Surprised by Joy...Alive in Love

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
     you have loosed my sackcloth
     and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
     O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever! (Psalm 30: 11-12)

My Lord God,
I have been back in Arizona since Saturday,
And if there had ever been any lingering thoughts
About where I belong,
Those have been extinguished
By my time spent in New York. 

It's been a long week,
Time stretched alternately slow and quick
And laden with layers of meaning.
I have simultaneously aged and become younger
In the span of six days. 

My Lord God,
I am but a human,
A being of Your Design gifted with
A brief span of years upon this earth.
Portions of my earlier years
Have covered me in shadows,
But increasingly,
Your Light has illumined me,
And drawn me through to
The other side of grief and sorrow. 

And on the other side
Of those griefs and sorrows,
I am unabashedly encountering joy.

Cover me with Your Mercy;
Protect me with Your Lovingkindness.
Do not withdraw Your Face from me.
Without You,
I am nothing. 
Be ever with me,
My Creator and King,
As I embark into the
Glorious, terrifying, unknowable future. 

Anointed One,
Above all things,
Teach me daily
And remind me hourly
How to love
My cherished ones
Like You love us:
Patiently and kindly.
Without envy, boasting,
Arrogance, or rudeness.
Ready to compromise and accommodate.
Without irritability or resentfulness.
In truth, and honesty.
Bearing all things,
Believing all things,
Hoping in all things,
Enduring all things.
Love never ends. *

It is true.
My life continues to be shaped
By the love I have encountered
From You,
And through Your Creation...
From those who are here now,
And from those no longer
On this plane of existence...
From the parents who raised me,
To the birth mother I may never know. 

Let the seeds You plant in me
Flourish and bloom and propagate.
Grant that I,
However dimly,
May reflect Your Love
And sing Your praises
Out, and out, and ever out,
Indefinitely... ad infinitum...
Amen.

Father,
Thank you
For my life,
And everything and everyone in it.

And Father...
Have I mentioned to You lately
How much I love Arizona?...

* derived from 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Pine Tree

On the corner of the Upstate property
Is my mother's favorite pine tree.
Soaring to a height of over 40 feet,
Many summers we speculated about
The logistics of
Decorating it with Christmas lights.

We had many conversations
By this tree...
Conversations about
Life. Death. Everything in between.

"I want you to promise me
That if anything happens to me,
You will take care of Gabrielle."

That was an easy one.
One dognapping,
And a plane ride later...

"I had two daughters,"
She would say,
(Special emphasis on the word "two")
"So that you both
Could take care of each other
After we're gone."

A much harder arrangement, Ma.
Much harder to know
What are the right things to do...
Much harder to navigate
Her personality,
And the landmines present there...
Much harder to not negatively impact
My own life in the process.

But you asked,
And I promised,
And I'm trying.

Lord,
Help heal the aftermath
Of all that I've done,
And have yet to do...

Alternate Universe

Thanksgiving week, 2005.
Mommie and I were standing in this kitchen,
In the Upstate house,
And I was trying to convince her
To stay here to celebrate the holidays.

It had been a wistful desire of hers for many years -
Just once, one year,
For us to spend Thanksgiving through January here.

"Come on, Ma," I had said,
"Let's stay.
 You've always wanted to do this.
Sis and her boyfriend can come up if they want.
Let's gamble, and try it.
Who knows, we may love it!
What do you say?"

Of course,
I had ulterior motives in place.
I was slowly trying to talk my mom into relocating,
Into doing the thing she wanted to do most.
I had been offered a job at the
Times Herald-Record Newspaper,
And I was prepared to take it,
Knowing that she would stay if I did.
If only I could convince her
To pursue a course of action
That would fulfill her desires,
Instead of everyone else's all the time!

But no...
One of her daughters
Was back in Brooklyn,
And so back to Brooklyn
She and I went.

The plotting didn't exactly end there.
In January, I got a job working for
A chain of community newspapers in Brooklyn.
In September, I convinced them to let me
Work from home for an indeterminate amount of weeks,
So that I could get my mom back up here
And try convincing her again about relocating.

She passed away in October.
So much was buried along with her...

Thanksgiving week.  Seven years later.
I am back at the house,
This time without Mommie,
Preparing to celebrate my first holiday here
With my sister.
Ironically enough,
That work-at-home job I had wanted so badly
Back in 2001-2003
Has morphed into my newspaper job,
The one I had resigned from
Eight months ago. 

Timing is everything...

"It's okay if you want to move back to New York,"
Adalheid had said to me last weekend. 

No, no, my very best friend,
You have it all wrong.
That window has come and gone.
Maybe I would've been able to do that
Prior to encountering you, and your husband,
And your wandering momma,
And your parrots and dog...
Before I had been kissed by the Arizona sun,
Or walked South Mountain,
Or lain on a blanket looking
At the southwestern night sky,
Or heard the songbird's glorious trill...
Maybe back in 2005 or 2006,
My fate to stay in New York would've been sealed -
But it is not so now.
I have been too altered, too changed
To ever be at peace here.

Although my sister's future may lie here...
Mine does not.

However...
I do sometimes sit back and wonder
About that other Blanca,
Living that Upstate, NY life...

Some lives are linear,
Traveling in a straight path from point A to point B.
Mine is like a spiral,
Ever-circling back around
To reflect on the circuitous path
Propelling me forward...

Lord God,
I feel You present in this place,
Your Hand at work in this pattern of my life.
Lead on, Creator,
And continue to unveil
My path before me...

Out of Touch

Two months ago today,
I returned to New York.
This has been the longest I have been away
From Adalheid's family in three years,
And from Adalheid herself in six, almost seven.

I sorely feel the disconnect
From my Arizona life in its entirety.
There's a drop-off point in my head
Where the Blanca living this alternative existence
Is somehow disjointed from the Blanca
Who lived in Arizona for six months.

Scattered, scattered...
Too many lives being led simultaneously,
And nothing ever in cohesion.
My "filing system," as Adalheid calls it,
Has sustained some heavy hits.
I have been altered by my time spent here.
I feel much heavier in my internal headspace. 

Every action has consequences.
Father,
Let the path I have walked,
And the good I have tried to do here in New York
Not negatively impact
The life I long to lead in Arizona...

Ocean and Earth

My Lord God...

My friend's soul is,
To me,
Like the ocean.
Deep and mysterious.
Ebbing and flowing.
Sometimes dangerous in its motions.
Sometimes treacherous.
Sometimes tumultuous.
Changeable with a sense of
Brooding beneath the waves.
Alluring with a siren song
That is hard for me to resist.
Beautiful and terrifying,
Enlivening and crushing,
Able to buoy me
Or drown me.

My soul is
Like the earth,
A field where others
Build houses
From which they aren't evicted.
They can choose to leave,
But the fence remains open
For them to return. 
There are permanent residents here.
My heart strives to
Love them,
Nourish them,
Protect them,
To be a place where they can be
Safe and secure. 

Father,
I am standing on the shoreline
Between ocean and earth,
Surveying the damages wrought
By the most recent storm.
The tide has receded further out
Than I had expected or thought possible.

Eli,
My Lord God,
Face down in the wet sand,
I ask You to
Mediate for me.
Maker of earth and ocean,
Reconcile my friend's soul to me.

I am approaching the shoreline
With great unease and trepidation.

Please, God, please...
Not another loss,
Not another someone
I have to get over...

Expiation

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

Lord...
In 2006 after our mom passed away,
I sat in the kitchen of our Gerritsen Beach family home,
And said to my sister,
"There's a $700 monthly deficit here
Between the bills and the mortgage
And what I make.
How am I supposed to make that up?"

Angrily, defiantly, she said to me,
"Well, you figure it out!"

It was a bad time.
Neither of us were thinking very clearly.
Neither of us knew what to do
With the weight of all that our mom's passing
Thrust upon us.
Forced into the unexpected role of family breadwinner,
I found myself with a mortgaged home in Gerritsen Beach,
A home that needed maintenance and repairs in Wurtsboro,
More bills than I could conceive of,
And a full-time-plus and part-time job
That still didn't financially cover it all.

For three years, I struggled vainly with the money problems.
I fell drastically behind on the mortgage payments,
And then madly scrambled to finance those payments.
No one knows the full extent I went through
To try to get that money
Except you, Lord.
The begging.  The near-loan-shark transactions.
The lies and cover-ups and complete deceitfulness
I regularly and systematically engaged in while buying time.
The life insurance policy I took on myself
And then asked You to mow me down
So my sister could pay off the Brooklyn house. 
All the sleepless nights.
All the crazy thoughts.
When it finally blew up,
So too did my relationship with my sister.
Already a rocky one,
This nearly demolished it altogether.

So many people weighed in with their opinions
About my trip here to New York.
Your sister is an adult, she can help herself.
She has to learn how to be independent and self-sufficient.
No one gives up weeks of their life at a time.
All true.
But -
No one knows or understands the promises I made
To parents no longer alive.
No one knows or understands the conversations I had with You
About my soul-sickness.
No one understands the knot of thoughts and emotions
Sitting at the center of my chest -
Guilt and remorse and family ties and loyalty and
"Honor thy mother and father" and
"Be reconciled to thy brother."

Who are you serving, the archer had asked me.
You don't get it, I wanted to say.
You weren't there through the years of struggle,
Through the food stamps and fighting for veteran-disability pensions,
Through the hospital stays and the home dialysis,
Through the fire of our first home in Gerritsen Beach,
And the flood that ravaged our second home in Wurtsboro,
And all the other things that happened in between and since.
We were four.
And then we were whittled to three.
And now we're just two. 
And yes, it matters what happens to my sister,
No matter how spotty and checkered and messed up our relationship is
Because relationships matter eternally. 
And yes, I have felt the depth of my wrongdoing
Because all I kept reviewing in my mind these past few weeks is
"If you hadn't lost the house in Brooklyn,
Your sister wouldn't be forced to move Upstate now."

What did I hope to accomplish by coming here?
Spiritually - communicating to my sister that she is not alone in the Universe
(from a human perspective).
Emotionally - propping her up so that she wouldn't disintegrate nor explode.
Mentally - helping to plan then execute the actual move.
Physically - providing the manpower to facilitate the move.
And for myself?
Peace of mind.  Release from guilt.
Knowing that my sister is on a path to soundness and wholeness.

Oh Lord,
My great, gracious, God,
How completely unfathomable and mysterious and wondrous
Is the way that you have unfolded,
And continue to unfold
My life.

The sale of the house in Brooklyn
Financed the necessary repairs for the house Upstate.
Had we not sold the one,
By now we would've lost both,
The Brooklyn house to Hurricane Sandy,
And the Upstate house to a crumbling foundation.

I walked by our former house on Sunday morning,
And stared in wide-eyed horror at the collapsed fence,
The items strewn on the lawn,
The open basement door that led to the sub-street-level basement
That I had baled out on numerous, rainy occasions.

O Lord,
Be with those people who purchased our family home.
Help them recover from the devastation,
From all that they have lost.

Lord,
Thank You that we were not there.
Thank You for protecting us
In this most unexpected and convoluted of ways.

Father,
There is release at the end of this long, circuitous journey.
At last,
There is an easing of burdens,
A knowing and experiencing of Your Grace
That far outweighs all that I have felt and envisioned
These past three years.
At the end of all this,
I can feel seeds of peace and freedom
Finally flourishing...
Finally leading me to where I belong...

West... west...
The arid air and desert landscapes
Are calling me home.

"Everything happens for a reason."
Indeed, Adalheid, indeed!...

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.
I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah  (Psalm 32: 1a, 5)

Pierced 2

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23, 24)

Father,
Tell me...
What is it
That I am supposed to do
If a fellow child of God
Does not wish to be
Reconciled to me?...

Disaster Area

Gerritsen Beach.
Never in my wildest nightmares
Have I envisioned what I saw today.

Cars haphazardly littering the avenue.
Trash and debris strewn in yards.
National Guard troops dispensing gas.
Dumpsters everywhere, loaded with
The water-logged detritus of so many lives.
Relief lines for food.
My sister and I stood on one of the lines,
Retrieving a hot meal for our aunt.
"You have no idea
How much this has taken out of me," she said.

Looking around... Yes, I do.

God...
As the five of us bed down
In my aunt's small living room,
I pray for Your Protection
Through this long, dark night.
I pray for Your Guiding Hand
For my aunt, her family,
And all the people devastated by Hurricane Sandy
Through these arduous days ahead...

Lord...
I am truly without anymore words...

Tohu Va Bohu

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)

O Lord,
You who have wrought order
Out of the chaos of the universe,
Do so, too,
To the darkness in my mind.

Disorder reigns.
It's getting harder to hide and control.
It's manifesting and impacting everything...
Jobs, relationships, responsibilities.

I don't know what's going on.
I've felt a change,
But what it represents,
I do not know.
Even my speech sometimes stumbles,
As the wrong word escapes my mouth
In lieu of the right word inside my head.

Let Your Light shine forth,
And bring order out of my internal chaos.
All things are possible to You.
Please, Father, please...
Illumine me...

Valley Prayer for A

Father,
My aunt stubbornly refuses
To leave her house.
She's past ten days without
Electric, heat, and hot water.
She stayed at the house
Throughout Wednesday's nor'easter.
She offers endless excuses
Of appointments with FEMA,
Insurance agents and others
As her reasons for not leaving the house.

Father,
Protect her
As she strives to preserve
What's left of her material life.
Keep her pressure low,
And her body warm
As she battles high blood pressure
And cold-induced body pains.
Protect her from looters,
And all the other forms of danger
Manifesting in hurricane-ravaged Southern Brooklyn.
Bring her to safety
If and when she seeks it.
Be close to her, Lord.
Be at hand.
She needs Your help
To pull through this time.
Uphold her, Father...