The Only Answer is Love

It’s impossible to think I could organize all of the emotions I feel tonight after hearing the horrific news of what happened in Boston today.  As a runner, as a daughter and a sister and a best friend, and as a human being, it’s impossible not to be affected.  It’s impossible to understand what happened, or who could possibly be responsible, or why, or how long and far the ripples of this day will go.  I don’t believe we’re meant to understand what happens in this world – neither the beautiful nor the ugly.  It isn’t our purpose to understand. It is our purpose to love.  Spread love.  As far and wide as you can.

The only solace I can find is in the one thing that is possible.  GOD.  He is big enough and bold enough and at the root of all that is love, and that’s what we need in every moment, on every day.  Love.  He is what makes it possible to hope for healing from such a tragedy.  He is what inspires those who have and will step up to help, and who rejoices in our prayers.

There isn’t a lot we can control.  But how much love there is in the world?  We can contribute.  Pray for Boston.  Send love everywhere.

Where There’s a Will…

A few weeks ago I was at a memorial dinner in Chinatown, NYC, for a friend of mine’s father who had just passed away.  I opened my fortune cookie as my friend, sitting to my left, offered up some memories of his dad to me and other friends and family at the table.  My friend paused and took a quick peek at my fortune, which read, “where there’s a will there’s a way,” and said with a little chuckle in his voice, “if only there had been a will.”

Last month was a month of loss for those around me.  August 16th was 7 years since the death of my first love, a day filled with bittersweet memories every year. The following week, the father of my childhood best friend passed away.  I grew up running in and out of his house: to and from the neighbors pool, or to the back patio lace up my rollerblades.  My friend is grown and is planning to be married soon, and her younger brother is a teenager, and now their father is gone.

All this has me thinking about what we leave behind.  Not our wills in the sense of our monetary value or our array of possessions, but whether the will for our lives has been carried out.  What are you accomplishing each day that shows love to those around you? What effort do you make to improve the lives of others? To inspire others to enjoy their own lives more fully?  So many of our days pass  the same as the others: work, dinner with family or alone, bedtime.  At least that’s how many of mine look.  But even in the ordinariness of so many of those moments, I pray that my work is improving people’s lives by building their business, that my writing inspires others to feel worthwhile emotions or to be creative themselves, that my time with friends and family, even normal day-to-day interactions, are cherished moments.

It’s always worse for those left behind, isn’t it, than the one who has left?

Here’s my will.  You’re all in it.

I don’t have much, but I leave the entirety of what I do have to all of you, to share:

• An immeasurable amount of Love: But use it wisely. Give it to those who need it most, even if there’s no ROI. Remember to lean on it during disagreements with those most important to you. Receive it without hesitation.
• An abundance of Joy: But you must look for it. The first sip of your evening tea, the slight shift in color of the leaves in September, the way your husband holds your hand, the sincerity in the laughter of your best friend at your mediocre joke, the silly expression your one-year-old makes when she dances to music, the way your bed feels so warm in the morning.
• An unfaltering Hope: But you must promise to never let it go.  When your life turns dark, when you can’t see a way out, when there seems to be no end to the road you’re on or no possible solution to what your facing, hold on to my hope and remember that the wheel will turn.  Something will give.  And God is in it with you.
• An eagerness to Learn: But you choose about what. If people fascinate you, ask millions of questions. If you love language, learn a new one, and then another – and travel so you can practice them! If you love art, visit museums and borrow art books from the library. One stipulation: share what you learn.
• An urge to Give Back: Whether it’s your time, money, talent, or support in other ways, give back to your community and elsewhere in the world.  It’s needed. Everywhere. From everyone.
• A sense of Family. No buts. I was born into a huge and loving family, and then I created a second family when I left home and made a life of my own in a new town.  I’m so blessed with both!  I have traditions new and old, I have a diverse circle of support, and I have family everywhere I go now. Be thankful for both your given family and your chosen family, no matter how alike or different you are from them, and both lean on and support them all.
• A vision for Beauty: But you have to be open to it. There is beauty everywhere, and you have the ability to see it with 20/20 vision if you so choose to. Don’t get so busy in your day, or so used to the drive to work, or so blind to the people you love, that you can no longer see the perfect purple-blue hue of the flowers on your front step, the shape of your lover’s smile, or the way your far-away friend’s voice sounds like a bell when you talk on the phone.
• Forgiveness: This one isn’t always easy for me. But even if it’s hard, impossible even, to forget or even if a relationship is unable to return to its former state, at least remember that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has pain and brokenness and imperfection. You don’t always know where someone is coming from when they do what they do, but you can always know they’re human.
• Passion: If you take anything from me, ever, please let it be this. Life is an adventure. Attack it with all the passion you can muster, from every angle. The new project at work, a night out with friends, your next vacation. You write your own story; make it  good one.

Don’t get greedy. It’s all infinite.  And you know what, don’t wait until I’m gone to use it.  Start now.

Good Grief

There is so much sadness in the world.  We all find ourselves facing grief throughout our lives. Losing loved ones, losing love, losing jobs and friends and dreams and homes and sometimes just our way.  But grief isn’t all bad.  Sure, it feels all bad, but I believe in what Elizabeth Gilbert said:

“Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing…”

During those trying times, if you are pushing yourself forward, you’re growing and learning more than you can know.  Grief causes us to seek: new hobbies, new friends, new challenges, a closer relationship to God, a different perspective.  At least it should.  Creating new experiences is like putting stones across a pond on which to jump.  Step by step, you can move from one side to the other.

“If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then grief is the door.” -Dexter

About two years ago, I’d been dating a guy that had worked hard to earn my trust.  Almost as soon as he did, he betrayed it.  I was hurt and confused.  One morning I lay in bed, half-asleep and half-awake (this is where I think God speaks to me most clearly) and suddenly I had a vision of a tree.  Thick trunked and strong, with high golden leaves.  I somehow knew that the leaves were my pain.  Oh, I wanted those leaves gone!  I jumped at the branches, but I couldn’t reach them.  I tried to shake the tree, but it wouldn’t sway.  I hurled my body at the trunk of the tree to no avail.  Finally, I slumped to the ground in defeat.  Then God said to me, “Give it time.  They will fall.  It is inevitable.”

This awake/asleep dream is one of the most beautiful gifts God has ever given me.  Every day is one day closer to better.  Every day another leaf falls.  Keep breathing.  Someday the pain will seem so small compared with what you carry forward.

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
– Tom Stoppard