Time like water in my hands.
A sixteen-mile hike to and from a cold lake. Light streaming dappled through tall pines. A garage door rumbles shut beneath us and children laugh. Playing nine-square under a milky gray sky.
I arrive, as one washing ashore, to a bar top in the early November morning. My hands encircle a paper cup of coffee. I flew here yesterday in a plane, and I will fly away tomorrow. I am filtering in between things that are framed, preserved one-dimensionally to serve as windows, “shots” - and things that glimmer in and out of my memory, often surfacing only in the small hour between waking and sleeping.
This all feels like a dream. It feels pastel, romantically rimmed with light. I can’t seal it into rows of jars in a cellar. It’s a river through my fingers.
But it’s not a circle; we’re going somewhere, all of us, together.
Keaden asks me, “Do you remember when Nate said he was taking pictures with his mind?”
I nod and tuck the blanket up under his chin.
“I think they also went to his heart,” says Keaden.
I smile warm. “That’s exactly right,” I tell him.
I go downstairs now to find two beds in the basement that used to have only one. Young boys’ clothes, books, and Legos litter the room. My heart wrings like a twisted rag. Wishing I had taken a photo, at least one, of the bed that used to be there.
But what would that do? Would it really bring me closer to my first two weeks in Kremmling, hiding down there in that bed? Closer to mornings putting on layers to go help Dave on the ranch? Closer to the night Liz and I sat down there on the rug and ate bagels from our suitcases - to the night I prepared to preach with Robbie about death - the night I collapsed into bed after finding that I had a father in you? The night before I left at 2:00 a.m. to go worship with Kevin David Johnson in New Castle, and then go back to Dallas . . . the many nights I swept my hands through the air and got your spirit-dust on them, nights of whispers, nights of dreams.
No, that room is gone, and so is the garage door. Never again will I hear it pound shut beneath me during Stirring Group.
That’s what this place is. Always a returning and a leaving behind. I return to find things gone before I ever had a chance to reach out and grab them.
They’re not meant to hold. They’re meant to be wished farewell with a sad smile. In the passing of these things is a reminder of resurrection. One day Matti won’t have any more volleyball games for me to go to. As these things die, new things grow, and so goes this entire earth.
We are all growing together, this one body fusing into Maranatha. Bearing up under a glory that waits patiently at the end of the hall in the night. Every groaning hour, every confused tear, every moment staring at unchanging mountains and thinking to ourselves, I am changing wildly - and I am not even sure how -
One day we will look up and understand. One day very soon.
This forward motion, this staggering symphony, is something that must distill into handheld-size for me in prayer. I see now. Seeing, and speaking, is a new way of existence I’ve found. It’s the only way I can figure out how to fit into this story.
Tomorrow I’ll take water to the chickens with Kelsey. The hum of the four-wheeler will be something I’ll miss before it’s gone. I’ve gotten used to missing everything around me, sighing with you at the beauty of its dying. Every sense a seed. It’s only a shadow of the things to come.
I’ll let the bitter wind blow my hair and I’ll whisper a few secret requests to you. I’ll know that you’ll bring them to pass. I’ll smile patiently, like you do at the end of the hall, feeling some strange authorship in this thing.
It’s you and me now. You’re my only one.
“I possess an inward certainty about you.”
“I urge you to examine this agape-love with the utmost scrutiny, just like when a diamond is viewed in the full sunlight to prove its flawless perfection. I dare you to take love to its ultimate conclusion. There is no offense in love, as evidenced in Jesus Christ who is the light of day.”
Philippians 1:6, 1:10 (The Mirror Study Bible)