Now

Sometimes there is nothing else to say. So the quiet comes. And it takes a while to get used to the quiet after you have spent years talking to someone. But you do get used to it. From time to time you remember the unfinished conversations, the halted dialogue, the tremendous pain in words. Your stomach still turns at the memory of the pain. At first the quiet is oppressive.

Evenutally you grow somewhat accustomed to it but it doesn't seem completely natural. You embrace it the best that you can but quiet is not intimacy and that is what we long for.

And you begin to do all of the things alone that you used to do together. And you learn to do things for yourself that you always relied on someone else to do for you. You take inventory of what you have lost and you hold dearly onto the things that you have left.

Then the miracles begin to fill the silence. Friends randomly call or stop by and new discussions begin. And you focus on them intensly because voids have to be filled. And there is no going back so you move forward. And you become very intent on filling the voids with good things, wonderful friends, holy purposes, and as much love as you can gather and hold on to. Serendipity happens.

Today I sit in the same place that I did on Easter morning. I was angry that day and I had let it be known the night before. And the anger was returned in kind. And while a dying love wasn't raised from the dead that day like I prayed, I was. I found the beauty of life again watching a tiny, deformed woman dance in the water and I realized that I could heal my own brokenness. And I began to dance in new ways. Better ways. Deeper and richer and fuller because of the brokenness.

Then I celebrted. Jeremy and Irish Catholic friends made me laugh and drink and love the hell out of the life that God had given me and that had been tainted. Mostly by me, but tainted nevertheless. And I dove into my life again with the wild abandon that is at the core of me and that I had traded for something else.

So I look at the day ahead of me. I did my very best in the ones that are behind me. For whatever wrong I've done, I hope that I'm forgiven. But there isn't anything that I can do about it now except my best to learn from it.

And today I want to laugh. I want to dance. I want good discussions with good friends. I want to celebrate God's creation. I want to embrace serendipity. I want love. I want to do all of these things with wild abandon because that is who I am.

So, I will sing along with John Mellancamp,
Your fathers days are lost to you
It is time for you to do what you must do
Your life is now,
Your life is now,
In this undiscovered moment
raise your head above the crowd
We could shake this world
if you would only show us how
Your life is now.