2 days now. One more trip. All their beautiful faces. And a still small voice that I'm having trouble concentrating on in the midst of all the shouting.

My life finds meaning in this one thing. I work hard at most everything but nothing was ever so fulfilling as the simplest smile. It's also the deepest heartbreak I've ever known. I guess that's how it works when you love another more than your own life.

I came home last year and unraveled emotionally. Too many questions and not enough answers. I slipped into a bitter, reluctant, lazy, self-serving, apathetic, cynical and depressed. I did plenty of things that I regret. Then I decided to leave it all and start over. It's been an uphill climb back to this time and another packed suitcase.

I'm thinking ahead this time. I'm ready, I think. Ready to make something of this. Ready to dedicate more than my emotions (because they never had a choice anyway). Can I make this feeling an action, my action a movement, and my movement a change? I'll start with the first step.

The reason - while I could barely face it - that I felt so empty after coming home last year, was because I felt small, useless, inconsequential, unable - and I chose to act as if my actions had no impact on the world, even my small one.

Then someone brought me a cup of tea one morning and through our talks began to open my eyes to how I came to give up on myself. He doesn't know it, but he restored the value of me in my own eyes.

I come a little more humbled, a little more realistic, a little more mature, a little more faithful, and with a renewed and revised determination. This love deserves my best.

Love and everything incomplete

I'm watching him sleep and seeing the face of a little boy. He sighes and curls up and looks peaceful and innocent and for a brief moment I want to go grab a corner of the blanket and curl up next to him. But then I look at my hands and remember who I am and who he is and why that wouldn't be all right, (even though we do that sometimes and don't make a big deal of it).

We're all children who wake up and grow up and get our dreams smashed and hearts broken and have find ourselves and our own way. In our innocence and in our agony we scratch at skin and hurt ourselves and each other.

Please believe me, I never meant to hurt you. Every moment that I travel away from the moment before, that moment feels heavier and more horrible to me until I throw it off with a cry and vow to get it right this time.

I walked across the stage one year ago today. It took my whole life to get to those few short steps, and then they were over in an instant and I had a whole new eternity to begin. How far have I come and how much farther can I go today?

I feel the world on my face every morning, taunting and questioning and anxiously waiting for me. Some days I pull my hair into my eyes and whisper to it: "I'm doing the best that I can..."

He opened his eyes suddenly and looked at me. I smiled. His eyes grinned and then closed again. When he rolled over and pulled the blanket up, his toes got uncovered. I reached over and pulled the blanket back down a little, so he won't wake up cold.

If I can't love you completely, maybe I can at least make sure you don't wake up cold.

I wish there was a garden

"I wish there was a Garden
Where the love of God would never harden..."

Me too, love. Me too.

I don't know what to say. I always finish reading the update emails feeling breathless and emotionally hauled over the coals. I'm simultanously inspired, joyful, angry, sad and confused. And I don't have to live with it every moment. I just read the emails. And a little girl's poem about her garden.

ALS is quite possibly the ugiliest thing that has ever existed. If I were God I'd never let this happen.

I am helpless to their struggle to find words for that which is unspeakably awful.
I'm the one raising my fist at God, even while they are faithful in spite of this terrible adversity.

Dear Lord, if not a garden, by your grace help me at least plant a flower...