in four letters.

You are going to hear me expound on this. Freedom is a four letter word exploding from my chest, taking my breath away, filling my soul with thirst quenching hope, moving my body in dance, singing with my voice thought lost. Love inspires and sustains; it grows and frees. Love sets us free.
now to believe it. to trust it.

grins to you.

I’m sitting here in my apartment alone at my computer finishing up two assignments with a big smile on my face, and a bigger one in my heart – the cause of which is nothing to do with the impending freedom from a few papers…
Sometimes – well all of the time likely, but sometimes you realize it… you have moments of shear happiness, at joys of your life. I am delighted. To watch the absolutely beautiful transformations that God is making in the lives of my dear ones. Bringing them together, taking them away, deepening and strengthening them. It is such a privilege to watch it, and such a deep pleasure. I am blessed overflowing with acquaintances of incredible faith and character, grace, hospitality and love.
In this moment, I am reminded that though much is and has been wrong, that beauty and peace reside in this world in a loving God working in, no- living in the hearts of His children - doing new things in the peaks and valleys, sorrows and celebrations of their journeys. Gah! So good.

love.

Oh my God. I didn’t think I would be here again this soon – but then who am I do be predicting such things. My grandfather passed away on Thanksgiving evening. I feel wrecked -and held together, ripped raw - and comforted. I loved my grandfather dearly, and he was the type that made each person he came into contact with know that they were valued, unique and loved. I am so grateful to have had him as my grandfather. I just never anticipated the reality of losing him, the evening before as he sat beside me at dinner – perhaps it is best, not to think on such things, to allow both love and loss, closeness and separation to wash over you wholly and freely as each ebbs and flows in and out of life.
Death is such a great insult to us. I couldn't breathe when I heard - I couldn't stop a flood of tears. I didn't want to be alone in a city 7 hours away when I got the call. I didn’t want there to be a last time to see his face, to touch his hands, to listen to his voice telling stories of his life, to give him a kiss at the car and wave as he drove away. I didn’t want to leave him to be buried in the cool October ground. I didn’t want to be at my grandfather’s visitation, seeing his picture on memorial cards, singing at his funeral, seeing his last photograph from the night before he passed projected onto the back wall of the church. I didn’t want to see my mother, my grandmother, my uncles and cousins to lose him – the community to miss him – yet here we are, and he is not. I had to keep reminding myself that though the motions that we all went through seemed so surreal and foreign, that though I could see his body in the casket, that my grandfather was already gone. Gone.
It is not that I do not draw comfort in the promise of life in Christ. Oh I do believe it to the depths of myself - I cling to that hope, I trust in that hope, that promise.
Rather, it is that, in loving others here and now, the pain of loss here and now is searing, gaping, staggering. It spills over in my tears – love that no longer has this man to pour into. I don’t doubt that love is what we’re made of, is what we’re meant for, what we’re called to, what takes us through these times, is what resurrects us from this wrong and sends us soaring beyond right, is what fills us over flowing.
Love friends. Love in the embraces and words you have today - in smiles and kisses shared while you’re loving, and in the tears that seep out when you’re not done loving. Love friends. Love. Love, never fails.