Some of you may know that my Uncle Rick recently passed away, it was less than a week after I wrote, "Because There is Beauty", and so I really had to put my money where my mouth was as far as seeing the bigger picture, and believing that his legacy lives on through the lives that he touched and the people who loved him and so he will never truly die...and all the other bull crap that always sounds alot better on paper and in theory than it does to our hearts! That particular emotional and spiritual roller coaster is still having the kinks worked out of it and is still a little too fresh to discuss here so, and is not the focus, instead it is a backdrop for another lesson/awakening/heart issue/discussion with God. I do have one thing to say before I get started though, as a sort of disclaimer: Please do not offer condolence as a result of this note, at least not in the typical "I’m sorry" or "How are you doing?" kind of way. I will not know what to say back and so will probably not respond. I would, on the other hand greatly appreciate your prayers or thoughts or whatever it is that you do, on behalf of my family and everyone who loved and will miss him. If you can, please pray specifically for his wife Jan, daughter Deena and his granddaughters.
So, at the funeral, my sister and I were talking about how blessed we are to have such a large family that is so close, especially during times like that. And yet, looking around at all those people who are the most dear to us, we were struck with a pang of grief to come-when we would have to say goodbye to each of them. This is not meant to be particularly morbid or depressing but rather to set the stage for the truth to come. What I realized at that point was this; the more joy you take in those around you, the more compounded the wound at the end. Intrinsic in having all things, is the knowledge that you can really keep nothing. And so we are either resigned to give and take as little as possible so as to avoid this bittersweet experience altogether; or we give ourselves over to the giving and taking (some do more of one than the other but that is a different conversation altogether) and simply hope to break even in the end. The desire to avoid pain at all cost means we pay the price of loneliness.
I don’t think it was directly related to this particular situation, however, the way that God decided to apply this to my life came up in a love lesson. I love people; my family, strangers, friends, acquaintances, hitchhikers...you name it. I love to meet new people, and share life and laughs with people, and so, I am not at risk of shutting out friends and family in order to avoid the pain that comes with the loss of them. However, I did find myself saying something not long after the aforementioned conversation with Ashley that caught me off guard once I began realizing what it was I was actually insinuating. First let me say, I have never been in love, and have gone back and forth the last few years counting the cost of what it means to allow yourself to be known in that aspect. Tonight I heard myself saying in prayer that I’m not sure I want to allow myself to be vulnerable to someone and their humanity and all that that entails, physically and emotionally. And then I realized, this is the common thread of anything worth having or loving, I suppose, that at some point, there will be an end to whatever it is, either death will part us, or any of the other billions of things that go wrong in relationships. But this is not a good enough reason to attempt at completely protecting myself from love. Instead, I must welcome it with open arms (and a discerning spirit) in order to learn the most bittersweet lesson of them all...the lesson of love.
Now, I’m not saying that you won’t find me back here in the blog medium within the next few months complaining that love was even uglier than I could have imagined...I’m just saying that if that kind of love is anything like the love I have already experienced in other areas of my life, then I just might find myself echoing Tennyson that, "it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." I have a feeling, though, that anything lost in the process or even in the end, will be worth all that I have to gain in the meantime
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