocked by the brutality of Good Friday – perhaps more cognizant of our fallen ways. With a broken spirit, I am uncertain of how to go about this day. Some will go about the day as if it were any other Saturday – sleeping in, working out, doing household chores, runs to the dump, shopping, and if we are lucky to be free of snow, some early Spring yard work or a trek into the hills.

And why not? It is difficult to dwell in grief and uncertainty; to live with the darkness a day like Good Friday brings into our being. We want to move on – quickly – to the joys of life we know and are coming. We want to live in the triumphant brass and bold joyous singing and drink in the “Good News” of Easter morning. And so we do anything to distract us from what this day in the Christian belief system represents – Jesus Christ’s death and descent to hell and the numbness and fear felt by Jesus’s followers after the horrifying events of the previous twenty-four hours.  A day where a suddenly and frighteningly unknown future pierces the heart.

I know this day well, perhaps you do too.  I lived it after the deaths of my parents and the end of my marriage. Anyone who has been on the journey of life for a good distance is cognizant of what a great loss can do to upend your world.  The day after death.  The day after your heart is broken. The day after the divorce. The day after the job was lost. The day after the diagnosis. The day after a dream was shattered. The day after a part of your life has died. The day after a part of you has died. Today is the day after, where putting the pieces of life back together seems unimaginable; when the sheer shock of catastrophe that muted our feelings and sheltered us from the raging storm has worn off.

Today is the hard day.  Today is the painful day of initiation by reality. The time after the funeral when the calls and visits stop. The uneasy time between your diagnosis and treatment, when there is absolutely nothing you can do but wait. Today embodies the loneliness and the nothingness that invades the soul when friends no longer check in as they must get back to living their lives and your life is supposed to get back to normal. And isn’t that what we all really want to do – just get back to living our normal lives?

But the thing is, great loss changes you, forever. Normal will never look the same again. Great loss forever unsettles you from the life you once knew.  Life won’t be the same. You won’t be the same.  The shadow of The Cross will transform you.

It may harden you; it may fill you with bitterness or remorse. It may soften you and make you more present. In whatever manner, it will change you. And you find yourself here – on a day just like today. How will you live in it and how will you live it? How has the shadow of the cross changed you? Will you let it change you?

We’d all like to think the travesty of what happened on the cross wasn’t necessary. Surely, we had no part. But without the horrors of The Cross and the bleak uncertainty that reigns over This Day, we would not know the hope and promise of new life tomorrow – Easter Day – and every day – reigning in our lives as I write.

New life sprang from The Cross and in the tomb a history-changing transformation began and because of that, new life can spring from the cross you are in the shadow of now.

And so, as we face our shadows with life at times suspended, as we try to carry on – however unsettled and uncertain each day may be – remember Jesus also endured this Day After, this Time In-Between.  Trust that God is neither absent from nor inactive in your life.  God was creating a new vision of life that none on that day after Good Friday could imagine. We know that God raised Jesus from the depths, providing the ultimate turning point for time immemorial and God is not finished. He is never finished. God never stops creating us anew and He never stops loving us.

Today, God is at work – redeeming and restoring the whole of creation with His mercy and grace.  Let this be so.  Let His will be done.

Happy Easter!!!

“Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right. All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.”

Romans 5:18-22

Let your light so shine!!!