Letters to Angels: Update on my dad Part 2

Well, have some time to reply for a bit. We're staying at my Aunt Eleanor's (well, she's my mom's aunt) place in Red Deer. She's in hospital right now (a ward or two down from where Dad is) & so we've been in to visit her & she offered us the use of her place while she's away. & so that's pretty great - we get to rest here instead of driving back an hour & a half to home, or trying to find a motel or sleeping in the hospital.

Dad made it through the night A-OK & was all rested & chipper this morning. So all my fears/worries about leaving him alone have been for nothing. He was in great spirits throughout the day & is looking forward to getting down to Calgary to get things looked after & have answers & he was looking pretty rested & like he's accepted his new 'hotel' for the next little while. The nurses have been fantastic & the food's actually been good, so that's helping things.

I'm doing better - last night i was a wreck & just collapsing. This morning I woke up with my chest feeling really tight & left arm hurting & so i'm afraid I was driving myself into some kind of a heart attack thing, but it's feeling OK now. (could be from exerting myself trying to help my brother make sausage last night).

.....

So, I think I just had my Christmas moment tonight - we're staying here at my Aunt Eleanor's & mom is tired & burnt out & looking for something to eat & craving ice cream & so I decide to wander to the Mac's to get some. Once there I pick out two containers of yummy haagen-das ice cream & go to pay at the counter. The guy at the till, someone from some middle eastern country, brown skin, goofy hat & thick accent, hands me my bag & says, "Thank you very much... I hope you are doing well & have a very happy new year"... Something like that anyhow - I walked out of there feeling all warm & happy inside - sort of on the verge of crying, but not quite there. After this stuff with dad, you just really realize the kindness of strangers - about how good it feels to have someone treat you with kindness & respect. Here we've been, scared out of our minds, sick with worry & fear at the thought of losing our dad, we've been rushing around, travelling around the countryside & you start feeling very, very alone... but we've seen the kindness of people - the number of people calling & volunteering to help us in whatever way they can, the nurses at the hospital have been wonderful & have made dad laugh which helps everything. Here we are & our wonderful Aunt Eleanor has given us a place to stay to rest our weary heads & hearts. & tonight as I'm lamenting about how there is no new years celebration for our family - not even our silly new years eve fondue tradition - and we are ushering in our 'new year' with a year full of uncertainties... and here is this random guy, some stranger who extends kindness & well wishes to me with some level of semi-genuine concern.

In the first Christmas, Jesus's 'parents' came looking for some place to rest, for some place for Christ to enter the world & they were turned away from everywhere except for one guy/gal's stable.... for centuries after that, Jesus (in the guise of so many wandering people) has been missed & turned out & given only stables to sleep in. But every so often, like tonight, people open their hearts & give a home for Jesus, or a home for the people that Jesus makes His home in.... & it's beautiful & wonderful & all I'm left with is gratitude....

Update on my dad

Hey,

Just an update on my dad. Yesterday at 4PM the hospital called our house & told Dad to pack a bag, head in to the hospital in Coronation & then they were going to transfer him to the hospital in Red Deer. We were having a semi-normal day & dad was feeling not bad up until that point. We then went to Coronation & they said they found some irregular heartbeat stuff on the heart monitor dad wore last week & so he was sending him to Red Deer for observation/to see if they could get him an angiogram in Calgary.

So I drove dad up to Red Deer last night while mom & my brother stayed home to try to get a good night's sleep so they could be fresh/come up in the morning. They didn't get so good a sleep, but yeah, it sounded like a good idea.

I got dad checked into the hospital & he was having some chest/indigestion/fluttery heart stuff when he got in - mostly from the nervousness. They hooked him up to a heart/oxygen/blood pressure monitor & took blood for blood tests. We then waited in the emergency ward for a while (checked in at 8ish & were in the emergency ward until about 11:30 PM) & chatted as dad started to rest. The doctor came in & saw him & asked lots of questions & such. Her prognosis is much, much better. The doctor in Coronation told him 'instant retirement' and that he had a 50% chance of living more than 5 years. The doctor in Red Deer sort of shook her head at that & said that dad had a much better prognosis than that.

So they got Dad checked into ICU & I spent the night in one of the family rooms mostly sleeping. Today was spent trying to keep dad from going stir crazy, but yeah. They only have him hooked to the heart monitor now 'cause everything else looks good.

So, he's got a blockage somewhere which is limiting return blood flow. The angiogram (they pump a dye into your blood stream & they can watch where it goes so they know where, if anything, is blocked or whatever.). If they find blockages, they can either give him drugs to fix that, or do an angioplasty (expand the blocked vein/artery with a balloon & leave a shunt in there to keep the passage from constricting again), or bypass surgery.

The irregular heart beat thing is maybe another matter - he's got something wrong with his 'ventricular' pulses that cause his ventricles to just pump like crazy & that will screw up the heart flow & shut him down - if he coughs it can sort of 'reset' the circuit, but not guaranteed. So that's a bit scary, but they can address that in the hospital too (I think I have something similar, but it's with my 'arterial' pulses or something). Anyhow, they may be able to find stuff about that in the angiogram or else with have to do some electro-physiology to try to understand the source of the irregular heartbeat.

So it's a good news/ bad news day. Good that, so long as they can diagnose this stuff, they can likely fix it. Bad 'cause well, we're just not sure about how many tests, or how long it'll take to find this stuff and there's tiny risks that dad could have something bad happen between now & then - thought being at the hospital, they should be able to look after it.

Anyhow, they're trying to get him into Calgary - this will likely be on Wednesday or Thursday.

My brother, my mom& I came home tonight to pack & sort of address things at home & then we head up to Red Deer to camp out there for, well, not sure how long. My brother & I may try to spell each other off so that we can go back to our respective lives for a tiny break, but yeah, both mom & dad sort of need/want our presence.

It's emotionally hard on me. I'm a wreck tonight & shutting down. The time with dad last night & today have been fantastic, just good times to hang out, but it's been brutal 'cause there's been a number of times where I'm ready to just loose it & break down & panic & start shrieking or crying or something & yeah, I've had to kind of reign it all in to try to 'be there' for my dad.... Physically, my chest is all tight & I'm tired & yeah, just don't feel good - I'm all stressed.... so yeah, hopefully a good night's sleep will help.

It's been really hard to watch my parents suffer/hurt with this. Mom's trying to be tough & breaks down every so often. My dad doesn't really let on that anything's bugging him, but he seems frustrated with the sitting still & he seemed to not relish the idea of us not being there, though he understood the reasons, etc. & he really, really misses the family members who can't be here right now (my other brother & his wife & daughter).

I've gotten used to sort of facing stuff alone & just soldiering through, but it was sooooo, so hard to leave my dad alone tonight ot face his evening/morning without one of us. Love is hard 'cause it just makes you so much more vulnerable... you can look out for yourself & soldier on & lower expectations & stuff, & it's all OK, but it's when the people you love are hurting that it just really tears you up & you feel so defenseless....

Anyhow, yeah, I guess I'm pretty emotional & worry lots, but yeah, appreciate very much your thoughts, tears & prayers for my dad & the rest of our family.

Thanks,
Kirk

A Carpenter's Psalm

Here's a christmas-y poem-ish type thing that I wrote a long time ago as a christmas 'gift' for a wonderful friend.

Reflections from Manger Side

(A Carpenter’s Psalm)

By Kirk Holloway

Tonight I sit

On only slightly soiled hay

In the middle of a run-down stable

In a town that is mine

In title if not in deed

Next to a sleeping woman who is my wife

In name if not in body

My hands cradling an infant child Who is my Son

In name if not by birth

Tonight I stare

At my hands

Their flesh in such sharp contrast with that

Of this newborn Messiah

His hands

Are soft and ruddy

Loosely curled into chubby fists,

Tiny balls of fingers and flesh

So small, so pure and perfect

Each finger a minute masterpiece

Carved and crafted

By a hand with more skill

Than mine will ever

Hope to hold.

My hands

Are large

and clumsy holding this newborn child

my palms and fingers engulf his tiny form

awkwardly cradling this delicate infant with hands

more accustomed to the striking

of a hammer’s blow

and the tearing of a saw

My hands

Are calloused and hard

Worn to leather by the rigours of hammer, saw and nail

Each line, each fold of skin

Every minute valley lined with the sediment

Of sawdust, soil and sweat

If I were to look I could trace the scars

I know so well

Here from the saw

There from that first chiseling lesson…..

My hands

Are carpenter’s hands

meant for wrestling and refining

rough, splinter edged timbers into

simple furnishings

made perfect in form and beauty.

They are hands of strength

of knowledge

of craftsmanship

of precision and

perfection

……But why then,

do they feel

so weak…

so foolish…

so incapable…

so clumsy…

..so..

futile…….

I stare at the woman next to me,

My beloved Mary who lies sleeping

Exhausted from her nine-month ordeal

Her hands

A pair of folded wings to shelter her angelic face

From the rough hay that reaches to scrape and soil

The perfection of her cheek

A single strand of raven hair falls across her face

The beautiful brown oceans of her

Eyes hidden behind the mystery of olive skin

A smile flickers at the corner of her mouth

Like the light from a windblown lantern

She looks so peaceful now, so beautiful

And I wonder

Where has this peace come from?

Certainly not from my hands.

For the past nine months my

Hands have felt so

Feeble

So

useless

For all their strength they couldn’t keep her

Gentle, tender heart from breaking at

The cruel words of those who mocked this

“shameful woman”

Whose only crime was to yield herself to God

For all their knowledge and skill, my hands never

Found the way to comfort her in those times

Where her tears overflowed and she begged,

“Why me, Joseph? Why me?”

and I had nothing to say

my arms reaching to pull her to my breast

trying vainly to erase the

immeasurable distance

I felt between my heart and hers

so unable to help

so useless to fight all

the fears and doubts

and the sorrows of her soul.

Even now I sit here in this place,

This crowning insult in the mockery of

My weakness

Even here in the city of my ancestors

In this place where I could’ve been

Heralded as King

(if only we were free)

(if only I were someone that mattered)

Even here I find my weakness

Cripples me

Leaving me unable even

to find a room for

My tired and broken,

--- and oh, so precious ---

wife

I wonder if she saw the tears I flung from my cheek,

As we turned towards this stable?

I wonder if she heard the anger and frustration

Choke my voice as I tried to thank the

Innkeeper for his

“generous offer”?

I wonder if my love has ever reached her?

If in all those nights of stumbling, stammering words

That had no power

In all the times I tried to hold and shelter her

If she’s ever understood how much I …..

Love her

How

proud

I am of her

This fragile angel

So strong in faith, so courageous in trust,

So bold in love.

And I wonder why she is here at all

Why she’s stayed with me in all my

Failure……..

And I wonder why He is here, this tiny tyrant

This One who has overturned our hopes and dreams

And weakened us and brought us to this place

Of sacrifice

And I wonder why God,

Why if You are to send Your Son to this earth

Why choose my hands to hold and cradle Him?

Does the world need another carpenter-King?

Does the Son of God need me to teach His hands to hold the hammer and the nail?

Does the Son of God need my foolish, feeble, rough and soiled hands

To hold His wise, powerful, gentle and pure hands

And teach Him to be a man?

And I wonder if, God,

The wood I use understands why

My hands

Must cut and chisel it

That it may fit the pattern of my design?

Does the wood understand why

My hands

Must carve and plane it

That the natural beauty of its grain

May be exposed and accentuated?

Does it understand why

My hands

Must pierce its pure and perfect flesh

With the blinding pain of the cruel, cold nails?

Does it understand that without

My hands

Without the pain that I must bring it

Without its surrender to my will

That it could never be the

Masterpiece of beauty it was destined to become?

And so tonight I sit, God,

On only slightly soiled hay

Next to a sleeping woman who is my wife

In name if not in body

My hands cradling a Son who is mine

In name if not by birth

And I marvel at Your hands which

Suddenly

Perhaps

Look a little like my own

And I marvel at Your hands

That you would

Take my brokenness

And make it a thing of beauty

And I marvel at this woman’s hands

That reach to me,

To love me in my failure,

And so become

Gentle chisels

Used of You to cut away the stones of fear and shame

That imprison my heart

And I marvel at this child’s hands

So pure and perfect

So fragile and yet so strong

Strong enough to love this world

Strong enough to love my stubborn heart.

And I cannot help but wonder

If the only thing that makes this all make sense

Is the fact that He is here?

But yet I wonder….

If this Your Son is to save us from our sins, then

What pain must Your hands bring Him……. and what nails will His hands hold?

The Necessity of Loneliness

A few weeks back I was in church & once again sort of struggling with encountering God in the midst of worship & one of the leadership got up, did the announcements & then talked about how Christmas was one of the most amazing times because it was when Jesus became real. He then went on to talk about how that, for a lot of people, Christmas is also a very lonely time & so he asked everyone that was lonely to stand up so that others could gather around & pray for them.

And yeah, I know it was done with the best of intentions, I know it was done from a good heart that saw a problem & wanted to help. But honestly, being one of those lonely people, I was angry. No, check that, I was livid….

I stood up to get prayed for, mostly ‘cause I try to be sort of honest-ish in public & since I’m just about always lonely I fit into the “lonely people” category, But I did NOT want anyone to pray for me. Sure the people who came up & prayed for me were nice & great & said wonderful things & were likely praying great prayers, but I was angry & stayed all stiff ‘cause I didn’t want the prayers & didn’t want to hear anyone praying for God to ‘fix’ my loneliness…..

Part of the anger came from the thoughts that if someone really wanted to help ‘fix’ my loneliness that they should pick up the @#$% phone & call me to hang out instead of saying they’d pray for me at church. It’s like John & James talk about in the Bible where someone is starving or homeless or naked & the Christian folk say, “oh, let me pray for you” instead of giving them food or a place to stay or clothes to wear. John goes far enough to say in 1 John 3:17 & 18, that if someone has the ability to provide for the needs of a brother & holds back their compassion on them, then how can the love of God be in them. With the whole loneliness thing, I don’t really need prayers, I need friends who will care about me enough that they want to get to know me….

…and yeah, I know prayer is good & I know it likely never hurts to pray for someone. I know that there is an important aspect of loneliness that can only really be addressed on a spiritual level of some kind, but really though… God’s given us the practical solution to help people’s loneliness & standing there next to someone who is lonely & offering prayers for them, well, really just doesn’t cut it. Being one of those lonely people it just makes you feel that much more desolate when first you’re ‘exposed’ as some ‘freak’ ‘cause you’re one of those social outcasts who is ‘lonely’ and doesn’t fit in the right crowd or obviously doesn’t have enough friends or something…and then when people rush in to pray for you & tell God to fix your loneliness & then they all pat you on the back & walk away & don’t talk to you any further than that, well, yeah….all it really does is help reinforce the loneliness. People can pray for my loneliness like it’s some disease & ask God to cure it & so I warrant enough time to be someone’s prayer project for the week, but I don’t rank high enough to warrant actually taking the effort to extend friendship to me….

…the flip side of all of this is that I don’t really want any more friends. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the friends that I have & so adding more to the list would just increase the number of people I feel bad about not hanging out with. (and the last thing I want is someone trying to be friends with me out of pity or ‘cause they’re trying to fix my loneliness….The balm for loneliness is love & there has to be a certain level of respect that comes with love. I want to be loved ‘cause I’m valued by someone, not because I’m a charity case. I may well be a charity case, I just don’t want to get treated like one….

The other part of my anger came because I felt that people just didn’t understand loneliness. You can’t fix loneliness through prayer. You really can’t ‘fix’ loneliness at all. (and, granted, it’s maybe my limited view on prayer that we pray for God to ‘fix’ a problem in someone’s life. Prayer can be very much us just talking to God on someone’s behalf & conversing with God about the issue.).

I’ve wrestled with loneliness for the large majority of my life. I’ve always felt on the outside of things & have always longed to be closer to someone, anyone, than I actually am. I’ve found this to be a bit of a disorder ‘cause even when I am sort of close to someone I keep asking for more which then ends up driving people away ‘cause they feel a bit squished….

Loneliness comes & goes. For me, loneliness is like a wolf stalking you through the wastelands of your life. No matter where you go or what you do, it is always there, just out of sight, waiting for you, following you, haunting you, stalking you like a merciless predator. Sometimes loneliness finds you when you’re alone, in the midst of desolation where it feels like nothing matters in life & you’ve lost your will to try again. Other times, loneliness finds you in the very best of circumstances, where everything is right & perfect, but you still feel there is something missing…. Loneliness finds you in the solitary places & in the populated ones. You can be in a room full of people & feel totally isolated & like no one understands you. You can even be wrapped in a lovers arms & realize that they have no idea what your brain is thinking or heart is feeling….

…this is what’s so disconcerting with loneliness – that it never leaves, it’s inescapable & even in the times where loneliness shouldn’t be there, it is. Don’t get me wrong. There are still great times, times when I feel a part of things, where I feel loved or valued. There are times where I don’t feel lonely. But these times just don’t last. Loneliness is always there, waiting, staring at me with it’s yellow eyes, waiting for me to step away from the shelter of friends or family & return to just myself. (this is one of the negatives of the single life – sooner or later you’re alone and if nothing else, the bed can seem awful empty on those dark, cold, solitary nights)

But I’ve found that the wolf of loneliness is not predator, it is more ‘spirit guide’ (or, if you prefer, The Spirit’s guide). Loneliness is a teacher & a protector, a guide & a guardian. What loneliness does most of all is leave me empty, leave me looking for something. Loneliness helps me show compassion to others. Because of my acquaintance, my familiarity, with loneliness, I can never enter a room & not notice the people who are alone. Loneliness drives me to long for community, to long for intimacy & so it drives me to look for the ‘lonely people’ & to try to help them find friends. Loneliness protects me from my selfishness & self-sufficiency. Often I’m tempted in my introvertedness to just hole up in my house & never come out. I’d be quite content there for the most part. But the loneliness brings me out, makes me long for community, long to learn how to love & be loved & so I end up going out over & over making failed/successful attempts at making friendships/building community. Loneliness teaches me that I was made to love & be loved. Loneliness teaches me that no matter how good it gets, how great things may go at my job, how many accolades I may get, or what I may achieve, it’s all empty without someone to share it with. Loneliness teaches me that it’s the relationships, the love between people, that makes life really worth living.

And most of all, loneliness points me to God. Rich Mullins wrote a fantastic article called “never alone” that first pointed this stuff out to me (see http://www.kidbrothers.net & look for the Release magazine articles). He talked about how that each of us is so unique that no other human can ever fully understand us & that this is, in an odd sense, a good thing. It shows us that there is a part of our hearts that God, as the one who knows everything about us, has reserved for Himself alone. Our deepest cries for intimacy, the cries birthed often out of the depths of loneliness, are cries for a Saviour, a cry for Jesus to find us, to love us & to rescue us from our own self-destruction.

Loneliness comes, most of all, from the part of us that remembers Eden, that remembers the time where man & woman walked & talked with God in the garden & they were one… a unity of beings. God & humanity spoke face to face. Man & woman knew each other & could be naked without shame. Everyone knew & was known, loved & was loved…. And it was beautiful & perfect. And then, through humanity’s choice, sin entered the world & with it came loneliness and, like the angel with the flaming sword, both kept us from ever going back to Eden, kept us from finding the union we once knew, but it also pointed the way back to the One who would be the ‘Tree of Life’ (or the Life who would die on a ‘tree’ to give us eternal life). Loneliness keeps me longing for heaven, longing for that place where there are no more goodbyes, where it is not so hard to get to know others, where we don’t have to wear masks or put up walls, but we can trust,…. And the older I get, the more I long for such a place….

And so yeah, I’m not sure we can ‘fix’ loneliness here on planet earth. I’m not even sure if we want to totally solve it either, even if we could. I do know that we are called to learn how to love & part of that means finding others in their loneliness & bringing them into community, into friendship. Some of that means loving ourselves enough to try to get out there & be friendly in the hopes of finding/making friends. But yeah, loneliness drives us to intimacy & we must follow its lead. It’s dangerous to ignore loneliness, to try to drown it, numb it, in the pleasures of this world. So much of our entertainment culture is geared around making near contact, but not real closeness. Being an introvert who likes being quiet & absorbed in movies & never understand people’s need to see movies with other people, or why watching TV/movies with someone is ‘bonding’. It’s nice & I do it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a shared experience that may or may not help you understand each other better or make you feel less alone. Even in church we all ‘come together’ to basically sit there & sing together & listen to someone talk together, but really the ‘together’ is just that we’re all in the same room. It’s not that we are actually connecting with each other. Breathing the same air doesn’t really cut it for ‘togetherness’, sharing a heart does….

Loneliness pushes us to take risks, to risk learning how to love – or at least to recognize our need for love – and this is what’s really needed. In Matthew 9, Jesus sees all the crowds & sees their hurt, their longings, their desperation & he has compassion on then & turns to his disciples & says, “pray that the Lord of the harvest will send harvesters into the field ‘cause the harvest is ripe & ready to be picked.” What he’s really doing is asking these disciples to know Jesus’s heart, to see these people the way He sees them & to have compassion on them. The reason I figure this is ‘cause the disciples end up becoming the answer to their own prayers – God sends them as the first ‘harvesters’ into the ‘field’. And I think sometimes that this is why God calls us to prayer, so that we will start to see things the way He does & then start to go, “Oh, I can help there in this limited way”, and suddenly we find ourselves becoming the answers to our prayers, or the instrument through which God answers our prayers.

If we want to pray for people’s loneliness, we should pray with open arms & embraces, with warm smiles & “how are you?”s. We should pray with cups of coffee or shared meals. We should pray with smiles & laughter, shared secrets & tears. Our prayer should be not in word, as John says, but in actions, in deeds. Lots of prayer may fix loneliness or build community (& yep, the prayers are definitely needed), but it’s much better to bring love…. Though it’s way harder for the giver. It is easier to pray in the shelter of your room or your church than it is to get your hands dirty with the people of the world. To deal with all the fears & baggage & really whacked personality quirks & neurotic tendencies that come with lonely people like me…. Sometimes we’ve been ‘outside’ for too long & forget how to relate to others & so we’re kind of frustrating to deal with… but yeah, Jesus calls us to love, to get dirty, to touch, to hold, to be with those we are trying to love.

And yeah, on the flip side, for all of us lonely people: if we’re waiting for someone to come befriend us, we may be waiting a long time. It’s maybe better to follow the advice in proverbs that says “if you want friends, you should try being friendly first”. We may have to crash & burn & get shunned a number of times before we find real friends, but hey, the rejection stuff gets easier to deal with over time….and the real friends are out there (I think).

Lonely Tonight by Bryan Duncan, “Slow Revival” album

Don't belittle me, don't be light
Hear me truly and hear me right
I know You love me and I know You care
I know You're always there
But I'm lonely tonight

The sun has set in a misty grey
All the color has passed away
I watch the moon as it clears the wall
"Life is good," I'm sayin', "all in all,
But I'm lonely tonight"
Yeah, my faith is gonna see me through
You know I trust in You
But I'm lonely tonight

It's not a simple need for company
I don't know
where I belong in the world I see
and I'm lonely tonight

Rest assured in amazing grace
I'd feel safe in a safer place
It's true I love You and my love is true
You know I'm thankful, too
But I'm lonely tonight
I can gather all the power to choose
And I can take it if I win or lose
But I'm lonely tonight
I'm lonely tonight

I don't know
where I belong in the world I see
And I'm lonely tonight

A silhouette in a garden gate
A single prayer in a solemn state
A place for me I'm gonna recognize
Someday in paradise
'Cause I'm lonely tonight

Oh, it's not a simple need for company
I know now
that I don't belong in this world I see
And I'm lonely tonight
Lonely tonight
Lonely
Lonely
Tonight

Desolation & Silence - My Dad has heart problems

“I was talking to a priest today….do you want to hear what a priest said?” – Helen Girardi
“Was it a handsome priest?” – Will Girardi
“Not as handsome as you” – Helen
“Well in that case go ahead.” - Will
“He said that we go through times of consolation and desolation. Consolation is when things are flowing & everything makes sense & you feel connected & you’re aware that God is present & has plans for you, maybe even likes you a little bit… You remember that?” - Helen
“Sometimes…” - Will
“Desolation is the other thing. When you are scared & confused & alone & out of step & your cell phone doesn’t work & your daughter gets sick & the cops come to the door & say there’s been an accident…. God retreats & you’re left with your own thoughts & those thoughts are…dark… there are answers there, he told me, & strength” - Helen
“How long does desolation last?” - Will
“As long as it needs to….” – Helen

- From “Silence”, Joan of Arcadia Season 1

Last Friday I phoned my mom. I was happy, excited, cheerful… excited about life. I’d had a productive week at work & felt good about that & about life in general & I phoned my mom to ask some questions for gift ideas & was all excited and… from the tone in her voice I knew something was wrong.

My dad’s been having trouble sleeping for a while now. He wakes up feeling like he’s suffocating, like he can’t breathe and so he jerks awake gasping for air. He finally went to the doctor to get it checked out & they did an x-ray & found water on his lungs & started throwing around works like ‘congenitive heart failure’ (which I don’t know what that is, just the ‘heart failure’ thing sounds pretty bad). And so that’s started our little journey. That was a week ago. This week has been a battery of tests & they figure that he had a small heart attack (possibly disguised as one of the bad acid reflux/heartburn things that are common with the males in my family) & the damage has been done. Today he found out that the ‘return’ in his heart isn’t working right – there’s some kind of blockage. They told him that if there’s a return rate of 40 that that’s really serious & his return rate is 30 (worse). So the doctor’s basically ordered him into immediate retirement… my dad’s a carpenter…and only 60 – which sometimes seems old, but now seems way, way too young to be dealing with this kind of thing….

And so…. Well, that’s really the big question now. So? The world changes now. My indestructible, tough as nails, work-horse dad is now supposed to not work & keep himself entertained (i.e. keep from going crazy) with what? How bad is this? Does this mean his time on planet is really limited? Will he die? How many years do we get with him (please, God, let it be years)? It’s all unknowns & the unknowns are driving me crazy.

I’m a fantastic worrier. If I could have it as a marketable skill I’m sure I’d be the CEO of Worry Corp… One of the gifts of being a creative is a great imaginiation, but it’s times like these where the imagination runs amuck… Last week I’d planned the rest of my life out… dad would die, I’d move home to look after my mom, try to find some job in Castor with a skill set completely unsuited for life in Castor… I’d eke out a meagre existence, try to pay the bills, would likely sell the house in Calgary. I’d never marry ‘cause I’d likely never meet anyone out here. And since I usually end up with whatever health issues Dad faces about 20 years after he gets them, well, I knew how I’d die, too…. Too early, very alone….

..and yeah, lots of selfish ‘me’ thoughts, but yeah, those are easier to think than to really contemplate what life would be like without my dad. When I was in my teens/early 20’s I had some rough go’s with my dad. Mostly me trying to grow into myself & that conflicted with Dad’s image of who I was & so we’d fight & I desperately, desperately just wanted him to like me, to be proud of me, to say that he trusted my judgement (he could still think I was crazy, but so long as he was confident that I’d figure it out, that was OK). But we’ve worked through all that stuff & now I’ve been able to enjoy a wonderful friendship with my dad. I really admire & love him & he’s such a great guy & yeah,… yeah… I’m not sure exactly how I’d cope with the emptiness that would be left if he was gone….

…I mean I know we all have to die, but yeah, I just wasn’t ready for it, not so soon….

And so the praying begins. I haven’t really prayed in any official, “real” praying-ish capacity for some time now. Conversations with God are simple or something. For a long time now, it’s mostly been just contemplation stuff, trying to understand Him, or it’s been little random “thank you’s” when I realize how wonderful He is or how rich & wonderful a life I’ve been given… Sometimes it’s quick prayers for help – mostly help for others, sometimes for me… but yeah, lots of little moment conversation stuff when I remember He’s there – which maybe doesn’t happen lots, but the moments of ‘awareness’ (or close to awareness) have been good ones & cherished when they happen…..

…but now, now I don’t know how to pray. Most of the prayers have been fuelled by the worries…. They become random, quick, almost chanty prayers. “God help my dad. Help him be OK. Keep his heart going.. heal him.” And the same sets of word repeat over & over like some broken record… I try to find creative ways to say the same thing to God…. Again it’s driven by fear… maybe if I pray it a bunch of times God will listen & hear… maybe out of my persistence, maybe out of His annoyance…. Maybe it’s out of wanting some sense of control… if I’m ‘busy’ ‘praying’ about it, then maybe that’ll give me the sense of control back that I lost….

Then I start bargaining – begging God like he’s some dark pagan deity to take me & spare my dad. “Kill me, my life’s not that big of a deal – just don’t take my dad….not yet anyhow…”. And yeah, I’ve started to wonder whether those kinds of prayers are praying to God or to the devil….

But really it comes down to my understanding of God….. I’ve encountered my share of desolation… maybe it’s ‘cause I’m a wimp & can’t handle the average curve balls that life throws you. Maybe it’s ‘cause I’m a feeler & overly melodramatic & I let stuff affect me more than the other ‘sane’ people out there. But I know that I’ve tasted desolation… I know what it feels like for God to be silent, to be quiet, to be ‘absent’…. I know what it feels like to pray & beg & plead & watch the answer to your prayers be “no”…..and I’ve learned. I’ve learned that in desolation, God feels absent ‘cause He’s so close – He comes right inside your skin so He can feel everything you feel, take every blow, every hurt & pain that you receive. He dwells in you so He can cry your tears, so His lungs can feel your sobbing, so His shoulders can sink with the weight that bears down on you…and, as we are unaware of the skin we wear or the air we breathe, so too we become unaware of Him, not because He is gone, but because He just feels like He’s gone…

I’ve learned, after much hindsight, the lessons that desolation teaches – most of all that God is good & that He can be trusted. This is said only after hindsight. In the middle of the heat (or rather the cold) of desolation, when you’re in the heart of the beast & drowning in sorrow & despair, it doesn’t feel like He’s right or good or trustworthy…. All you can see is your own pain, see all the ways you’re ‘disappointed’ by Him ‘cause He’s ‘let you down’ by not doing what you wanted him to do…. But, after sometimes years, you see the beauty of what the desolation brought. You see the forest that has sprung up after the fire, the wildflowers & meadows that spring up after the flood…. You see, in the end, that all the stuff that God did was the right thing, was the best thing, and that, in the end you have grown, love has grown & you’ve learned how to love, learned how to trust & all in all the world has been made a warmer & better place because you & those around you have learned the lessons of compassion – to suffer with…..

In Song of Solomon chapter 5 it talks about the dark night of the soul & how God sometimes ‘removes’ Himself to help mature our love. Too often we fall in love for how it makes us feel & our ‘love’ is really all about us, all about what we can ‘get’ from the relationship…. But real love is all about giving, about pouring yourself out like water for another…. If a parent spends all their money in order to save their kid from cancer, if they ruin themselves for the sake of their child being ‘saved’, it’s not some sacrifice they really think about & agonized over – it’s that they’d do anything for the one they love – willingly, gladly – and this is the hallmark of love…. It’s the love pictured by Jesus dying on the cross for the bride that He loved, for the humanity that He loves…. And it’s the times of desolation, the times where there is nothing for us to ‘get’, where there is nothing we feel good about, that teach us what love really is…. Where we find ourselves saying in one breath, “I’m sick of love!!!” and in the next breath we say, “This is my beloved & this is my friend”…. This is where we start to understand what love is all about – where someone becomes so valuable to us that everything else in the world becomes like chaff, like dust,….

This is the kind of love that is holding my parents together right now, that has mom all planning on how to make sure Dad’s OK, that has the two of them sharing a bed even though dad my wake up gasping or need to flush out the fluids the pills are draining from his lungs…. It’s where you gladly trade a bad nights sleep for a chance to be there, to be present for the one you love, so they don’t feel like they’re facing this alone….

…and yeah, so it’s hard to pray with God… I know that He’s good & that He’ll do the right thing… but the ‘right’ thing scares me. I don’t want to walk the path of desolation that involved losing a parent…not yet anyhow… I don’t want my dad to die, I don’t want him to have heart problems. I want him well. I want him without worries & fears & having to wonder what he can do/not do to not strain himself…..

…and I’m afraid to pray… afraid to give the whiny prayers that tell God how to run the show…. Partly it’s the residual fear/mistrust that goes, “I’ve prayed for stuff in the past & God’s just taken these things away & left me desolate, so if I pray for my dad to stay, God’ll take him away just to… to… to hurt me… to teach me another ‘lesson’…..” and yeah, I’m trying not to think like that. The flip side of that though is that if it’s God’s ‘will’, his ‘plan’ to take my dad from this planet early, then I can’t argue with God. I can’t fight the throne. No matter how much begging & pleading I do, God will still do what He wants to do…. And yes, I know in the long run whatever that is will be the ‘best’ for all of us, but yeah, it sure wouldn’t feel like the best if the ‘best’ is taking dad.

So instead, my prayers revert to the simplest of all prayer…. ‘Oh, God…..” is where it starts & then it all trails off into a flood of emotions that choke the words… there are no words to express the overflow of the heart… the mixture of sadness & longing & fear & hope…and he knows what those emotions mean, He knows the words that I cannot find voice to speak….

…but yeah, like Will, I ask, “how long does desolation last?”… I watched this episode last night & yeah… I was left doing my weird sob/shriek-y thing when Will asked that… How long, God? How long does it have to last? How much hurt do we have to experience here? Why do the good times always feel so short & like they’re over too soon…

and yeah, I guess I’ve learned, too, that God answers me the way that I have to pray….In the “Oh, God…” prayers, there are no words to express what I need to say & in God’s ‘silence’ there is really no words to express the things we need to hear, want to hear… and so all He does is wait there, in silence, waiting to listen, to hold us, like a lover or a dedicated parent… the answers don’t help in desolation… knowing won’t make it any better & won’t make the desolation go away any quicker. What is needed in desolation is love & that’s what He waits to give us, and show us, in the silence…..