(That’s my second Beatles reference, for those of you keeping track.)
It’s been almost a month since we returned from our family vacation to the West Coast.
We landed around 9pm on June 25th, Sarah went back to work at the kids’ camp early early the next morning, and that evening we celebrated Mark’s 21st birthday with another pizza party at our neighborhood pool (the shots of whiskey at the end, provided by his best friends, were somehow just….perfect. I know…I KNOW he loved it, just somehow).
While I was in Sanibel, during the first week of my disquiet, Maryann sent me a link to Dan Forrest’s “Requiem for the Living.” She wanted us to know about an upcoming concert of this work, at the National Cathedral in Washington DC: would we want to attend? I listened to it (you can, too, if you click on the title above) while I was preparing dinner one night, gazing out at the darkening sky, and it is a truly gorgeous, soulful composition. Without an understanding of Latin, I could only enjoy the sound of it at that time. In so many ways, I wish I had taken the time right then to dig a little deeper. God was working through and for my friend, once again.
I do not know how much of my blog you read, Person Reading This Right Now, but last year – when I flew home from Sanibel – the lady randomly sitting next to me on the plane turned out to be someone I went to college with (but did not know back then) and we discovered she was actually in a photograph I had on my phone from a recent reunion weekend! In the photo we were standing right next to each other. It was the most BIZARRE and wonderful gift from God. I wrote about it then. It was really the perfect capstone to that whole experience.
I brought several books to read while I was in Sanibel. I cracked the first on the plane headed there. It’s the latest by Wm. Paul Young, the author of “The Shack,” which has become one of my favorite books. This one is entitled “Lies We Believe About God.”
This is the post I was going to share, written at midday Monday, after 8 days in Sanibel, with 3 more to go:
This is going to surprise you (it surprises me; I am actually pretty embarrassed to admit it, but I promised honesty): this trip – this time, this year – was not the right choice.
It’s just as lovely here. The arc of the blue sky just as beautiful. There are countless varieties of birds; lizards, turtles, bunnies – even a 5′ long snake that glided soundlessly across my path as I walked onto the beach last evening. And the shells! Such an amazing constellation! This vacation, in fact, has all the hallmarks of “success:” for a pasty white girl, I’ve got a decent, careful tan. I’m reading 2 books at the same time, and finished 2 others. I’ve taken long walks and bike rides. I am not insensitive to this privilege, to where I am.
I’ve actually avoided writing directly about Mark lately. I’ve avoided thinking too hard about Mark, because it inevitably leads to tears (yes, sometimes smiles, perhaps a giggle at a memory, but the tears are often more predominant). The magnitude of our loss still eludes me at times, like a wisp of smoke I cannot quite grasp. Perhaps that is a good thing. To grab it and hold it – to see all the implications at once, all the ways we will mourn – would not be like grabbing smoke; rather, more like grabbing a live power line.
After the twists and turns that brought me here to Sanibel, and then the lift of Sunday, I arrived at Monday in a totally different place, mentally and emotionally.
I have returned to Sanibel. Getting here was not an easy journey.
First: I was not 100% sure I wanted or needed (like soul-deep needing, the way I felt last year) to come here. I worried it would not be the same, that the power and restoration of that time could not happen again (and I know myself pretty well; I’m not the type to buy season passes to anything because much of my joy is in the new, in the adventure).
This is going to be a very long post, but these two dream experiences may yet make you a believer, if you are not already there.
Back when we first started dating, it didn’t take Steve long to figure out he was falling in love with a perfectionist…with someone who, more correctly, was obsessed with trying to 
be Someone Who Follows All The Rules, who often failed to do so, and who would then spend 99% of her time beating herself up about it. At one point in those early days, he turned to me and said, “You can’t be Jesus, Emily. That job is taken!”
Just last year, he gave me this birthday card. Appears I haven’t gotten that whole “you’re-not-Jesus” message yet, because I honestly got kind of giddy over what was on the front, before I opened it.
BLUE SKIES REMIND ME 