The Ache of the Wait

I finally sat down to write this post, after I spent the better part of the day trying to avoid it. This space has become more than I had ever envisioned for it, but it often times puts my heart at war with my head. Sharing the mix of the hard, in with mixes of the joy can make me feel as if I don't know the voice of this space, but then I have come to realize that it's all just my voice and some days that voice is light and carefree and some days it can feel as if the weight of the world can leak out when I open my mouth. That's where it started today. Yet, as I wrote, I found myself with this sense of deja vu, so I looked back through last years posts and discovered that I had written nearly the same post I had just started. As I reread my own words, they spoke to my heart the things I needed and so I thought I would share them again, but add a little more this time. 

You see, I had approached Thanksgiving with a sense of anxiety I didn't realize I had until the holiday weekend ended and I finally found that I could breathe again, like taking a long breathe of air after trying to see how far you could swim underwater before surfacing. And then on the ride to work the other day, I found myself singing along to my Christmas CD, when tears I didn't even know I had coming found themselves streaking down my face. It had started with the words, "...Trust me and follow me and I will lead you Home." The next thing I know I am trying to get out the words to my Grownup Christmas List and my heart seems to understand every word in a different way and the song became more of a prayer than a song and "I'm all grown up now, but I still need help somehow" seemed to reverberate through my soul and out into the world. And I found myself wondering if it's not just those that have lost someone close, but really all of us who have fully entered the world of adulthood and taken off the blinders that leave us feeling this ache of Christmas. 

When I was writing today's post in my head, before I ever remembered last years post, I had been thinking about the ache of the wait leading up to Jesus' birthday. The post I found was actually written a few days after Christmas and this is what it said... 

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The tree stands glowing in the center of the window, in the same place it has always stood, adorned with the same ornaments for over 20 years. It looks the same as it always has, yet it means something different this year. It holds on its limbs the sweetest of memories, but they are memories so very sweet that they leave an ache behind. An empty, dull, pit in your stomach ache, because they hold all that isn't there. It meant the same last year, but I may have been too blinded with grief that I didn't see them. Or they were too hard to put up. This year the sting wasn't so fresh. It didn't take just the feel of the breeze to make the world hurt. But the ache is still there, it will always be there. In the mention of a name and in the ornaments that hang amid light draped branches. They are the sweetest memories and they still can be. But it's the texts you get from your dad, who is putting the ornaments on the tree, saying it's a slow going process. He doesn't say why, but you know. So you go over and you help and though you don't hang but one ornament its just the fact that there is someone there to look and see. To look and see and not need to say anything, because you both know what the other is thinking. You both know that the ornaments mean so much, but feel so hard. 

The ache is still there on Christmas morning. It's there when you are making waffles and eating them. And it's there as tears fall down faces during a pre-breakfast prayer. It's there in between all the wrapping paper and bows. It's there when presents are presented. Beautiful paintings that so artistically brought sweet memories to life. Yet, the ache is there because on this side of heaven the closest we will get to life here on earth with my brother is the smile in the paintings and in the memories that fill our hearts. It's there when you smile at the joy of a three year old opening presents, hugging Elsa dolls close. It ebbs and flows and sometimes gets forgotten, but it comes back. And really that's ok. 

The ache can be handled, it can be tolerated. Though we hate that it has to be tolerated, we will tolerate it all the same. Because it's better than forgetting all together. For numbing it down so much that you crawl blindly through the holidays. That's about where I was last year, there isn't much that I remember. This year the picture is different. There was more color, more light. There was so much more life in this Christmas. I am glad for that. I am glad that on Christmas, on the time of year that we celebrate life, that we celebrate the greatest Birth there ever was, that I can ache. When a part of you is gone, some of you will always ache. I think it is similar to the way our hearts are hardwired to ache for Jesus. We think fondly of the sweetest gift, the gift that filled the whole world with hope. We ache for the fact that we are so far from sitting face-to-face with Jesus, but we are glad for the fact that someday we will. I am glad that the ache can remind me of all that was good. I am glad for the sweet memories of life that will make it just as hard to take down the tree as it was to put up. And I am glad for the fact that, while I ache here on earth, it is just a matter of time before I see my brother again and get to rejoice at seeing his face. I get to rejoice because the sweet memories will be there, but all the hard things will be long forgotten. 

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My gosh, how those words just echoed in my heart again this year. But in a different way. This year, the anxiety felt different and now having made it through Thanksgiving, I have a better understanding of it. I know when it comes and I can greet it with a nod of my head. It still sits there, but there is more joy in those moments. The joy and sorrow aren't separate things anymore, but a mix of it all. Even in the midst of moments that, in the previous two years would have left me unable to speak, I am able to fondly talk about memories with a sense of joy and light in my voice. Time has given me that. And while time can not erase the hurt that lingers, I don't think it should. Our hearts should be hardwired to hurt for things that are wrong. Our hearts should ache and cry out and pray loudly words like, 

"No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
and wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown up christmas list" 

Our hearts should ache for the coming of Jesus, so that His birth gives way to the joy of what the gift of His Love really means; which is that someday all of those prayers will be answered. Some day the ache will lead to Him coming to us, taking us by the hand and saying. "Trust me and follow me, we are going Home."

Words for Wednesday: Grief and Glory

I have been absent from this space for a few weeks. Life was in that flux of space between grief and joy and I wasn't sure which emotions and feelings I felt like sharing (or really which ones I even felt) and so I didn't write at all. Which, I have realized in turn, is bad for my soul. I discovered a while ago that, even if I never post publicly, I need to share the words that choke up my heart. In writing, just for myself, over coffee, with others, internally, externally and most importantly with Jesus. 

I am not usually one to shy away from openness. I share a lot on here, because I feel that in sharing pain and our own walk with suffering we all help one another. Reading things where people share their hearts helps me realize I am not alone. But on the wake of the second anniversary of my brothers death I felt things that were new, things I wasn't sure how to voice and so I tried to block them out and not think on them. And then a sermon preached this past weekend was the gentle reminder I needed of the Glory that there can be in suffering. 

Zach Van Dyke, of Summit Church, preached on Romans Chapter 5 (verses 1-8). He preached about the desire for  a happy place, he referenced Inside Out, he quoted Chronicles of Narnia, he shared joy and sadness and he shared that Christianity is not stoicism (listen here). As Christians our hearts will be broken a million times over and it doesn't mean that we can't suffer, that we can't feel sadness or pain or that when we do we should hold it all in. The Glory is IN the suffering. It is in the broken moments when our tears roll down our cheeks and mix with Jesus'. It is the understanding that when we suffer we can also know we are not alone. Jesus' truest Glory came through His most ultimate suffering and it was the thing that saved the entire world. 

Suffering and grief are part of the picture of what makes us human. In this world we will suffer. But slowly time heals and suffering and sadness mix with joy and that joy is amplified by the pain that hides underneath. This second anniversary of John Wayne being gone was a strange mix of those feelings. Two days before was my mother's 60th birthday and my sister's 35th and we did the best we could to celebrate that day with joy, but there is a lingering undertone. It is the chance to be together with family and close friends to celebrate, but the reminder of what's missing is forever there and so the laughter and the tears blend together in a mess of BBQ and key lime pie. And that's ok. 

Last year the grief was so fresh. This year it left us each trying hard to go about our daily business, some even working longer hours that day to have less time at home. We didn't meet up again, instead leaving the celebration of birth our time together as a family. We reached out to each other via texts and we responded to each others Facebook messages on my his still active page. Calls were harder, as if the sound of a voice would be the cutting edge we needed to break past the floodgates until we all went under together. I am not sure if that was the best means to get us through the day, but it was what we all seemed to need. An unspoken bond that would carry us into the day after. And sometimes that's all it is when sadness and joy morph into a relationship with one another; an unspoken bond of understanding that, though the two might seem polar opposites, they need one another in way that other emotions don't. The reminder that this isn't all there is. 

Words for Wednesday: Darkness and Hope

I woke up this morning and the first thing I did, as I do pretty much every morning, was reach to the floor and pick up my phone. I slid it out of lock and immediately started scrolling, first Instagram and then Facebook, this is a habit that I am failing to break. And this morning it broke me for a bit. I scrolled aimlessly through Instagram, catching up on the "life" I had missed while sleeping, as if it was the best way to start any day. I stopped briefly on a picture posted by a friend that said "Pray Hard." I liked it, thought to myself, "yes, that is what I need to do. I need to go start my devotion." And then after scrolling a bit further, I switched right to Facebook and thoughts of devotion slipped to the back recesses of my brain.

It was while scrolling Facebook that I found a lot of posts about my brother. People who had been thinking about him, missing him, talking about him, commenting on old posts from before he died. One will pop up from time to time. I can expect multiple around his birthday and in mid-July. But when multiple came up and caught me unaware my brain did the thing in does when it tries to just glaze over things; it turned to fuzz. I got out of bed, went to the kitchen, poured a bowl of Lucky Charms and started my day. I never sat and had a moment that I so needed. It was while in the middle of trying to send a work email that I realized my brain wasn't functioning. I stared at the computer screen as if it would answer emails for me and solve the problems of the day. So I closed my laptop. And I went to the spot that I should have gone to as soon as my feet hit the floor (or really before I ever even flipped on the phone). I tucked my legs beneath me as I sat in the blue chair in the corner of our extra room, the one that has become my place of solace, the place to start my mornings and have God pour into me. I have been reading through a bible book for woman with different verses centered around different topics. I have been opening the book and reading through whatever topic the book opens on. This morning it was Adversity. As I read I realized I had been trying to remove my thoughts from the pain that was trying hard to get in.

Once I had taken time to read and pray, my head felt a little more clear, but my heart felt heavy. I showered and while there, the place where a lot of my thoughts seem to pour directly from my head into my heart, I had an overwhelming feeling to share the following words.

These are words written in a hurry, words that spilled from me looking for escape. They were written almost two years ago and they were words that I had never planned to share with anyone, let alone let them out into the world where they can be read for all to see. They were written after a tear filled car ride to work, where my heart broke open and I addressed fears I had been trying to avoid. I wrote them quickly from my office computer in an email to myself, knowing that no work was going to get done until they had the chance to be free.

Since writing them I have thought of them often, over many of the things I had written only for me. I have often felt this small voice saying "share them," but I pushed that voice down thinking the words were too raw, too festering, too void of any semblance of hope. But that small voice would often answer back and say, "but isn't that what we often need most; the words we are too afraid to voice aloud, the ones that tell us we aren't alone and we aren't the only ones who feel lost. Don't you think that there may be someone, who is in the throes of grief, who needs to know that the darkness doesn't last. That there is light and hope on the other side." Most days I let those whispers simmer, I tell them the time isn't right. But today my answer was different. Today I couldn't fight, I could only listen and as I write I realize how freeing this all is. To see the past and the places grief can take you and to also see where I am today and how far that grief has come, how it lingers, but in a different light, with a newer sense of hope.

My hope in sharing the following words is that if you are struggling, if the world you knew is no longer a tangible thing to you, that you know it will be alright. There is hope and you will get stronger. You will not always feel on the edge of darkness wondering how you will ever find your way out.

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I am afraid of nothing.  Nothing scares me! And that scares me more than anything.  I afraid of this nothingness.  I am afraid of the fact that I no longer see a clear picture.  I had this vision of my life.  A plan that I saw at the end of my horizon.  And now... Now I see nothing.  The picture is no longer there. I can see today, I know what today brings.  I can see the past, even in all the uncertain terms of what I thought it was.  The future? I can't see that anymore. And that terrifies me. The pretty little picture I had in my head is one I  am now so unsure of that I can't even picture an alternative. I had wanted kids.  Boat loads of them. I wanted my own baseball team. A house full of little boys running around a big yard, with a tiny little girl chasing after them. A little girl who I would often roll my eyes about just because she would  (try as I might to avoid it) be so spoiled, but who I would also envy because she would never need to know fear, knowing that she always had her brothers to protect her and keep her safe.  I know pictures don't ever come out the way we plan, but now I picture nothing.  The world is not an idyllic place. That little girl would never be able to live her life without knowing fear. I would bring my children into a world where I can promise them nothing.  I am not sure I can do that anymore. Maybe my journey is now to love on ones that are already here, to care for them and protect them as much as I can but that picture doesn't come to mind either.  It is all just blank.  And that nothingness, the darkness, it makes me afraid.  Afraid because my husband deserves all those things we had pictured.  He deserves the chance to spoil a little girl with pig tails and his big brown eyes.  He deserves the chance to teach his sons to be good men, like he is. He deserves to lead by example and this world deserves more men like him. And that terrifies me because all I can give, all I have to promise, is nothing.

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And it ends there. It ends there because I had no other words, the reality of life was blinded by the hurt, the loss and the fear of future loss. So my world view shut down on me. In the midst of pain we can so often forget the hope of things still to come, the hope of things being alright because we don't see how they can be.

But then slowly, with time, pain begins to heal, leaving scar tissue behind. The pain isn't gone, we are often reminded of it, but it feels differently than it did. It feels lighter, as if somewhere, in all that darkness, someone shone a light and we slowly and achingly began to walk towards it.

The other day while talking to a friend, we were discussing the sense that ultimately we are ok and that really, that truth is one of the hardest things to wrap our heads around. When some huge, fundamental part of your life is just gone, you can't grasp the understanding of "you will be okay." But then life moves around you. It envelopes you again into the daily living, the joyful moments, and you find yourself smiling. You find yourself laughing and loving and hoping. You find yourself "alright." But alright makes less sense, because how can you be alright when something is that broken, when moments that should be shared with people who can't be here are shared anyways? And I have come to realize that I can rest in that because that is what we are called for. We are called to keep living, we are called to keep loving others and to not give up the fight. We are called to make our lost ones memories sweeter and cherish moments more dearly because we know how fleeting it all is.

And so I walk now with hope, hope and fear. 

I think they so very often go hand-in-hand, don't you?!

Surrendering the Older Brother

"Don't you know I'm the prodigal son?" He says it with a smirk and a condescending smile as he closes and locks the bathroom.

And, like something that feels threatened and angered I do the first thing that comes to my mind. I start spewing venom. I start banging on the locked door like all of the world's problems will be solved if I can just break the door from its hinges or in any way shape or form get him to move faster. "Open the dang door!! You are the most selfish person I have ever met in my entire life! Who do you think you are? Get out of the shower!! You do not have time to shower! Today is not about you!! We are already late and we have to leave! Dad said we had to be out in the car! You think of no one but yourself! You care about no one but yourself! We all know you're the fricking prodigal son, you sure do get everything you want!! That's your problem!! Now GET OUT!!!" I scream so hard my throat feels raw. I scream and I scream and I am right where I was before I ever even started screaming, behind a closed and locked door, accomplishing absolutely nothing. And do you know what happens with those words that left my mouth like venom? They burn. They burned coming out and they burn afterwards. They burn a hole right through you. They are words that never leave you.

There is no vindication in them. There is no answer. There is only weakness and the hurt that you felt and then placed on someone else. And maybe in that moment, when all my brother wanted was 5 minutes in the shower even though he had woken up late, he felt like he would use the prodigal son card to get what he felt he deserved. But when you feel like you have the authority to call yourself that it's also because you know how far you had fallen. How lost you had been. And instead of looking behind the condescending smile and the air of entitlement that I was "so sure" he was throwing in my face, I played into the older brother role yet again. And in that moment I was just as lost as I had always assumed he was. I was so far past any realm of understanding because I let my own brokenness cloud what was going on. I fell into my human nature and made my bitterness, my brokenness, more important than his struggle. And I will always carry that with me. You see, I vowed after that trip to NEVER again go on a family trip with John Wayne. Or at least to never be made to stay in the same hotel room with him. And I never did. I will never have the chance to. Because a year after that trip, he would never get the chance to take another one. 

I had prepared myself for this week's sermon. I had been given fair warning that this sermon was going to be about the prodigal son. I thought that I had come to terms with the demons that I faced that left me a heap of a mess after each previous sermon preached on this same story. I was wrong. Because again, from word one, I was waterworks. And do you know the moment that I truly broke open? It was these 4 simple words, "Jesus loves older brothers." That was all it took. I thought I had come to terms with it, with my sin and brokenness and the bitterness that played so strongly on my heart. I had asked God to forgive me. Thank God I had the opportunity to ask John Wayne to forgive me. But I realized, in that moment, that I had never allowed myself to forgive me. I never forgave that part of myself that held so strongly to those moments where everything in me broke. 

I held onto those words, to those moments of broken anger and others like them, like some badge of shame against myself, so that I would remember the feelings that came after them. I never really let them go. I let them play on repeat and fester in my mind and in my heart and all that did was lead to more broken and bitter feelings. This time at myself for the role I often played in our story. I feel grateful for the times where I could have a conscious discussion with my brother. I am grateful that not long before he died, we had been talking about trying to give the whole "family trip" another shot. And yet, I still could not surrender the hardness I had built against myself and his addiction to allow for me to drop my "older brother" badge altogether. I held onto it, unwilling to surrender it to God. Unwilling to let Him take it and make that part of my heart His. It seemed too ugly somehow. Too broken. But nothing is too broken for God.

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"Jesus loves older brothers." 

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My heart needed those words. Jesus came for everything lost in us, for the older brothers and younger brothers alike. And He said "I love you. I love you more than the pain of death and loss and I will carry you home. I will celebrate YOU, because you were lost and now you are found." And with tears streaming I surrendered the darkest parts of myself. The parts I tried to keep locked tight and hidden away. I surrendered them then and I will surrender them each time I feel like I am trying to pull them back, because God can do such a better job at loving the older brother in me than I can. 

If you would like to listen to the sermon and the rest of the series (preached by Zach Van Dyke) you can click through the picture at the top of the post or find it here. 

The Ache of Christmas

The tree stands glowing in the center of the window, in the same place it has always stood, adorned with the same ornaments for over 20 years. It looks the same as it always has, yet it means something different this year. It holds on its limbs the sweetest of memories, but they are memories so very sweet that they leave an ache behind. An empty, dull, pit in your stomach ache, because they hold all that isn't there. It meant the same last year, but I may have been too blinded with grief that I didn't see them. Or they were too hard to put up. This year the sting wasn't so fresh. It didn't take just the feel of the breeze to make the world hurt. But the ache is still there, it will always be there. In the mention of a name and in the ornaments that hang amid light draped branches. They are the sweetest memories and they still can be. But it's the texts you get from your dad, who is putting the ornaments on the tree, saying it's a slow going process. He doesn't say why, but you know. So you go over and you help and though you don't hang but one ornament its just the fact that there is someone there to look and see. To look and see and not need to say anything, because you both know what the other is thinking. You both know that the ornaments mean so much, but feel so hard. 

The ache is still there on Christmas morning. It's there when you are making waffles and eating them. And it's there as tears fall down faces during a pre-breakfast prayer. It's there in between all the wrapping paper and bows. It's there when presents are presented. Beautiful paintings that so artistically brought sweet memories to life. Yet, the ache is there because on this side of heaven the closest we will get to life here on earth with my brother is the smile in the paintings and in the memories that fill our hearts. It's there when you smile at the joy of a three year old opening presents, hugging Elsa dolls close. It ebbs and flows and sometimes gets forgotten, but it comes back. And really that's ok. 

The ache can be handled, it can be tolerated. Though we hate that it has to be tolerated, we will tolerate it all the same. Because it's better than forgetting all together. For numbing it down so much that you crawl blindly through the holidays. That's about where I was last year, there isn't much that I remember. This year the picture is different. There was more color, more light. There was so much more life in this Christmas. I am glad for that. I am glad that on Christmas, on the time of year that we celebrate life, that we celebrate the greatest Birth there ever was, that I can ache. When a part of you is gone, some of you will always ache. I think it is similar to the way our hearts are hardwired to ache for Jesus. We think fondly of the sweetest gift, the gift that filled the whole world with hope. We ache for the fact that we are so far from sitting face-to-face with Jesus, but we are glad for the fact that someday we will. I am glad that the ache can remind me of all that was good. I am glad for the sweet memories of life that will make it just as hard to take down the tree as it was to put up. And I am glad for the fact that, while I ache here on earth, it is just a matter of time before I see my brother again and get to rejoice at seeing his face. I get to rejoice because the sweet memories will be there, but all the hard things will be long forgotten. 

Saving Mr. Banks, Saving Innocence

"The rain brings life- so does the sun." -Saving Mr. Banks 

When one thinks Disney or Mary Poppins, they think happy thoughts. They think magic. But I have so often found that magic is given to the areas in our lives that we fear the sting of reality. Addiction is messy. It is messy and ugly and it takes away so much. Yet, it is very much a part of reality. Saving Mr. Banks hits that reality on the head in the most real of ways. But it also saves something too. It saves innocence and it saves magic. I have never been one who likes to watch realistic movies. I prefer my movies (and books for that matter), with enough fantasy to pull me out of the world for just a brief moment in time. I don't mean that in the sense that I watch only far out fantasies or pure science-fiction. I mean that I prefer movies with enough reality that they could almost be real, if it weren't for the fact that they aren't because there is far more that the movie doesn't show you. They leave out the messy and broken bits. Or they weave them together in such a way that they are all well and mended by the time the credits roll. I don't tend to watch documentaries or read biographies. Even Sundance movies are far too real world for me. Which is exactly why the story of Mary Poppins is something I can't stop watching. It is the hard and bitter truth of reality, of one grown child's story of addiction, told through the magic of one man's imagination, to paint for her a world in which things ended up alright. 

I watch Saving Mr. Banks and my heart breaks and mends and breaks and mends time after time. It breaks for the little girl who covers for a father she loves. It mends for the woman who opens her heart to the forgiveness she denied herself. It breaks for the cruel reality that addiction brings into people's lives. It mends for the resiliency we have within our hearts to keep going when it takes everything away. 

When I watch saving Mr. Banks I see my own story. I hear the lies you tell yourself to pretend it all away. I see broken people, wearing the physical faces of breaking hearts. I think about all the questions, the questions screamed outwardly and inwardly. When I watch Saving Mr. Banks I can't help but think about the questions that my niece won't have to ask because she was never old enough to understand what was going on around her in the heat of a relapse. But I wonder too about what questions she will ask the older she gets and knows fully the reality that her dad isn't here. I dread the day she asks why. How do you explain to anyone, at any age, the truth behind addiction? I still don't understand it. 

When she is three you can tell her that her daddy is in her heart and that he is with Jesus and that he loves her and that is and always will be true, but what about the day when she wants more? Yet, in it all there are things to be thankful for. Thankful that she was too young to realize what was going on, thankful that she was too young to be made into a crutch to hold up a world that was falling apart around her. I am thankful for the fact that she can hold onto magic, that we all can. When we loose that innocence, that magic, we turn our backs on the hope that life can have beauty. When we loose that, we build walls around our hearts. Walls that have thorns to keep out anything that can hurt us. We build fortresses around our battered hearts to protect us. Fortresses that shoot arrows to fend off anything at all; love, pain, life and death. I know, because I have been there. Keep out the good to keep out the bad. 

Life on Earth? Addiction? The reality of all the painful things? They are hard, brutal and messy. There is no way around that and no way to prepare for it. But I have hope and faith in the things that I can not see. I know that someday I will live in a world without pain and without tears. I will live in a Kingdom with no walls, because they won't be needed and that is no fairytale. That is the magic, that is the ending to the story- and the beginning. That is the reality that changed all realities. Walt Disney took Mary Poppins and he saved Mr. Banks. God sent us Jesus and He saved the whole world. It hurts- He never promised it wouldn't- that believing doesn't mean we all get to live here on Earth together until we are old and feel that we have fully lived. It hurts that people leave before we are ready for them to. Free will and the choices we make often hurt us, but there is the Promise of a life forever. And I will hold onto that. I will hold onto that and the innocence of a child-like heart. The innocence and magic of a child-like heart that can find beauty in the most messy of stories. 

Sin Boldly

Do you sin boldly? 

No? You should! You should sin boldly. 

Sermons often have a way of rocking me, but some have a way of breaking me wide open. 

They are all just words, words formed by letters, to make a sentence that someone speaks aloud. But it is in that arrangement of those specific letters that one can truly see the power of words, the power in a sermon. They are words laid together just so, so that we can see God at work through the one who is teaching them.

Sin is a short word, comprised of three letters. But it holds so much if we let it... All week long I have heard those words "sin boldly", replayed the question in my mind as I attempt to fall asleep. 

This entire week and all week before that really, I have walked around in a fog. I stopped blogging. I did exactly what I had recently vowed I was not going to do anymore. I wrapped myself in cloak of haze and let myself hide in it. Why? Because I don't want to think. I don't want to remember. I don't want to move forward, because it is painful. I stopped thoughts, because I didn't want to feel the pull that it would bring from my heart. It has been almost a year since my brother died and with it comes the urge to block it all out again. 

But God gets through fog and haze has nothing on Jesus. And so, He met me where I was. He met me where I was so that I could see the question marks that I had been letting eat me from the inside. 

Do I sin boldly? 
That answer would have been no and I would have thought it should be. Sin boldly? Why would I want to sin boldly? And so I leaned in closer and I listened. "You sin boldly, because Jesus is bolder than sin." These words made sense, but not in real terms. And then there was a reference, a reference to a story that always brings me to my knees... the younger brother, the prodigal son. The inaudible intake of breathe, the invisible fingers tightening around my insides was all it took and the tears were pouring out, tears I had been forcing back all week long. This story has so much significance for me and usually without fail any mention of this story will leave me in tears, it has for years. But these tears were different. These tears held so much of what I have been working so hard to repress, because when this story was mentioned- in this particular sermon, in this particular context- I was confronted with all of the questions I have been refusing to acknowledge. The question prosed went something like this, "What if part of the reason the younger brother left in the first place was because his older brother wasn't contrite enough to share his own sins? What if the younger brother felt he could never live up to the expectations set by his older sibling and so he just didn't even care to try?" 
And so in the middle of a sermon, on a Sunday, in the far corner of a sanctuary I broke open. All week long words have been bottling up and now, because another sleepless night can wait, they will bleed out. Cut open, bleeding black and white. 

Was I contrite enough? 

Did I do enough to help a dark situation? 

Did my brother know that my heart could be just as sinful as his?

Did I share my story with him? 

Did I share my sin? 

I brought him to church, I encouraged him to come to reGroup. I did this checklist of things I thought might help him, but how did I do it? Did I say "come, you need this" or did I tell him how much I need it all too? 

I would like to think I did. I would like to think a part of me had gotten better, that I had learned to be more forgiving. I would like to think he remembered my apologizes more than he remembered the words I spewed at him in anger. But then I replay the number of my memories that include bitter undertones. I can't go back, I can't replay the picture. I can only hope that the things I shared with him before he died were enough for him to know just how badly I wanted him in those seats. I am grateful for the year we had before he died, I am grateful for the redemption our relationship had started to see, but I also know that I could have done more. Our stories are our own, but they are also there for the sake of others. Looking back, I wish I had shared more. Not on pen and paper, in my own private way, but out loud with him. I wish I hadn't waited until I had fully understood my own sin to share it with him, because it wasn't enough time. 

I know that these things - these questions and the way I throw them at myself- are a processing step; a self-inflicted guilt pang that will probably heal with scar-tissue that can still be felt from underneath the skin. They are real; they are the questions that I have been pushing to the far corners of my mind because I didn't want to address them. Yet, they are what I need. I need them to be the reminder that my sin should be shared; shared boldly, so that I don't have to question if I could have shared more. Shared boldly so that maybe another "younger brother" doesn't feel the need to run so far away, so that maybe they will want to settle into a seat, that fills a room, that is filled with people who can help tell them of God's grace. 

Sin is a short word, comprised of three letters. But it holds so much if we let it.

God is a short word too, but God will trump sin every time.

He doesn't need to hold any of it for us, He has already let it go. 

Link to hear sermon (preached by Zach Van Dyke)