12 Jul Love & Hugs
It’s 10:20 on Friday night. The sky has finally lost the last bit of color as the sun said goodnight.
I can hear the faint strum of a drum, the crackle of a fire. There is a fan spinning on it’s axis inside evidence of the heat that has gone to bed. A plane whirls overhead and a cars zooms by on the road that lies behind me. When I let me eyes wander off of the screen and turn heavenward I can see the stars.
Thousands of miles away one of my best friends has just arrived at a friends house for a mini vacation. Another friend is on the road driving through the night. And another is snuggled warm in bed with her babies.
And in a city north of Atlanta there are broken hearts and restless minds trying to sleep. The unexpected passing of a life, a mother, a friend, a daughter, a leader, a kind spirit taken from the Earth as she slept in bed.
I found out this afternoon right before beginning our afternoon yoga practice that a dear, close family friend passed away. It was shocking. I was numb. I did not feel anything.
My sister got to me before my mother did…sorrow, frustration, and anger filling her texts. I read her words, the angst of them shattering the pillars of hope that normally stand firm in my heart. “I’m so sick…” of the pain, of people being taken away, of people being hurt, of the heartache. “I know,” I said. And I do. I know.
I was tempted to explain it away. “This is life.” “This is what happens when you get older; it’s always been there. We just see it more now.” I considered sticking up for pain, after all it is a pivotal point of the human experience. But it just didn’t seem right. No; tonight we just needed to sit with it. It sucks. It is not fun by any definition of the word, but it’s necessary.
~~~
Rachel Brathen, a rock star in the world of yoga is a beautiful spirit. She is known worldwide for her awe-inspiring yoga practice and, maybe even more than that, her kind, generous, energetic, and hopeful personality. She just recently got married and I just finished watching the interview Elephant Journal’s Waylon Lewis did with she and her now husband the day of the wedding. What I haven’t yet mentioned is that just a few short months ago she lost her very best friend in a tragic car accident. She has navigated the intertwinings of her grief publicly and with so much heartfelt, gut-wrenching honesty and grace. I, like millions across the world, have witness her negotiate the joy and pain of marrying her very best friend and losing her other best friend simultaneously.
My grief, though of a different variety–however entirely the same–has resonated with her pain. I get it. She has written my own emotions in black and white for me more than once. Tonight I was reminded of her once again as I lied in savasana with tears streaming down my face. To move would disturb my rest, possibly the stillness of those around me as well…so I let them fall hoping my instructor did not notice the gracious traitors streaming down my face.
~~~
Pain is universal. There is no language barrier. No cultural gaps.
There is a girl from Kazakhstan in our yoga cohort who struggles with English but laughter she gets. Love she knows. She giggled to herself when a group of women burst into squeals of laughter today. There was no explanation needed for her to understand.
The same is true with pain. Heartache. We know it. We wish we didn’t. A friend tonight said, “I wish it didn’t hurt.” It seems like it would be poetic justice sometimes for it not to, right? We do not always deserve our pain. In fact, maybe generally we do not deserve it…yet it comes.
I’m sad tonight. I’m angry at the world. I am mad at the human condition. Broken. A broken world filled with insecure, mean, fear-filled people. [I am not overlooking the good, the gracious, the humble and kind, the loving and generous. I know they’re there.] And the death, pain, heartache, starvation, abuse, suffering that simply are. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by it all. Tonight it is one of those such nights.
It was the ‘ought to’s and the ‘ought not’s that played a large role in C. S. Lewis’s conversion to belief in Christ…and, for tonight, I am simply infiltrated with dreadful sadness at the ‘ought not’s of the world.
It simply ought not to be the way it is.
Yet…it is.
I wish I could hug my mom tonight. And my sister. And my brother. And my father. And Tina. And Vanessa. And EA…damn…tonight I think my heart even longs to reach out and hug the person I used to believe was my husband. It hearts that badly. If only the world could be healed with hugs.
It can’t. That’s why there’s a cross.
But for tonight…I just have tears…and hugs.
I love you all.
“I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.”
{Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are}
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