Surf and Sand

My computer has been on the fritz for nearly three months... Many of my photographs from our California Road Trip are trapped on its hard drive but I managed to grab a few - including a few here that feature Morrow Bay and the Getty Villa - before it went back to the repair shop. Few things soothe my soul so much as seeing images of my girls fully engaged in the beauty of God's world...

A Child's Prayer

It was a quiet afternoon. I sat on my bed, sorting books while Audrey arranged her dolls on the carpet beside me.

“Guess what Audrey?” I asked.

“What?” Her head popped up over the edge of the bed.

“Ella and Kate are coming home in two days!”

“Two days?” Her weary eyes widened.

“Yes, two.”

Suddenly her eyes glazed; she looked away, abstractedly, then sighed. “O,” she said, turning her eyes back to me, “and Olivia won’t be with them?”

It was half a question, half a lament - one little note of protest, testing the finality of the absence she had learned to call 'death.'

“No,” I said, my voice quavering, “she won’t.”

That night at dinner Audrey prayed: "Dear Jesus, thank you that Ella and Kate are coming home soon. And please help me and Evie to be patient about having our princess dolls. And please help Becca and Brice to be patient about seeing Livia again. Because I know they still cry.

Amen"

Joy...

In a word. In a moment. In my heart forever.

Paper Happy

After my dear friendBetsy featured some photos of Carrie and Ryan's invites on her blog, their suite was featured on 100 Layer Cake and OH SO Beautiful Paper. It was such a privilege to be able to translate my love for Ryan and Carrie into something touchable and visually stimulating; and I'm happy that other people were inspired by it, too. Carrie works at a travel agency and both she and Ryan have traveled extensively so the travel theme was not only inspired by my sisterly confidence that they will "go far" together, but by their mutual love for seeing the world.

Credit goes to Betsy for acting as the project's "artistic director," and to our friend, Sarah, whose own over-sized wedding invites first inspired me to try to put together something unique for Ryan and Carrie.

I should also mention, for anyone eccentric enough to try something like this, that the paper for the liners was purchased at Cavallini Papers. I ordered several different travel and vintage-themed papers - one with old passport stamps and stickers, one with vintage world maps, and another with vintage stationary - and then, because I am totally nuts, selected which one to use based on the color scheme of the stamps and the biography of the person, if I knew any part of it!

Jellyfish

From now on I'll post pictures in order but, proud mother that I am, I had to put these "Photos by Audrey" taken at the Monterey Aquarium at the front of the line... The light was bad inside, and all the pictures are a little blurry, but I love the images she captured.

The Ace

We spent the first part of August winding up the California coast... I armed with my camera, Evie with her "bink" and her "blank," and Audrey with a 35mm Diana mini. On several occasions she even borrowed my large lens... I am looking foward to posting snapshots, from a variety of vantage points, large and small.

Sorry and Glad Together

"As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing..."

"The day is yours, and yours also the night..." ~Psalm 74.16

I've not written much since Olivia's death. I haven't known how. It's as though I've put on a pair of those silly 3D glasses - the contours of the world are different now, unaccountably different; there is a new dimension to existence - the dimension of grief and loss - and no one's told me how to integrate it into what was previously my "normal life." As a result I've been apprehended by the sense that what I have to write is either too weighted down with grief, or too frivolous, and I haven't known how to strike a balance between the two.

Wherever I am - but especially in the presence of Olivia's parents and sisters - there is a hole. Though a ray of hope pierces even our darkest hours - there is a new shadow over every shining moment. Life feels simultaneously as though it cannot go on and like it must go on... Both sensations are impossibly, even imposingly true and real; but any attempt to give vent to one over the other feels like an act of betrayal...as though I am denying one truth in order to express another.

I ask myself: How can I move forward when moving forward feels like leaving her behind? (It isn't.) How can I rejoice in all that's worthy of rejoicing in when the world is so full of sorrow? (Somehow, I must try.)

There is an old Innocence Mission song with lyrics that go, "This flurry of plans is over, over / And I'm sorry and glad together / Our bustling house is sane now, sane / now / And I'm sorry and glad together..." That is how I feel exactly – the whirlwind of activity that so often marked the time we spent together, watching our girls tear up the ground, has been tempered, and all the plans we had have... well, they have been given back to God – and I am sorry and glad together. Like a long, low sigh after an extraordinary book, I am filled with sorrow that Olivia's life on earth is over at the same time that I am glad her story collided with and became part of our stories for a little while.

I see, too, that I must accept that when writing about life - about real life - there is no way to strike the perfect balance, to follow every thread. There are countless running narratives in every story, so many that it's impossible to convey them all. On a basal level, life is always at least two things together - joy and sorrow are like bookends, marking off the boundaries that contain everything in between, and they take turns throwing themselves into center stage.

This blog began as an affirmation of the life God had given me. At a time when I felt most acutely aware of my limitations and failures - certainly as a writer, but also as a mother/wife/daughter/sister/friend - I realized I must make a decisive choice about where I was going to focus my concentration.

I could choose to focus on my seeming "deprivations" and failures - and thus shrink back into a paroxysm of self - self-reproach, paralysis, and despair or I could choose to fix my eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of all things, and to discipline myself to view life through the lenses of His Word.

This required, and requires still, not only a childlike faith, a faith that recklessly says "Yes" to God; it requires the suspension of disbelief, a decision not to disbelieve, not to say "No." That may sound redundant or over-complicated - double-negatives always are! - but I have found both muscles are indispensable and must be flexed on a daily basis if I am to remain "accessible" to God, letting Him write my life story and take me to all the places He wants me to go.

I can choose to say “Yes” to the everyday miracles – like watching the way the light works its way through clouds, and the colors it casts over my horizon. I can choose not to despise "the day of small things," and believe that God has not only initiated a great work in my life, and the life of the world, but that He delights in the work He is doing.

Every time I stoop to snap a photograph, or wriggle wildly out a window, or stop dead in front of a shop display, or weave across scraggly cliffs while Dutch looks down at me, wagging his head, smiling, to capture one-millionth part of the moment, I am saying "yes" to my Creator, to the life He has given me, to the world He has made, and the people He has peopled it with - I am finding Him in even the small moments, and glorying in the "small things," gifts, all of them, which He has created to fill up my days.

And when circumstances arise, like the death of a little girl, our sweet Olivia-Lu, to test my faith – to arrest my “Yes” and press it back against the wall – I am free to lament and mourn and present my complaint to God; but I must refrain from dismissing the plausibility of His goodness in a particular situation before I have grasped His purpose. "Shall we accept good from God, and not evil?" asked Job.

This is very hard; but any teacher will tell you that it's awfully presumptuous to judge an Author before you have really listened to what He has to say - or let Him see His story through.

What would have happened if Christ had rejected the cross because it offended His sense of justice? What would have happened had Jesus turned away from such an arduous calling because, like the scoffers who dismissed Him on the grounds that He came from Galilee, He couldn’t possibly see how anything good could come from one man’s dying on a cross?

We are judgers, all of us. But we forget that we lack perfect knowledge... and all our best estimations are hopelessly one-sided.

On the pendulum of life, the needle still swings back and forth, from joy to pain and back again; these states persist, and are reconcilable only through Christ – "who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:1). His finished work on the cross means that, although we will still weep, our tears "will never be shed again in the way they were before" (Oswald Chambers, A Place of Help). Sorrow remains but with a promise - He will transfigure every tear into a shout of praise, and the blackest holes will swell and bloom into gardens of beauty.

This is the Christ-life; I have tested it, and it is true in the old-fashioned sense of the word. It remains trustworthy where all else is counterfeit.

So I will continue to put up these pictures and words. These words and pictures. Not because they have, in themselves, any particular power or merit. But because they are my gift to Him. My way of strengthening feeble knees, of learning to walk by faith-sight and not mere eye-sight, and to accept what He has given, even the heart-rending thing, glorying in it, and giving it back to Him.

Thank you, Lord, for broken arms, and lungs that struggle to take in air; thank you for Dutch, and all the days he's gone. Thank you for Olivia. Thank you for her life; thank you for her death; and for the good things which have already come as a result of her having lived. Thank you for your magnificent promises - that as Solomon said, 'the end of a matter is better than its beginning.' Thank you that, in Christ, we possess the glorious hope of seeing her again, "in a little while," on that beautiful shore.

R + C = Married!

The very talented Vanessa Kearnes - photographer to the stars! (well, those I consider stars, anyway) - posted some teaser photos of my brother, Ryan, and his beautiful Carrie as "bride" and "groom." I think they played the parts elegantly, don't you?

The Wrong Side of the Door... Spring Retrospective

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves – that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us the ‘beauty born of murmuring sound’ will pass into a human face; but it won’t. or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day Give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in.” ~CS Lewis, "The Weight of Glory

Lulu

"Fear not," says Jesus, "I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore...and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev. 1.17-18).

The last four weeks have given me little time to sleep, let alone to write. A wedding and two funerals … a lifetime’s worth of heartache with a little joy thrown in. On the afternoon of June 12th we received the news that our precious god-daughter Olivia "Lulu" Kopas had been in a drowning accident - and at 2:51 am, after many hours of tearful petitions, God answered our prayers, though not in the way that we had hoped: He graciously chose to heal and restore Olivia by taking her to Himself, into the joy of His Presence, and out of the brokenness of this world.

Those of us who knew and loved her best... well, for us there are no words to adequately describe our grief.

It feels a little like dropping a flashlight into a deep, deep well. One sees the fading light flicker as it falls; and hears the reverberating echo as the beam descends and disappears. But one can do nothing to recover it. This is work only Christ can do; and He has done it!

Yet I have never had a more distressing experience – standing by her bedside, holding her little heel in the palm of my hand – such a fine, smooth heel! – and surveying all the delicate features which had become as familiar to me as those of my own daughters’: there were the little bow legs, the stout tummy, the long smooth arms, the rosebud lips and flaxen hair – her mother and I even took a moment to marvel at the little flap of skin on her pinkie finger which she had shut in the door the week before, and lament the fact that we would never enjoy the privilege of seeing it grow back.

I looked into her face and smiled: her mouth was turned down into that infamous little pout – the one that used to make us laugh and call her “Grandpa Kopas” because her expression in those moment’s so recalled her grandfather’s.

But for the profound stillness of her body, the ashen skin and – dear Livvy, you looked as though you were only sleeping! Here she is, a part of me insisted, she’s right here! How can she be gone? And if gone, then where?

A wild feeling of panic swept over me like a wave. Then a kind of blind rage, and an overpowering feeling of indignation: for here before me wasn’t Livvy – it was death, which had come into the world because of sin.

I never knew my heart could hurt so much. Never knew, as CS Lewis says, that grief felt so much like fear. Nor had I experienced the kind of snorting anger I imagine Jesus felt when facing Lazarus’s tomb.

I understood in that moment as I had never understood before why Christ came to earth, and what His coming really accomplished. His death and resurrection meant that this was not the end, but only an intermission – a break in the story, but only on our end: for Olivia, the story goes on; and I imagine her movement from this life to the next was as seamless and simple as it is for me to turn the page in my book, flipping from the end of one chapter to the opening of another.

As I stood at her bedside, in those blackest hours before sunrise, I saw myself standing in the shadow of the Resurrection. The light emanating from Christ’s Risen Form was blinding and yet still there was a shadow – the Valley of the shadow of death, which all must pass through - though because of Christ we can walk through it without fear of evil or loneliness: for He is with us, every step, helping us to leave the old man behind in order to put on the new one.

There is one more thing - I can almost say it boldly now: Olivia’s death has given us a very great and precious gift: by transferring the object of our affections to eternity, God has made the way forward easier; we cannot help but “set our affections on things above.” For she is there. She and He together.

“Behold, I have set before thee an open door,” Jesus says to John in Revelation, “and no man can shut it” (Revelation 3). This door, the door to eternal life, opened for Olivia on June 13th; and no matter how we tried, none of us could shut it. Now, instead of waiting for her to return to us, we must go to her: entering through that great and narrow Door which only a few find, the door that is Christ. “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture” (John 10.9).

a royal wedding

It is wedding season, and this spring I had the privilege of soliciting the artistic talent of my friend, Betsy, to put together a wedding invitation suite for my sister-in-law-to-be, whose marriage to my brother will take place in just a few short weeks. The invitations were printed on enormous sheets of hand-made French paper, folded intricately, and then bound with baker's twine and sealed with wax. They were a dream to work on! A wonderful reprieve from laundry and dishes, I must say, and I do think Jane Austen would have been proud.

I happened to be folding and tying and stuffing and sealing a great many envelopes while William and Catherine were exchanging their nuptials; and although I had to draw a breath when I saw the stunning Miss Middleton, swathed in lace and tulle, float from the lobby of the Goring Hotel into her humming automobile, I was even more swept away by the words of Reverend Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London who - with shining eyes and a great deal of English zest - delivered a most moving wedding sermon.

"In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding," he said, "with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future." He reminded the future king and queen of England that "A spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves," identifying the dangers of living in a world where devotion to romantic love has eclipsed, even replaced, devotion to God. Most people's lives reflect the belief that "personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life;" which, he noted, "is to load our partner with too great a burden."

Instead, by grounding our ideas of love in God as He has revealed Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ, we discover that "the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves..."

I couldn't help but agree.