Something To Take Hold Of

Today is Saturday. Olive is crying with fantastic two-year-old volume and I’m not ready to begin this supposed day off with five underfoot and this heart that is bleeding. I read the Word, stomach lurching, and scribbled down a tragic prayer. Messy handwriting, short, bullet-like complaints, signing off with HELP ME in angry caps. The ink smears from the tears that have been leaking since the goodbyes began. 

Because I married well, my husband took one look at my pale face and sent me to the office while he took charge of diaper changes, stirring oatmeal, and sorting through the meltdowns coming in hot and fast by 7am. 

Pulling fat headphones over my ears, I played Chopin on Youtube to cancel out the sounds of my world, and closed my eyes. 

And I remembered saying goodbye to my best Indian friend. We had spent every weekday morning laughing over my Hindi blunders while drinking overly sweetened Nescafe. Her wedding was last week. She was married in a hundred thick layers of red, blue, and gold. I wasn’t sure how she could breathe under her thick veil in the heat of summer. She was adorned like an ancient doll. Mysterious dangling beads, puffed rice, and plastic chandelier-things hung from her arms, and a giant nose ring glittered over half her face. Her round cheeks were wet as wrinkled women poured oil into her waist-length ebony hair. Her husband, who would take her far away to live in a new home with a new family, sat beside her in an outfit just as decadent. No joke, an uncle (as tradition insists) threw my friend over his shoulder and carried her off to symbolize the journey she was making. A journey that took her far away from me. 

God placed one of my few American friends mercifully down the street. Her house smells like oranges and laundry detergent. When I sneak away from my rumble-tumble house of little people, I enter into hers with relish. I breathe for the first time that day and she quickly fills my hands with an iced kombucha. We talk easily and freely on her deck overlooking the mountains. Our friendship felt instant, sisterly, and naturally our heartstrings attached, firm and lasting.  A couple weeks back I watched her and her husband pack their bags and head to the airport, her pregnant belly sweetly popping underneath her colorful kurta. I wash dishes and no longer see the lights on in their windows and it reminds me that she’s no longer here.

Yesterday, we said farewell to our team leaders and their kids for an unknown amount of time. They are returning to the States to care for a sick family member. It was our last night together as a team and the house hummed as it usually does when all of us gather. Kids weave in and out, water spills, food heats up the kitchen, babies are scolded, and the dog jumps and licks faces. No one has put on a fresh shirt for this gathering. We are ourselves. We hug and laugh on the crabby days, as well as the happy ones. We confess the fight that happened in the car and laugh over last night’s dinner failure. Such acceptance feels like home as it was intended to be. I sit spooning eggs into my baby’s mouth and I swallow salty tears. I am imagining the quietness that will come minus this one essential family. What words are worthy to send people off who have shared your darkest moments and who understand the bizarre things in your life, like food poisoning and the bad B word (um, beef). They have been there for the language flops and victories, the depression and thrills, and they have been the other third of the choir worshipping the Lord with you. We ended the evening in prayers and feet washing, while the kids made a clubhouse in another room. Their laughter made me want to weep and protest their leaving. But I knew it was right and good. But where will home be?  

All this leaving. Wasn’t life quiet enough before these three goodbyes? I question God’s goodness and my ability to endure. I want to curl up on my bed and sleep through it, but my kids are pulling at my shirt. The dishes are piling up. My stomach rumbles. 

My fingers moved over these words this morning, as the sun illuminated the white curtains and a bird sang charismatically on the wire across the street:

 “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:17-19) 

I sipped my coffee. I listened to the bird with the mohawk singing it’s guts out on the wire. The uncertainty of riches. The uncertainty of everything. As a kid, my cousin and I tied ourselves together with a rope in hopes that our parents wouldn’t separate us and take us states away from one another. I am still doing this I suppose. I tie what I love close to my body and warn God not to take it from me or else.   

What can I grasp in this life that sickness and death and transition won’t touch? If I manage to stay tethered to it for eighty years even, will I be able to keep it safe in the face of death? 

The alternative is laid before me in these words from the Apostle Paul. God never leaves. He provides me with everything to enjoy. I find my grip loosening, my palms shyly opening towards the ceiling. 

That I might take hold of…oh, that sounds good. To hold it in my bare hands like a treasure. To keep forever. Words of rock. It will not disappoint or decay. That I might take hold of that which is truly life. 

These goodbyes are fresh. Yet, the memory of a better friend is rising like the sun in my mind. Like medicine, it works comfort down to my toes as I see Christ tethered to the cross, saying his big goodbye. He was bound to wood in order that I wouldn’t have to be bound to any earthly, fading thing. His violent farewell made a way for me to say hello forever to glorious life. 

The bird is still at it. Seen only by my eyes. And my Fathers’ eyes. It’s trumpet-like tune confirms the truth of these words, beckons me to look outside my dominating feelings and depressing circumstances. Look out! Take hold of life! There is One constant. 

Sing on, silly bird.