Visiting my sister, I’ve found a thousand rabbit holes down memory lane as we go through letters and photographs.
I know I lived through those years but the solid stories behind them seem to be missing. They come back in a moment with the pictures –but why they weren’t accessible without the memory jog is disquieting. Am I so busy in the now, I am not retaining the past? Yes. Should the past be forgotten? No.
Mom was my memory keeper. For years, she held onto the moments with an iron grasp of the details. They’re laid out now in boxes and bags with stories behind each of the snapshots we sent.
But it’s hard. Because I cannot ask Mom, “Who’s this in the photo?” and “When?” I can guess from the ages, the photo and the clothing.
Every day I wake up and the first thought is, “Mom’s gone.” My mornings are mournful.
It makes it hard to get going, to get started on whatever it is, but the present marches on with its own demands for Christmas, family, work, bills, the house, and the business of grief which supercedes all of it, sometimes unannounced and oppressively so.
The quiet of God’s still small voice is a comfort, because somehow that strong whisper pushes everything else back into proper place. God lets me ugly cry, and then reminds me it’s not over. He allows me to be angry, to seize up in pain from it all, and to be okay with all of it. He lets me in His mercy, walk messily through grief to Him, bringing all the unfinished thoughts and feelings trailing behind me like a child’s blanket.
So now I sit surrounded by boxes of memory trying to figure out what’s next. What do I do? How do I do it? The quiet voice of God says, “Hush. Listen.” and I open my Magnificat for the day. Sure enough, there are God’s words, via Saint John of the Cross.
“At the evening of our life we will be judged on love.”
We will be judged on love by the One who is love. This is why we can never merit salvation, it is a gift of love and one can not force love, one can only give and receive. We cannot command an adolescent to know they are loveable, we can only show them they are by our words and actions. Likewise, we cannot force our adult children to love God or others, we can only show that every time we love, we add to the brightness, lightness and healing of the world and hope that our witness and the witness of others who do likewise, attracts them to God in the process.
Love is so much more than feeling, it is self-sacrifice.
Surrender to the cross, either on it or at its feet. It is always thus, and always has been, but we being child like, and childish in our notions, get distracted. We want Christmas without Advent, and Easter without Lent. It’s not possible, but Easter and Christmas are there to remind us, life is not always ash, and it has a purpose beyond comfort, beyond being.
We are made for love by the one who is love, for the purpose of love, of self sacrifice. Made to embrace the cross so that we participate in the redemption of the world. We are the body and blood of Christ, and can only be poured out to others through that offering.
I always know when I get lost to ask God, “Now what?” and the answer is always the same, but He tells me anyway. “Love.”
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In