Ceilings: This we'll defend.

I am in Georgia for my husband's graduation from Basic Combat Training. I Hotwired a screaming deal at a Holiday Inn about 15 minutes from Fort Benning. I have full confidence in my In-laws and parents to take care of the children, or at least that they will survive (adults and children inclusive). I am currently waiting for Patrick to check in to Officer Candidate School. Learning first hand the truth of the Army’s unofficial motto “hurry up and wait” On the bright side, an extra moment to record some floating thoughts.  

I have often thought that you can tell the quality of a place by the way the ceiling looks. A hotel room can make you feel quite comfortable, pictures on the walls, nice desk lamps, faux-leather couches. But what is the ceiling like? Panels? Popcorn? Paint? Water stains and mold? The illusion of luxury literally capped with low cost covering. And why not?

The ceiling is usually the last thing you see when you fall asleep the first thing you forget when you wake up and move about your day. But really, the ceilings are the most valuable part of the room, Indeed it is why we have rooms. What would walls be without a roof?

The absent from our mind is the finishing touch that transforms our experience.

Recently, death has been on my mind. People close, not so close and places in between have left this frail existence. Leaving the awe and confusion of us the living to cope and to continue living. The room doesn’t look so nice when all we are faced with is the end, the top, the roof, the ceiling of a person’s life. All the luxury around us, the memories, even a Frank Lloyd Wright reproduction pales to the fact that they are gone. The room is finished and all we can see is a sparkling popcorn ceiling. Alone we look up and realize that it is over for now and the necessity of that caption is cruel. It makes me angry.

Why are we so shocked when people die? Why do our minds ignore this essential and ironically vital part of life experience? Why don’t we see the essential? What are ceilings for? Protection, comfort, to tell us the difference between inside and outside. And it helps. It helps me at least to know that the ceiling is not the end. There is the limitless sky just a few feet beyond.

Death, the essential and crowning part of the room of life it seems. Things, are looking up.

Now.

I realized last night that is has been 20 years since I chose to take on the name of Christ by being baptized. Twenty years. What a wild ride it has been. When I began this journey I was positively convinced that this path, which is called strait and narrow, would bring me joy, peace and eternal life with my loved ones. So where am I now?

The image of stretched taffy comes to mind.

I am a terrible sleeper, always have been. I heard once that you can never "catch up" on your sleep that your body is either tired or rested at any moment in time and you can not get more sleep to make up for being tired yesterday. I don't know if that is true but I woke up this morning feeling rested. I don't remember the last time my mind was that clear.  Thanks to my loving Mother in law for letting my kids sleep over at her house last night. I was not disturbed once.

I thought again of my 20 years, of my walk sometimes crawl towards Jesus. I think faith is a lot like sleep. It is only ever valuable in the present. Every valley I have crossed, every peak I have reached in the past 20 years has only pushed me forward to now. Stretched thin nearly to nothing in some places and in others tasting heaven, all has been a part of creating the soul I have now.  

This is somehow shocking to me. This path of trial, sorrow, isolation, not the anticipated "joy, peace and eternal life with my loved ones" that I felt like I was signing up for. It's difficult to explain what kind of hell this road to heaven has taken me through. Everybody's hell is difficult to explain.

I am really sick of asking why. I am really sick of "I don't knows" sandwiched with "but I do knows..."  Faith is not a question, it is not an answer but it is a state that is uniquely created by extremity. My faith is what I have become because of my journey of questions: Why? What? Who? Seriously? and all the rest. If I had known then what I know now about choosing the journey as well as the destination, I'm sure it would have been a harder sell. All I had then was then. Now I have now. I am so grateful to that little girl that chose to enter in at that strait gait.

Another shocker is that all we have is Now. Our nows never die, they never change. In now is the constant rebirth and death of ourselves. I'm not one for drinking in moments, I usually think that I will choke. Learning to love these moments, these, now(s), I think there just might be something to that.  

I know this is a really odd way to come back to "look how happy my family is" blog scene after such a long absence. But there you have it. In other news, Patrick is about to graduate from Basic Combat Training in the United States Army. When he finishes next week he will immediately begin Officer Candidate School for another 12 weeks in Georgia. I am living with my loving parents, working full time as a Junior Consultant for Alternative Behavior Strategies.  I am also studying to take a board exam to become a BCBA in May. We have had another child and called him Lincoln Neil.

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perish, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:7