It’s two weeks out from my birthday, which marks five years since the day a dialogue began between my now-husband and me. A most elaborate birthday gift if I do say so myself. Still in the infancy of marriage (sixteen months), five years feels like room enough for us to have suffered through five whole lives and five whole separate deaths and that’s probably about true. Hopefully more than that, I suppose, if we’re speaking in terms of “absolute being” and necessary expirations for the ones on their way to it.

(I hope my saying this doesn’t communicate to whoever might be reading that a relationship which turned to marriage is the single avenue for necessary dying. It isn’t. If you’re breathing, you’re sinful and Christ is working to draw you to Himself, and dying will happen, not as punishment but reconciliation. I’m only using this example, because I’ve had more of my sin exposed and survived more tiny deaths over the course of five years and have witnessed it doubly so as I continue to know Ryan).

I was telling him a day or so ago that something’s come over me recently and the something is that I don’t feel scared about real death like I used to. I’m not sure what birthed it, this epiphany, and if this turns out to be a weird, archived premonition, well then, tell my dog I loved him, er – love him.

I certainly don’t welcome the end or wish it, and I’m not unwell by society’s current standards. I only know for sure that it was once my deepest burden – the fear of my time being up with an armful of gifts the world hadn’t yet received – and now it’s not. I practice communion, obedience, faithfulness, and the world needs nothing else from me. My arms are empty and I give only what I have this day and this moment, grateful that the Lord resides in the land of plenty and is not stingy. Perhaps all this earthly dying has laid before me like a hall of mirrors how little each unfinished me has brought to the table. And perhaps it’s this humble prelude that practices us and prompts us to say, “I believe. Help me in my unbelief” as we inch toward its permanent and more comprehensive counterpart, depending on how much stake you have in what’s coming. For me, a people restored of all sad things and no more dying.

Unfortunately, as the world spins and we chug along – passing away and again living only a fraction better than we were before – we’re reminded and painfully about the first one-hundred lives and our heels that dragged in the gravel to be sinful and broken still. If I’m going to die (whether by choice or by grace) let her at the least be gone so I can go on independently unbothered. But she’s there in the funhouse multiplied, wearing the young face of perfectionism and, to my left, an older, fuller one of isolation and cynicism. Behind me, apathy and more of it. Each of them is there, not entirely, but until I’m at last done with the dying, they get to hang around. That’s part of the deal, and I’m sort of glad for it lately.

Christians in church (well-meaning) often stand completely on the coverage of our sins. We accept one new life in Christ and thereby discard each of our previous selves as they produce too much shame and condemnation. “My past doesn’t define me” or “I’m not who I once was before Jesus.” All of these new creation adages are fine and true, but might we be doing a disservice to the coming you and I’s by resenting or avoiding altogether the ones that walked before? I don’t know.

I got really jealous again the other day. Going mad at the irrational possibilities. I felt the train wreck on its way, triggered by a bout of inadequacy or fear of abandonment or my period. Either way, I ended up in the mirrored room at eye-level with the one who died once due to trust in man, and she retaught me about how misplaced or displaced trust is a foundation not built to last.

I speak poorly to Ryan in efforts to make him hear. I feel unheard and severely misunderstood. And then, offered up to me is one who died during another lesson in pride. She doesn’t rub my nose in it – that I had failed him again as a nurturing wife – but cautions me against the manmade and entitled right to be heard and to be understood. It’s only an injection of the Spirit that compels people to understand.

Having these is not a handicap or a haunting. It’s a grace that I’m insurmountably grateful for, to accept forgiveness as a blanket but to also confide in the ones that have failed me. To conspire together about what went wrong and what is being made right at every turn. After all, our greatest teacher is Christ in us, by us, through us. I will not make a name for myself by my sin alone, but I will use it as it’s there until it’s not any longer.

Revered mystic and the first known female writer in English, Saint Julian of Norwich, said this something like six-hundred and fifty years ago: “Sin is behovely (useful), but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” None of us here enjoy a thousand sinful ghosts riding our coattails to the next, but if it’s necessary carpool for all manner of things to be well three times over, then I think that’s an alright trade, don’t you?

Ryan and I started five years ago what would carry on as one long conversation, and in it, a million tiny deaths. In the past year, post-covenant, our exchange has wandered closer to the likes of sex, hospitality, the dog, and bills. Sometimes it’s empty, shallow, sometimes it’s silent, and sometimes we wrestle to fill that space, which is mostly and usually unhelpful. And sometimes, on nights like last night, we wind up beneath the debris of a good old-fashioned fight; letting tears dry up slowly on our faces as we talk about our current death and the mystery of God. The Great Equalizer. The middle sphere in Newton’s cradle. And about how only something genius and good would kill off our favorite darlings and let them cheer us on forward to more abundant life.

Death will happen when we least expect it and when we most expect it, not one time but many, and I’m going to need my whole unruly bunch – until all manner of things is well and until they’re buried for good.

I’ve been quiet around here lately, and that doesn’t bother me like it might have a year or two ago. I don’t want to speak frivolously, but my purpose for this space and writing in it is not for those of you who read and want more. I covet your time and feel thankful for each strange twinge of human connection it’s fostered. Really, there’s something cosmic about the transfer of experience from being to being, having met or having never yet met. Reading someone’s mail, as it were, and letting it happen the other way. I think we need more of that brutal exchange, and I’ll offer myself up for the opportunity every time.

But if I wrote for you simply because you read and you liked it, this shit would be over. The muse becomes a different thing entirely. It’s no longer art, or rather the manifestation of art as Christ through me. It would look like long-suffering deadlines (the two of these by themselves breed faithfulness but don’t play healthily for me in conjunction), opinion as an idol, and filling inevitable spaces that I was never meant to fill. The minute I start owing anyone anything, I’ll owe everyone everything, and that’s not a white rabbit I’m willing to chase. I hope this makes sense.

Truthfully, it’s been a little of this and a little of that. I’ve had my nose in the dirt, forging ahead in some areas I’d have been too fearful to go for in a previous life. Doing over saying, which is a new concept for me and in some ways a better one. I’m riding the proverbial wave (after a good stint of toes in the sand) and in doing so have felt the kind of pruning that happens when you’re finally ready for it. Some, you know, we stumble into and some works itself out over time, but this kind doesn’t feel sharp as much as it feels like I’d imagine a freshwater rain would after several days lost at sea. Gathering the pails and buckets and empty sardine canisters because here it comes, boys, and please don’t miss it. Patience, open-handedness, a spirit of peace and a gentler one. Pruning that only stings because it would have been nice to have had it awhile ago and now you’re scared you’ve got to ration the miracle because will it stay? And if not, will it come again? I drink with my tongue out wide like my life depends on it and I apologize for the belated invitation.

The idealist in me, though, wonders about the real reason I haven’t written in three months – as if what I said before wasn’t excuse enough. Is it because sometime earlier this year I’d committed myself to put down the pen and to read? I’d make my tiny veins plump with wiser words laid out like a feast before me, ones that had done both the sowing and the reaping and all the preemptive becoming. I’d lay a blanket over mine so as not to collect much dust but to forget its whining for a time so that I might press in to the gleaning. And I’ve done that, some, but it wouldn’t have stopped me. I’d have snuck into my room and plucked the blanket aside, bludgeoning the page until I could breathe properly again. Writing is no discipline for me, although I could make it one. I listen to it and respond accordingly and usually against my will or better judgment.

. . .

I remember being younger, maybe fourteen, and being dubbed “Megaphone Mouth” by Dad. He’d say it sweetly and like he wouldn’t trade it, but the decibels in which I said regular words apparently translated to some ungodly and uncomfortable level for those in earshot. In high school, my health teacher let me hear it. I’m Mrs. Conscientious, never-miss-a-day, star pupil, but I couldn’t seem to figure out my volume. I snapped at her, because the entire class was in uproar, hissing and chattering, which she recognized. She shrugged and said, “Your voice is the one that stuck out louder than all the others.” I had crafted a masterful frequency that outran the rest, maybe due in part to a large family and one that shouted remarks in ladder-like fashion. To keep up meant crawling on someone else’s shoulders and beating on your chest in pride once you reached the top.

I’ve got a strong bent towards feeling unheard or misheard with a lot to say and no real way of getting it across, and perhaps this heightened my perception of “tell something worth telling or you ought not tell it at all.” Words were my gavel for many years. I could make them what I wanted and they would tell me how to feel. I hung my hat believing, in the language of Kim Addonizio, “there is something you absolutely need to say. No one is asking you to say it. You know that, and yet here you are, an army ready to do battle with the forces of silence.”

I respect that sentiment still to some degree. Voices of hope, or not even hope – just a voice of anything – in a hollow land. This land is hollow and I have a voice to use. I got real good at taking up my words as a shield, and they’re some of the times I regret most heavily. The Lord’s been kind in revealing to me moments that I’ve used words for senseless battle. He’s been kind in showing me that the forces of silence are often a gift and shouldn’t be fought. And he’s been kind in teaching me how to let the shield loose and wield a new thing, one that might not involve my words at all.

We were sitting around a BBQ joint the other night, most of my family and I. We stammered on over Shiner about the fish that the boys caught earlier. We got on to telling stories of growing up, building upon memories of when we’d laughed the hardest, comparing our separate scenarios with sleep paralysis, and uncovering the phenomenon of recurring dreams, ones we’d each had that were too hard to articulate at the time. The four of us there finally circled back around to birth order and marveled at how different we all are, me from my brother in the middle and even he from our brother that’s the youngest. In a few moments of tender discipline, we called to mind instances we had been hurt by each other and areas in which we were most skilled in hurting.

There will never be a time when that’s pleasant to hear, but I’m more inclined to hear it in the moment, when it’s a fresh, clean sweep up. There’s a scuffle and a flash and then it’s over until the next time. This one was miles worse and far more jarring because you’re at eye level with almost twenty years of your bloodiest battles, ones during which your words did all of the wounding and they’re still talking about how much it hurt. Not anymore, but maybe. Who knows.

I went home and cried in the shower for fifteen minutes. I scrubbed my skin raw and wondered how much damage does it take to equal a wasted life and at what point do you stop hurting people in the exact same way? I was thinking about my husband now.

He’s only been on the receiving end five years, and I’ve delivered to his door enough persecution for this life and two more. Manipulation, fabrication, domination. Shrinking behind plated armor when I have felt embarrassed or duped or misunderstood or unwanted. And as much as he recognizes the hurtful hiss and chatter of the rest of the class, I’m just so scared that he might one day say that your voice is the one that stuck out louder than all the others. And as I fumble my way out of the bathroom, soaking and sobbing and looking for a shirt, he’s there with a blow dryer. He sits me down in the hallway on our floral, hand-me-down chair and combs the tangles in my hair and says that the ones who have every right to run will still outlive the rest. That’s how it works when people love you, he said, and that if it’s not one stupid sin it’s another. We all know, and we’ve all stuck around, haven’t we. Don’t be so hard on yourself and say you’re sorry when you can.

. . .

I will always write, because I have to, much like the need to salivate or to swallow. It always comes when it needs to, but just as I’m thankful for the discipline of writing words, I’m equally so for the discipline of harnessing them. Making them not like a rope of possession or a whip of correction or a leash of control, but making them like a ribbon of comfort and truth and wisdom that brings healing [Proverbs 12:18].

Another writer years ago told me that I’d be doing a great disservice to the world by not exercising my gifting publicly. That it was more prideful and selfish to hold onto my words than to share them. I lived a long time after that thinking I’d better tell something worth telling. And I guess what I’m realizing now is that I could live a quiet and really faithful life without ever writing a word for you again, though that’s not my hope. I hope that you’re encouraged when you come here, but I pray you don’t depend on it. I pray you depend on muscling your way through your own junk sometime and that he’d wield a new thing in you, too.

I wanted to share a poem with you that I found. It’s about the quiet, faithful life of a tree who wouldn’t speak if given the choice. Let’s you and me care more about sinking our roots into the ground that grew us.

The Life of Trees by Dorianne Laux

The pines rub their great noise

Into the spangled dark, scratch

their itchy boughs against the house,

that moan’s mystery translates roughly

into drudgery of ownership: time

to drag the ladder from the shed,

climb onto the roof with a saw

between my teeth, cut

those suckers down. What’s reality

if not a long exhaustive cringe

from the blade, the teeth. I want to sleep

and dream the life of trees, beings

from the muted world who care

nothing for Money, Politics, Power,

Will or Right, who want little from the night

but a few dead stars going dim, a white owl

lifting from their limbs, who want only

to sink their roots into the wet ground

and terrify the worms or shake

their bleary heads like fashion models

or old hippies. If trees could speak,

they wouldn’t, only hum some low

green note, roll their pinecones

down the empty streets and blame it,

with a shrug, on the cold wind.

During the day they sleep inside

their furry bark, clouds shredding

like ancient lace above their crowns.

Sun. Rain. Snow. Wind. They fear

nothing but the Hurricane, and Fire,

that whipped bully who rises up

and becomes his own dead father.

In the storms the young ones

bend and bend and the old know

they may not make it, go down

with the power lines sparking,

broken at the trunk. They fling

their branches, forked sacrifice

to the beaten earth. They do not pray.

If they make a sound it’s eaten

by the wind. And though the stars

return they do not offer thanks, only

ooze a sticky sap from their roundish

concentric wounds, clap the water

from their needles, straighten their spines

and breathe, and breathe again.