The plane leaves @ 2.55pm on Sunday for Minneapolis, a short layover and on to Seattle. My place of home, smells of salt water and dead fish (let's be honest), family, an 89 year old mom who 'is going to live 10 more years because God has her praying for everyone and their sister', an ingathering of memory, reflection, and hope. Isaac and I will travel together after our time of 'trust shaken, not broken' as my spiritual director says to a place of warmth, love, acceptance, sorrow, grief, fear, as each and all find their way in their own worlds of salt & light, darkness and hope, life and death, maybe. Their anticipation is spoken in emails with lots of !!!, plans for family birthday celebrations and long conversations about this gift we call life.
I travel alone now as a single woman no longer a wife, partner, friend, lover, companion. I call my former mother-in-law who can't wait to dine over funky Chinese food in Auburn, WA, with Isaac and me; she desperate to stay connected to the daughter-in-law who always spoke direct, not unkind, but without a covering of sugar, intelligent woman to intelligent woman.
After 4 days I go to Eugene, OR, my place of coming of age as a pastor, Campus Minister, a true believer and leader of this thing called Christian faith. I remember falling in love with college students (something I have never been able to do with middle schoolers, in a group anyway) their searching, fear and joy so tangible. Rooting my faith in the questioning of an intellectual environment I crossed a line toward the internal when the love of my life left me for another. Faith in my head needed to get into my body and soul or I would fall down, never to get up again.
'Arise, do not be afraid' are words of angels and the Savior. I am a believer, still and I arise.
I travel alone now as a single woman no longer a wife, partner, friend, lover, companion. I call my former mother-in-law who can't wait to dine over funky Chinese food in Auburn, WA, with Isaac and me; she desperate to stay connected to the daughter-in-law who always spoke direct, not unkind, but without a covering of sugar, intelligent woman to intelligent woman.
After 4 days I go to Eugene, OR, my place of coming of age as a pastor, Campus Minister, a true believer and leader of this thing called Christian faith. I remember falling in love with college students (something I have never been able to do with middle schoolers, in a group anyway) their searching, fear and joy so tangible. Rooting my faith in the questioning of an intellectual environment I crossed a line toward the internal when the love of my life left me for another. Faith in my head needed to get into my body and soul or I would fall down, never to get up again.
'Arise, do not be afraid' are words of angels and the Savior. I am a believer, still and I arise.
