single and other conditions
Life is just hard.
Being married is hard.
Being single is hard.
I tell my teenagers – being human is hard.
Someone recently asked me, but were you lonely even when you were married?
Yes. Sometimes. Sometimes I was.
And I have one friend whose foster son doesn’t want to go and doesn’t want to stay. Can’t find the yes and can’t find the no.
What sort of world allows an eight year to feel so broken?
I had coffee with a person recently and he shared stories of his youth and they were true and they were some kind of awful and he’s living through them all and being a productive member of society, but what sort of hope is any of it?
And another friend asks, “Why – why am I still single? Why have I been single my entire life and what is that about?”
And I wonder the same.
I know a dozen, maybe two dozen, beautiful single women. Funny, smart, kind, generous. They love Jesus and they love others and they are stable, secure and normal.
What on earth? what.on.actual.earth.
I don’t have any answers.
I have a million questions.
Little questions. Big questions.
I want to know why my friend has to grieve the loss of one of her closest friends. Why cancer keeps staying so strong. Why jobs are lost and hearts are broken and life is so full of mystery.
So much unknown.
The talented poet Mary Oliver passed away last week.
I love so many of her words and the ways in which she aligns them and strings them together.
Her words are the words I want to finish up this post today …
When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver
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When death comes |
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like the hungry bear in autumn; |
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when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse |
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to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; |
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when death comes |
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like the measle-pox |
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when death comes |
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like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, |
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I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: |
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what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? |
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And therefore I look upon everything |
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as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, |
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and I look upon time as no more than an idea, |
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and I consider eternity as another possibility, |
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and I think of each life as a flower, as common |
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as a field daisy, and as singular, |
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and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, |
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tending, as all music does, toward silence, |
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and each body a lion of courage, and something |
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precious to the earth. |
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When it’s over, I want to say all my life |
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I was a bride married to amazement. |
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I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. |
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When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder |
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if I have made of my life something particular, and real. |
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I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, |
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or full of argument. |
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I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world |
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5 Comments
Norie Mueller
Yep. Suffering really makes you consider eternity as another possibility. And I think you can consider it in a couple of ways. Dread or hope. One makes this life miserable and the other, bearable. Sometimes even enjoyable. And sometimes more, even MORE enjoyable.
If I’m learning anything in grief, it’s that the grass does wither and the flower does fade. But my soul was made for more, and grief is stretching it wide, to a capacity to enjoy fuller the life before me.
Thank you for writing thoughtful thoughts and making me think. 🙂
Kristen Coward Heiselman
I agree. Thank you for your posts. ❤️❤️❤️
margie
Just wanted tot say “thank you” for writing and giving perspective. I rarely comment but read your posts often. Thank you for using your gift of words and sharing them with the rest of us.
Sara
To embrace the here and now with all its ugly and hard and also its beauty and possibility….
And yet to look also to eternity as “another possibility,”
so help me, God.
Thank you ,Lacey, and Mary Oliver, for fresh perspective this morning.
Daryl Hrdlicka
Love this post. Thank you.