DECEMBER 12, 2009
This morning I was getting ready to journal after my meditation, and I realized the date: today would have been the sixteenth wedding anniversary of myself and my wife who died in January, 2005. I experienced a sadness -- a timelessness -- a remembering -- the last anniversary -- and the one before -- and the holidays.
It felt different -- it felt new and fresh -- and it felt familiar.
Later this same morning, I was at a spiritual support group that I attend on Saturday mornings. The topic was the holidays and using God’s Presence to deal with grief and loss. One person’s grandmother had died last week. One’s daughter had died over thirty years ago, and she was still experiencing parts of her sadness. Another has lost his mother a couple of years ago, and his father this past year. Still another -- her sister died this past year, her sister’s husband was remarrying, and she was experiencing a new and more conscious sadness and grief with the Holidays.
As I sat there, I could see in my mind, an attic -- used for storing Holiday ornaments and decorations for the each year -- and storing other things as well. In our metaphorical attic, we store the memories, dreams, hopes, loves -- that no longer are -- except in storage. Losses we didn’t know what to do with. Deaths of people and of relationships -- stored in compartmentalized containers away in our attic -- until someone or something brings them down out of our attic, and we have to re-experience the pain and fear. Then we can begin to experience spiritual healing -- or return them back to the attic to sit and to wait for our return.
In my experience, two life events primarily sends me or someone else into my attic for more “boxes“:
The first event is change. If we can just go up there and get the decorations of the past and come back down, the rest of past stays stored and safe in our attics. But when things change -- move slightly or greatly -- we and others take ourselves back to or further into our attics, and we begin going through some more “boxes“ of stored memories. We begin to remember.
The second event that brings more of us out is our improving conscious contact with our God -- conscious Presence. As we become more and more spiritually awake through daily inspirations, we begin to remember -- we begin to return to our attics and find more boxes of our life that we have instinctively stored in the attic.
The Holidays are a prime time to remember and rediscover our pasts. Life during the Holidays is consciously stronger and louder than any other time in the year. The Holidays force us to find forgotten and lost parts of our selves -- and regain or relose these lost selves.
Kathy and I went to a Christmas flea market at the Convention Center in the afternoon. With the experiences of the morning, I found myself looking at people -- as they were shopping or as they passed me by. What I realized was that each face -- each person -- was a reminder, a metaphor for one or more of my lost selves. So I began to watch them, and allow them to remind me of boxes of selves still in my attic, and begin to re-experience some of my selves. I didn’t finish -- and I am aware that many more boxes and experiences still lie ahead.
I shared with Kathy at lunch about my remembering and experiencing my old anniversary. Being the wonderful person she is, she saw, bought, and had personalized a very special Christmas tree ornament -- just for me.
On the ornament was written, “You may miss me, but I am spending Christmas with Jesus this year. Love, Liz”.
We don’t have to be afraid of what’s in our attic -- as long as we have our God’s Presence to comfort and spiritually empower us to live through the possible pain and fear -- allowing the past to be restored to being a loving part of our Present.
December 15
After writing this, some boxes from the past came down out of my attic.
I was talking to my daughter about an hour ago, and she told me of the tragic and sudden death a special couple in Austin, Indiana -- James and Jackie Jewell. My daughter understood that they were traveling on the interstate between Austin and Scottsburg, when they were bumped from behind, losing control of their car and careening across the median and into the path of a oncoming semi. Both were killed instantly.
As I was standing in White Kastles a little while ago waiting for my order, I could feel tears swelling up inside -- I became nervous and embarrassed that someone might see my tears and wonder what was wrong with me.
I could feel myself beginning to go through the boxes of memories with their names on them. In 1974, I came to a church in Austin as a summer youth pastor before going back to college my senior year. This couple were leaders of a small group of church people who took a special interest in me, and were very kind, caring, and supportive. As I am re-experiencing this time and events, I remember that they were the first members of the denomination in which I had grown up, who could care and love unconditionally, without religious judgments and ultimate criticism -- without abandoning.
I came back to Austin to live there for several years, and they continued to be the same kind and compassionate people I had met and known.
I am glad to have had them in my life. And now, as I am remembering and experiencing their presence I am realizing that the treasures of their simple loving care can now be stored forever in my heart. They are not going back into the attic.
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