Lord, give me a sign

Forward: I wrote this thing at three am last night. Long day, and  Netflix night, by the time I was ready to sleep there wasn't any sleep. So i showered and washed my hair. And got to bed at 3am. But there was no sleep. So I wrote. And finally, slept. 

People know it. In their deep inner lives, they know what they ought to be doing. And they know it would improve the quality of life. The challenge is to develop the character and competence to listen to it and live by it – to act with integrity in the moment of choice.

The people of Israel had been pestering Moses for a while. These guys, like me, were not too fond of hearsay. You know, some Guy, who we’ve never seen, keeps telling you stuff to tell us to do, and you know, we’re just supposed to like, do it. No questions asked. Sorry,but yes questions asked, yes lots of questions asked. Who is He? Why is He talking to you? If He’s everywhere why can’t we see Him? What’s this that’s so good about you; He just has to talk through you?

We wanna talk to Him ourselves, even us (disclaimer: this is a direct translation and obviously not my stellar grammatical prowess). We want Him to talk to us, coz you just keep telling us stuff, and you know, broken telephone, so we’d prefer if we could communicate directly with the Source. You can make that happen, Moses? Yeah, that’d be awesome.

So blah blah, rules about washing up and abstaining from drink and no lovey dovey stuff for three days before The Meeting. More rules about not touching the mountain, not touching someone or thing that touched the mountain whilst putting the someone or thing to death, not looking up at the mountain lest they see Him and die, and so on.

So on day three the clean and eager Israelites congregate at the base of that mountain. The Lord, as promised, comes down. I figure maybe two or three overeager chicken or persons get stoned or arrowed for touching the base of the mountain. He gives the Ten Commandments to a crowd shaking in their metaphorical and actual pants.

And finally, the bad word here people decide that these -a-tetes are way too intense. We just wanted some of that eating and drinking fun you and the seventy have every time you go up there and you come back looking like an angel. All this lightning, thundering, trumpets, smoke and booming voice from fog and darkness – that’s hardly what we had in mind. You know what, it’s totally cool with us, you just be going (see disclaimer above), He tells you, and then you come tell us, we’ll do. From now on, it’s cool, you can be our spokesperson.

Someplace else it said that God revealed Himself that way so that the Israelites would understand how fearsome He is, and not sin. But you’ve got to love the human psyche, not far after that and they were already at it again with the grumbling et al. Do you ever wonder what life would be like if stuff didn’t go forgotten? I wonder all the time.

When I was in first/second year dad was living in Eldy still, and we used to go to IVC – a church – on Sunday. Around that time dad was so busy with school he stopped commuting to Mumias; mum came over instead. This one Sunday, I was wearing black on black with my favorite black wedges, for some reason I remember that.

I think I was in second year, coz I was freaked out and looking for a sign, like frantically. I hadn’t met the boy yet so it wasn’t that. The only other  major freak-out I had was around the time dad got a transfer away from Eldy, which meant I’d actually live in campus aaaaaaalllll the time, and like it. Coz I’d go home Fridays and come back Mondays.

Anyway, whatever, point is, I had convinced myself that I wanted to hear Him speak. Not with the helpful platitudes from people I already knew, because I probably already knew those, but like in a way I would have no doubt it was Him. Like you know those where a pastor you’ve never met calls out your name and says things about you (this is before the 310 era, so it was still legit). That’s what I wanted.

So that Sunday we went to church, dad, mum and I, and found that there had been a conference running with the guest speaker and so he’d do the sermon. Usual stuff, praise and worship, announcements et al, and then he came. And the first thing he said after intros was “Who is Joy?” Now obviously it wasn’t me, I mean it could be me, but it had to be some other Joy, because come on, who talks to me?

Now, Joy was a pretty common name even then, unlike when I was born; but that day, there was no other Joy in the church. And of course mother kept prodding at me so I went na huko mbele. He said I was the one, and then said stuff. I’d gotten my answer, sort of. I left service with so much zeal, I figured I would live. It would turn out okay. Because God had spoken to me, me, meeeeee.

I don’t know why I remembered that this evening. Looking back, even that assurance was forgotten not too long afterwards. I still freaked out after the actual move happened, it’s took me a whole semester to acclimatize and start cooking. But I still pretty much hated it. God had spoken, and while theoretically that should have been THE POINT when all things became new, really, it just… faded, I guess.

I’m in my stressed mode, have been for a while. How do I know this? Well, there has always been a weird relationship between my sweet junky tooth and stress. On a normal day, I’ll go for weeks, months even, without wanting or eating cake, and eat fries only occasionally. But now, it’s like a mainstay in my brain. I always want more fries and real cake - none of this SupaMill Madeira stuff, the real decadent one with frosting.

I know why I’m stressed. I know it’s only going to get worse. Or it won’t go away. But I don’t know what to do. So here I am again praying for one of those signs from God Himself again. Except now I remember that even if it came, it may not change much. I think He knows it too, so He’s been rather silent.

Sometimes God sends signs, like real deal you'll-meet-a-girl-in-a-red-dress-who-will-have-no-front-teeth signs, but I think He likes to do that when He knows it will make an actual difference. Most of the time, almost all the time however, you know it. You don't need a sign. Deep down inside you know what you should do. Maybe you think you can’t, or just won’t, but you know. And you know that until you decide to do it then you’ll keep circling that mountain, like the Israelites. But you know, easier said; always easier said.

So you keep praying for a sign. 

scheming in my pretty little notebook

There have been occasions wherein I have wondered about a variety of things as with all human beings, and I get struck by the urge to write them down. Usually, actually almost always, I score these deep thoughts in the middle of a road (literally) I’m crossing, or anywhere really, provided there is nowhere for me to write. So they end up floating around like cosmic rays in the universe, because as soon as I sit to write, they’ve got someplace else to be.

Today I’m lucky, I’m in the right place, so at least I get another post. I didn’t get to reading that editorial on making every sentence “at least good”, but I’ve read through the first paragraph, and I think none of those ones can be described as “bland, slack, utilitarian sentences”. Particularly if you think in images, like Dinah (it occurs to me from the number of times she gets mentioned on my posts that I need more friends). Anywhoo, I mentioned last time that I was supposed to be writing about things you cannot change, and now seems as good a time as any to get started down that crazy path. 

In other news, being an editor is fun, last time I made it sound like a really lousy job, but really, being an editor is a lot of fun. In fact, if I could be an editor for the rest of my life I would die a happy human. Like, don’t even pay me, just lemme go at people’s words with a thousand question marks and that forbidding red coloured font. Or let me be a teacher, so I can write things like these on the scripts of unsuspecting youngsters:

I had a teacher in primary school, or was it high school… I want to go with high school because chances of scoring zeroes on a test were higher in high school, but then I also want to go with primary school because I have just the teacher to fit that profile: one Mr. Wamae of Kiswahili. Anywho, whenever someone got a zero on the test, he went ahead to draw it as a crying face and happily announce it to the class when the scripts came back.

I found the concept so hilarious, so it was no surprise that when I got to high school and some nice boy from some school wrote me letters massacring, butchering, annihilating and decimating (thank you Thesaurus) the English language I was in heaven. We (in the interest of privacy I won’t mention your name) took red pens and went to town on letters we received, translating their words to hilarious pictures and laughing some more. It wasn't very nice, but I was 15 in Form 2 and I had no sense of tact whatsoever. 

As a side note, I’m beginning to zero in on the reasons I’m still single. And as a second side note, someone should have seen that and told me I was born to be an editor. Life might have been very different. So back to the things I cannot change, (this was supposed to be a serious post). 

I have and not once in the throes of anguish wondered (TMI ALERT!!) why endometrial linings have to exist. Why doesn’t the body have a mechanism to build one only after fertilization has occurred? Or why, like cows and other normal mammals, didn’t we just land an oestrus cycle, where the thing gets magically reabsorbed if fertilization doesn’t happen? You probably already know when exactly these thoughts plague me. 

Job is one of those deep thinking, philosophical people who quotes Leo Tolstoy and Bob Marley in the same conversation as you casually walk around in Kahawa Sukari. It’s interesting because he’s been dating this girl Naomi since we were in first year, and she has the memory and concentration span of a goldfish. A very beautiful, sweet, mandazi-brown Taita goldfish who I’m supposed to be having icecream with tomorrow. 

Anyway, Job told me once that life and relationships are about whose crap you’re willing to take. He said Bob Marley said that, and I have yet to confirm it for myself. I have a feeling he said it because he’d kept me waiting for an hour, but I have been thinking about it from time to time. And too about Danielle's statements. The spirit of them anyway, rather than the stark reality, hers is too, too something, severe maybe .. or too harsh, I think:

You can plan and scheme and write in a neat little notebook. You can create numerous lists that await the swift line of completion, but it won’t matter. Nothing will end up the way you thought it would. Things will happen that you couldn’t have possibly foreseen. Life doesn’t care about the plan. The scheme. Your neat notebook. Or your fifty lists.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to have kids, and what they’ll be like. I stopped taking that as a right, owing to a series of shifts within my circle of friends, and Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Sometimes I wonder what marriage will be like, and I get scared. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen a little bit of desolation and crap, haven’t we all. Maybe it’s because on occasion I have the disposition of a conservative educator in the 1960s, with thick glasses and a tight severe bun at the back of the head, telling children to get their minds off the clouds. Like Marilla Cuthbert in “Anne of Green Gables” which I’m now reading. 

You know, it’s an honorable thing to be a parent, it’s the greatest responsibility on earth, and apparently the hardest. You can do everything right, and they still might not turn out how you'd hoped. But heaven knows you won’t. You’ll second guess every decision you ever made, you’ll make so many mistakes, and you’ll try formulae until it hits you that no two kids are remotely similar. And then you’ll eventually have to let them go and make their own mistakes. 

The reason I wanted to write about this on Sunday was because one of the poets mentioned something about why poor people have the most children. It reminded me of a book I read and this mother who could hardly feed herself had 12 kids, and when she had another someone asked her why. She said that the moment when brought another life into the world, that single moment before all the thinking about how they’ll eat and all the problems, she felt like she did something good for the world. And that maybe she wasn’t a complete waste of clay. So she did it again and again.

Life hardly ever turns out the way we think. I didn’t think I would be here now I know, not in a cocky I’m-better-than-this kinda way, but I just imagined my life would follow a decent path of events, like other normal human beings. But I get what that lady said, and why Rebecca Bloomwood loved shopping so much. I’ve shared this before. 

I think the best way to think about life is to take it like one of your kids. You do what you can to raise them right, you teach them God and ethics and discipline; you prepare them for the future and everything no one prepared you for. But then you’ve got to let go and realize that things won’t always go the way you’d thought. And it doesn’t mean that someone did something wrong, we only do the best we can with the information we have at the time. That’s what life is all about. Now all that’s left is for me to believe that.

In the interest of my 7 desiderata posts, let’s consider this the next installment, even though I’ve had to skip a few lines in between. The rest will come, they will come….

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
You have a right to be here,
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

too often scars

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.” 
~John Green~

“Hey!”

“Hi, how are you?”

“I’m well, and you?”

“Fine thank you. How've you been...”

I’ve been working on a concept. I have yet to come up with a real name for it, or chance upon what other people have called it, since I doubt I’m the first to think about it. However, for today’s purposes I’m going to call it the ‘one good turn’ theory.

One good turn (for today) is doing what is expected simply to add a plus to your list of pluses, or perhaps negate a minus. So that you can walk away patting you back feeling like an exemplary human being. or at the very least an okay person. And dare the universe to repay your kindness a hundredfold. Like that conversation. That’s how hallows go, depending on what side I'm on; it’s become so ingrained that most of the time I’m doing it on autopilot. On some days, I mean to actually know how you are, but there are times really it’s an autopilot mode response. Don’t give me those eyes, you know it’s true.

One good turn is passing by that guy and tossing a coin into his little cup. Hell, if you’ve been extra bad (hence extra guilty) or extra good (hence extra magnanimous) it might even be a note. So you can add another thing the universe owes you. Like today you have transformed the universe and done your share to alleviate human suffering. And the universe must not fail to see that. Like in the background there should be a big choir singing Handel’s ‘Messiah’ as you walk away. Okay, that last part is a bit much, but you get my drift.

The reason I’m thinking about that tonight is that I recently mended fences with an old friend. It wasn't an exactly friendly parting and we hadn’t spoken in forever until a couple of weeks ago when apologies were poured out by the torrents and promises were made. And life was back to normal. But I knew it would happen. We’d slip back into the normalcy that was there before. And not the good kind of normal either, the uppity kind.

“The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived.” 
~ Katie McGarry~

Because you see, they weren’t apologies to reinstate the friendship for its sake. It was a therapeutic move. To purge the conscience of the weight, to gain some relief. I said sorry, she said it was okay, now we’re friends. We’re good. Cased closed. One less thing to worry about. Hhhmmmm…. It’s human form I guess. I have this other theory, that life is about those who give and give, and those who take and take. So are human interactions. It’s one of those things, just like the reacher-settler phenomenon people don’t usually want to believe. I don’t know why I’m mentioning that; maybe because I feel done in. With giving. And being the bigger person. And being nice. Much good I have been done for all of it. I'll just shop.

A few months ago I was going to write about forgetting. Just forgetting as a concept. You know, past pain, past drama. I had just started doing my research (occasionally I’m not just blabbing from the abundance of my thoughts :)))). And then the news about my friend’s passing came, and I abandoned that for whatever I ended up sharing last month.

Do you ever wonder what would life be like if time didn’t heal everything? I wonder sometimes. If you could remember every single thing with the same rawness as if it was yesterday? In medicine there is this ailment called  the ‘broken heart syndrome’, it’s failure of the literal blood pumping organ, brought on by having your other heart broken, like by a boy or loss or something. If one event, like having a boy tell you that he doesn’t think it’s working , can cause your heart to fail, wouldn't we all die really young?

Would we suffer pain and more pain until we dropped dead? Would those people who have higher thresholds for pain live longer? Would have the human species survived?

Forgetting is a gift, it’s a privilege, and sometimes it’s all you have. Knowing that no matter how much pain you feel right now, no matter how insurmountable the mountain of distress, there will come a day when it won’t be so bad. It will just be an event in the annals of your life, and then it won’t be even there anymore, towed away to make room for new things.

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.” 
~Fernando Pessoa~

Well, it’s just that sometimes forgetting is easier on some than others. Which is why hypnotists have a job at all. I’m thinking about that, going for hypnosis. I hear you should carry someone along so that you aren’t subliminally told to do anything weird. I’d carry Dinah along, she knows karate and her eyes can get very serious (mean) when she wants. Which of course means that she’d have my back. Which in turn means that she’d talk me out of it before the words came from my mouth.

But there is a word for this feeling: defeated. It’s what you get after a whole series of broken-sciencey things slapping you across the face in rapid succession. Like Barney did Marshall with the three slaps of the slap bet. Like what point is there anymore, you know. Not in any I want to be dead sorta way. Just, I dunno, just defeated. Even the girl with all the logic in the world can’t get over this one. And too afraid, maybe  proud, to ask anyone. So she tries to not go completely down, over and over again. Perhaps one day a sun ray will shine with her clarity. Every dog has its day, after all. 

But oi, Lord, shall ever a break be caught....

there is no panic in heaven...

Human beings are very interesting. We all come with this sense of... of... of… entitlement. It’s really very interesting. I hadn’t thought much of it myself until I saw this update by one of my friends on Facebook.

It comes so easy to us, giving each other ultimatums, and all those sistahs telling you that you deserve better and more and all manner of feminist speeches. It’s all good I guess, because yes, you must know who you are and what you can and cannot take from another person. It is intrinsic to your self-worth and survival It’s all good. 

Until you carry that to God.

Giving Him a list of unlesses and pouring out questions about “Why would a good God allow this’ or ‘Why me’ or like my friend and I have been musing recently “Surely God, a break has got to be caught!” That’s easy, it’s natural, it’s human. And I am human. But the greater part of being human is the ability to know when what you’re doing isn't up to par. And giving it up.

I’ve wanted to write some post since that last post I wrote, I’ve been musing over whether to or not to, but well, I can do half and half right? I made a good friend recently, happened to show literally out of the blue at the very right time, and stuck around long enough to see me through a not-so-great patch. I know all the blah about seasonal friends et al, but it’s hard to understand that someone can just, you know, go just like that. I’ve added this particular one to the list of things I will never understand, but hopefully I’ll be okay with it someday.

It wasn’t messy, it wasn’t hateful, it wasn’t laced with passive aggressive nuances. Maybe some parts of me are still reeling in the wake, I think we’re all just wondering how we could have missed it. And why God doesn’t want me to be happy. That’s not exactly false, He just wants me to be holy more than.  I dunno, I’m just throwing out various lines here.

But the best thing I learnt from it was the magic of the ordinary. I don’t have memories of grandiose gestures and expensive measures. I have memories of the oddest things. The oddest things. The oddest, oddest things. They were simple, they were real and I miss those the most. I am grateful. I wouldn’t take it back. The ride, the good and not-as and sometimes silly. I found out that some of those things I used to hear and think, broken science, they were actually true. And I think back with a smile. Because I became slightly better.

Anyway, which is why you know, I so wanted to WTH God. It’s not a pretty thing to admit, but yeah. I was absolutely unamused by that turn of events. I still am, a little. But you know, resilience, all this will fade away someday. But then, I’m looking at it all wrong. Technically that’s not true, I know the right outlook, I just wanted to whine, we all do sometimes. But the hard truth is, God owes me nothing. He does not owe me a break, a happy life, everything I want when I want it, the right to always have my loved ones around until I’m old and gray.

Nothing I have is anything I deserve. Anything I have is gift I’m given. Including the time I spent with him. It was a gift He gave me. My family, my friends, everyone who’s around in my life now, it’s not for my purposes or my comfort, it’s for His. So when He takes any of it away, like when He called Flo, it is within His perfect will. And He knows everything. I imagine I can choose to cling  and cry and whine and be sad, but the truth is, no good thing will He withhold…

You know, I’ve found many times in my walk that I have so much clarity regarding what I need to do. I know, and I know it with unshakable certainty, but it’s like, transforming that knowledge to executables, I draw blanks. Like when I’m speaking now, it’s so clear. Everything is so clear, but I guess it is as Oswald Chambers said, "we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there".

So here in my room everything is clear, and theoretically all is well. But the real stuff is when I get up from this bed and go out to meet life. Faith is easy when everything is okay, because the mountain resembles the reality. But when it’s all a mass of things you don’t understand, hitting one after another, that’s where the real stuff is. Oswald lived in the 19th Century, but his devotions are just timeless. You must read this one and this one.

So get up Joy, get up and get on with it.

Cornelia’s was one of the families that were sheltering Jews during the Holocaust. When they got caught, they suffered a similar fate – they were sent to a concentration camp. Her sister died, and then her father. And life was probably just as bad as you can imagine. But she was there, tending to the sick, the elderly, sharing her little rations with the other people in the camp. At some point, shortly before the war was to end, Cornelia was set free in what turned out to be a clerical error. Shortly after that, all the women her age in that camp were killed. God has no problems, only plans…

It’s easy to see that now because that entire story took me 100 words and three minutes to narrate. Took you even less to read. But between the capture and the clerical error, there were months of suffering and unending pain. Watching her family die. We are not made for the mountain, it’s to walk down here with the knowledge of the mountain. God has no problems, only plans…

Only plans…

lead me to the Rock that is higher than I

When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I...~The Bible~

Figures I would run to Thought Catalog. It makes sense, I read it like some sort of religion. Just as with forums open to public contribution, I am oftentimes disappointed, but every so often, every so often someone comes up with something genius, something brilliant and something just right for me, and that’s what keeps me going back for more fixes.

Today, I run to the arms of Meredith Gray, that girl with all the soulful monologues that make you want to sit back and narrate your life along with her. I figure I could come up with a soulful monologue or ten of my own. But Meredith’s are way cooler. Like this one:

People have scars in all sorts of unexpected places. Like secret road maps of their personal histories, diagrams of all of their old wounds. Most of our old wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. But some of them don’t. Some wounds, we carry with us everywhere… and though the cut is long gone, the pain still lingers. What’s worse? New wounds, which are so horribly painful, or old wounds, which should have healed years ago, and never did? Maybe our old wounds teach us something. They remind us where we’ve been, and what we’ve overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. That’s what we like to think. But that’s not the way it is, is it? Some things we just have to learn over and over and over… again.

Life has got its own way of shaping you, sometimes by throwing crap all over you, tying you down the back of a truck and driving around with you there at full speed. It’s amazing what people go through… I used to sit in a mat on my way to see dad every day, and I’d look around at people. I’d imagine asking the person next to me, “So, what’s your story?” Because at that time I too had ‘a story’. I guess until then I never saw life like that, i just thought about the surface of things. But people contend with so much crap every day, you’d be shocked.

But while one still stands there’s much to be grateful for. Because it means that until now, your survival rate for bad days remains 100%. Maybe that’s what they mean when they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Only I wonder at the wisdom of that. Michael Jordan says that you miss 100% of the chances you don’t take. He’s got a bagful of quotes about shots he took and shots he missed, and we must all believe him, he did take some pretty great shots after all. But just like Colin, who is actually a pretty great guy and amazing brother with a nice girlfriend who sends us nice things ;), I wonder, when you have just one shot to take, and you take it and miss, what’s the difference?

All logic will tell you it’s not worth that much sadness. It’s really not worth that much crying. It’s not that big of a deal. But sometimes, it isn’t mourning over the what was, sometimes, the greater loss is for what could have been. For the picture in your head that wouldn’t half match the reality once it got here. The finding out that all the things you thought were crap were real things. And while it shouldn’t, it still causes pain. Pain that emo-music and ice-cream can’t quite reach. I discovered that doesn’t work by the way.

Pain. You just have to ride it out. Hope it goes away on its own. Hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions. No easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time, pain can be managed. But sometimes, the pain gets you when you least expect it. Hits way below the belt and doesn’t let up. Pain. You just have to fight through. Because the truth is, you can’t outrun it. And life always makes more.

It’s the end of June. June wasn’t the greatest of months this year. It started with the loss of a friend. And now it ends with the loss of a friend. That much more frustrating because there’s no one to take the fall, no one to be angry at, and even if I were, what good would that do?

But every so often, the tears come uninvited. Once in a while, I let them get the better of me. Once in a while, I forget the wisdom of knowing that all things are working together for good. That no good thing shall He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Once in a while, I just want to be human and ask why. And shut the door and let the pain seep through my being. Do that, by all means. And then get up and keep living life. Because life must go on. And no matter how far you run from it, there’s always another rough patch waiting for you a little ways down the road.

You just have to live through this one.

fear not, He said, I have overcome the world

 “It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.” 

~John Steinbeck, Cannery Row~

Is it true that when a man is dying hope is the last to go? Or maybe regret, you know, for the more important things one should have focused on but didn’t: family, love and a whole bunch of like stuff? I don’t know, I’m not dying, but I watched my father almost die every day for months, and every day I wondered what life was like through his eyes. It’s not something I like to remember, until recently I think I blocked every image from that time. I still wonder even now, even though the threat of death is now behind us.

Flo died. She was loud and lively, she had the optimism of three rainbows, and she died. And she is in a better place. It’s easy to say that, because I mean, it is fact. Where we are going is a better place than where we are. But this was truer for her. And I am angry. We are all angry. Not at God for allowing it to happen, because God’s truth I don’t think any of us would call her back even if we were given the choice.

27 years, that’s how long she was around for. And for the better part of those years no one ever saw the burdens she carried. No one could imagine that behind that frame that clung to Christ so ably, making all of us imagine it was totally doable, there was a gory tale.

Flo downlived it every day for years. And she did so without changing, without losing grace, without frowning at the world or taking it out on anyone. And now she is not around anymore. And we are angry. We are all angry. We are angry at human beings. Not in general, with faces and names and stuff.

I’ve always imagined that nothing is impossible with man given the right set of circumstances. Mother will turn against daughter, father against son, and every single one of us is capable of the most heinous acts of evil that has ever been. That part is fact. Which is why I cling to Christ, because even I cannot imagine the depth of my wickedness, I must have Him with me at all times.

So, given the right circumstances, someone can tear your resilience down bit by bit. Hit you below the belt and never let up. Continually crush your spirit and every ounce of dignity and self-belief that you have nurtured, and tear at your very essence until you are nothing but a mass of shrapnel not unlike a building torn down by bombs.

A number of statements come to mind:

You are capable of handling situations you couldn’t have possibly imagined. Fathers will disown you. The love of your life will sleep with someone else. The person who made you will hit you. Your best friends will die. A man will ignore your fervent “no” and take what he wants. And still you will find yourself filling your lungs when situations should have left them empty. It is in those moments that you’ll remember there isn’t anything you cannot overcome.

~Danielle Campoamor: 30 Life Lessons for 20-Somethings with Too Many Feelings~

Mostly that’s true, but what if you can’t? What if you can’t fill your lungs anymore and you just simply give up and say something like ‘I am going to be quiet now’. And then nobody ever hears from you again?

I went to Google in search of answers. Not about life, actually I was looking for quotes about forgetting. I found that first one up there. Shortly after we found out Dinah and I kept wondering how life could possibly keep going as though nothing happened. You know, you want to stop people on the street and go like, “Yo! People, hold up, hold up, this major thing just happened; this unbelievably strong woman is no longer with us. Please be still and respect that for a while, okay? ”

But you couldn’t. Life goes on, and pretty soon people will forget. Maybe we too, will not remember it with as much vividness. We’ll always have memories of the times and etc, but as time goes by, the pain will fade, and new memories will take part of the room we have reserved for Flo.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing at all. Because it’s a sad thing when you are relieved that your friend is no longer here. It’s sad when you know that given the chance you would never call her back to the life she lived. I wonder what she’s thinking, looking at us from up there. I wonder what life would be like if we didn’t forget things, if we remembered everything as vividly as though it happened yesterday.

So this is my lament. I hope I am allowed that much. I have not questioned God’s Will, or His wisdom. In Him I have unshakable faith that everything in the universe is unfolding exactly as it should. But David wailed. Jeremiah wrote an entire book wailing. I’m allowed this much. Because our souls need to be purged of the pain, and in the words of Anne Frank:

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn." ~Anne Frank~

I write because a great woman died. And while the world will go on, we noticed. For a few people in the world, time stood still. And so maybe in time, we won’t recall as much; but right here and now, today, we noticed. I noticed. And I write to engrave the memories of this remarkable woman all over the sands of time. I will write for as long as I have the words. Because people deserve to be remembered when they are no longer here. Life must go on, but we in turn, must never forget to those to whom we owe a significant chapter in our lives.

Farewell Flocy, I know you make the face of heaven so fine!