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life

Hope

May 6, 2019 By krystamacgray 6 Comments

I met someone recently who had lost her daughter. She told me about a visit she once had with her doctor. While talking about her emotional well being, this woman told her doctor she was struggling a bit. The doctor said something to the effect of “you need the healing power of Jesus Christ in your life.”

So.

Guess what she didn’t seek?

. . .

The meaning of names is a big thing in our family. Both mine and my husbands names have meanings that have each hinted about who we were and what we were doing here. We wanted to give our kids the same gift. We named our youngest Eleanor because we were smitten with the name itself and because it meant “shining light.” How great is that? Her middle name is Hope. For a while, I wasn’t on board with the middle name choice. My husband kept saying “I want to name her Hope. Hope is the greatest gift we’ve been given on this earth. There’s nothing better.” And I was always like “You think? What does that even mean? I don’t know about that.”

Around this time I happened upon Emily Dickinson’s famous poem:

Hope is the thing with feathers 

that perches in the soul

and sings the tune 

without the words

and never stops

at all—

This little string of sentences brought hope to life for me. Hope did do that. When we don’t have the words, it gives us the tune. And all of a sudden, there’s melody where there was once silence, however faint. And it never stops, at all. How great is that? I thought.

“We’ll name her Ellie Hope” I told Jeremy. 

I thought hope was amazing even though I was still thinking about it in the everyday sense. The way a new doctor with different ideas and methods might give a woman hope for a baby after not being able to get pregnant for five years. That kind of hope. Good for sure, but I hadn’t yet started to contemplate hope in the eternal sense. That is, hope as the gift that Jesus brought to the world. I knew my husband was thinking of that when he suggested the name in the first place. I knew about this kind of thing intellectually of course, but it didn’t really mean anything to me. Which is to say, I didn’t actually know.

. . .

The other night I had a dream. The night before, Jeremy had shown me a picture of Drew, a boy in Olivia’s class that had passed away last Thanksgiving. In the picture he was smiling for the camera on his mothers lap. Precious, beautiful boy he was. Jeremy said “I can’t imagine the sorrow his mom has to walk through everyday.” I always shut thoughts like this down real quick, or else they’ll destroy me right there on the spot. I won’t recover. I’ll end up a ball of worry, sadness and tears in my bedroom if I let the thought settle in past the first layer of my skin. I know this because I do let it settle sometimes. I do it intentionally. I let my heart break wide open in solidarity with the mothers and I pray on their behalf, mostly for comfort and peace. It’s just I don’t tend to do this when I am in the middle of making dinner like I had been this time. It stays with me though, even when I shut the sadness down quickly.

Then, I had my dream. In my dream, I was looking at Eleanor’s picture on my refrigerator and I knew she was gone. Sorrow settled deep in my chest as I thought about never being able to hold her again…

Until heaven anyway, I added. 

In my dream, I felt an epiphany of sorts. The words “until heaven” changed the way the dream felt to me. It wasn’t that anything dramatic happened. My sorrow did not leave me. But I think it was the moment when what I knew intellectually became what I actually knew. Because there was only sorrow the moment before, and then there was hope. A tune began to play. The dream played out a bit more and I despaired at having to walk with this tremendous loss for the rest of my life. The hope did not change that. But it did give me a sliver of thanksgiving amid my grief. When I woke up, groggy in the land of half-asleep half-awake, It occurred to me I had been dreaming. The sorrow was heavy on my chest. I could feel the weight of it, and then with the realization it was just a dream, relief blanketed me. I could breathe. And the breathing was easy. And then immediately, my thoughts went to Drew’s mom and the woman who had been to the doctors office. They hadn’t woken up to relief.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t FAIR. I raged that a mother or father anywhere would have to walk the rest of their days grieving the loss of their precious child. I found myself praying for them before I opened my eyes that morning. I prayed for the usual peace and comfort, and then I gave thanks that even in the midst of our greatest despair, God created a way to comfort us beyond what I had been praying—with the hope of Heaven. 

THAT’S why hope is so important. That’s why Christians fall on their faces in thanks to Jesus because that’s why he died. He died so that we could have new life after we die. Specifically, life with those we also love here. So that it doesn’t have to end and we’d get to see our beloveds again. That’s what it meant when I’d read the famous John 3:16 passage as a child, “For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son…” 

God loved us so, that he gave us a gift. A gift that cost the life of his own Son. The best possible gift ever—to not have to say goodbye for good—but only goodbye for now. 

Hope.  

That’s what the doctor was trying to tell the woman, I’m sure. He just really sucked at his delivery. And the timing was all wrong. Not to mention, I don’t think he was ever going to be the person able to give hope. Not then. Not like that. People muck this up all the time. We can be really insensitive about it and not even know. We can bust out with weird “you need the healing power of Jesus Christ” for people who are hurting in a way that we aren’t at the moment, who are not a part of Christian culture or accustomed to this kind of thing, and not realize it’s off putting. Not realize we are not offering the comfort or hope they so desperately need.

I think the hope of heaven can only be truly received if it’s shared out of trust that already exists in a relationship. Otherwise, I’m not sure it can have any weight or meaning. A doctor you see once a year who busts out with strange “Christianese” isn’t going to cut it. If we, the Christians, need years to cultivate trust and knowledge of who God is, then might I suggest so do other people? If we need years to get to place where we can believe God is good and He really does love us then, might I suggest, so do other people? And if we need somebody who we trust to share God with us, then might I suggest, that’s who they need too? 

I think our job as acquaintances and strangers, is to be the light. The shining light. Just like my little Ellie Hope. Always shining, never hiding, always learning from the marginalized, always inviting but never insisting or “should-ing” or thinking we are better than, but just shining on in the darkness.

. . .

There’s a scene in The Hunger Games where President Snow is talking to the Game Maker, Seneca Crane. If you don’t know the Hunger Games—-OMG, WHO ARE YOU?! FIX IT NOW!—I feel sorry for you. I do. 

Anyway, President Snow in all his cold, power hungry callousness asks the Game Maker, “why do you think we have a winner?” 

Seneca is confused, “what do you mean?” he asks. 

“I mean, why. Do we have. A winner?” he repeats it, heavy. “I mean, if we just wanted to intimidate the districts, why not round up 24 of them at random and execute them all at once? It would be a lot faster.” 

Seneca looks at him to say he doesn’t know. He’s never thought about it before. President Snow dips his head down, looks Seneca in the eyes and says “Hope.” 

Seneca repeats “Hope?” 

“Hope. it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective…A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine. As long as it’s contained.” 

Seneca answers “so?” searching for what President Snow wants him to do next. 

“So. Contain IT” President Snow directs.

President Snow is the dark force in The Hunger Games. A little hope is effective, he’ll permit it. A lot of hope is dangerous. Dangerous for him because he needs people to be afraid in order to retain power.

The darkness wants you afraid. A little hope is allowed so you don’t rebel or dare to seek more. It’s contained. 

The light wants you to live without limit. It offers hope abounding, even after death. Hope. The only thing stronger than fear.

We’re invited to dare to believe it’s true. But of course, I know it’s not that easy. I can make it sound tidy here in an essay but we all know it’s messier than that.

You must test and see that God is good. I get it. 

You must find a way to believe that Heaven is real. I know. 

Must you now believe just the right thing about Jesus? Yikes. That seems complicated.

Is any of this real?

Uh, huh. You are not original in your Charlie Foxtrot, okay?

Everyone grapples with this. 

Well, most everyone. I guess what I’d say is that, it’s allowed. It’s all part of it. What’s more, I figure God already knows I grapple and doubt and try to prove and…and…and…So I don’t need to try and hide it from Him. I figure he wants the real me. Not the me pretending to have it all figured out or hiding behind pat answers I’m actually skeptical of.

If you want to skip ahead of all these questions, which you probably won’t be able to do, but let’s pretend you could— I can tell you how it ends. 

God shows you He is good. Then, you start to believe Him when He says He loved us so much that he sent his Son so that we might be reunited with Him and those we love after death. 

This is where you end up. 

Eventually. 

I mean, first you’ll be confused by old testament God stuff and then absolutely shocked to learn that Jesus seems a little harder and opinionated than you imagined.

Then you’ll go off on weird tangents and particulars in your faith and get all distracted.  For example, Jesus not being all love bombs and rainbows confused me because he didn’t turn out to be what I expected. Because of this, for a while, I wondered if I could just deal with God and not figure out the whole Jesus thing. The Jesus part is what gets everybody uncomfortable anyway. God rarely does, you know. Most people accept there is a God even if they use a different word for it. It occurred to me at a certain point during this exploration, that without Jesus there is no Christianity, so my approach wasn’t going to work. Then mercifully, I realized it was the organized religion part of Christianity with their declarations of who-is-in and who-is-out that makes me uncomfortable, not actually Jesus. 

So, phew! Dodged that bullet.

It get complicated, okay? This is what you have to know. What I’ve learned though, is that for the most part, anything that confuses me is usually due to my own lack of understanding or context in some area. And so I keep learning until things smooth out and make sense to me. If I chase my questions long enough, I don’t usually get answers, but I do get brought back to the heart of God and Jesus—a soft place to land. But before this, I get all bound up over an issue of the times, conflicted and worried. Then eventually, I remember God is just there. Not waiting for me to figure it out perfectly but rather, just delighting that my heart is after Him and his goodness in the first place. And then I can breathe again. 

Forgetting-conflict-worry-remembering-grace-hope. This is my way. But regardless of how many times I go through this spin cycle, one thing is certain.

Hope in abundance is on the other side.

Which is Good News. I was tired of being contained and afraid.

Filed Under: Stories Tagged With: christianity, death, god, Hope, jesus, life

LIFE UPDATE + SLOW COOKER PORK LOIN “CARNITAS”

April 3, 2018 By krystamacgray Leave a Comment

I hope everyone had a fabulous Easter weekend.

I’m going to do something a little different today. This blog post is going to be a letter to you, instead of a story with a beginning, middle and end, all wrapped up in a bow….

Read More »

Filed Under: Food, Stories Tagged With: books, family, husbands, life, marriage, pork carnitas, sisters, The Husbands Wife

God’s Time

March 23, 2018 By krystamacgray Leave a Comment

This morning I woke up slow and full of ripe abundance. I considered my family and their health, and my relationships to them. I thought about the financial resources that afforded my husband and I to go on a date last night to our favorite special place, Cloverdale. For the luscious food we got to eat there. For my in-laws who babysat our kids so we could.

As I laid there in my comfy warm bed it occurred to me that I was thankful for that too. Then, as I always do, I started to run through my day. It is Friday and on Friday I’ve got Ellie at home with me and I don’t usually workout. This fact normally makes me very happy, but this morning I was grateful that I could work out. That my legs worked correctly and that I had the time. Wonder of wonders. I almost wished I could workout.

Almost.

I remembered that my sister was planning to come over with my nieces this morning. I thanked God that Ellie had cousins on both sides of the family to grow up with. How lucky. How blessed.

Kairos.

It’s raining today.

A 48 year old man died yesterday in town on a construction site close to our house. I passed the site yesterday and saw police officers taking pictures. I didn’t suspect anything like this. It could have been my husband.

Yesterday morning that man ate breakfast and headed off to work like he had thousands of times before. An ordinary day. Ordinary in every way, except that it was his last.

Did he have kids? I asked my husband.

No. But a wife.

Why do I always ask if there are kids? The second I find out the answer is no, it makes no difference. There is a wife and she is in pain today. There’s always a wife or husband or child or mother or father. Someone always grieves. It’s like I want everyone who dies to have no loved ones. I want them to have lived alone as a hermit with no family ties so that no one has to grieve their death.

Because grieving death is so final. When you grieve someone you love, you will grieve them all the days of your life from that day forward. There will always be a before and an after. It’s the saddest burden to have to carry. And also an honor. Because, of course, when there are people who grieve it means that there were people in this world who loved you and that you loved in return who carry the memory of you. Who cherish you, still. The more people who grieve, the better the life, really. So while I want the departed to have no grieving loved ones, I also want them to have dozens and dozens and dozens.

When I find out the man’s name I look him up on Facebook. I always do this when people die. I look them up and stare into their faces and read the things they posted. I do this to confirm that yet again, this person was a real live human being with things to say and travels past and people loved and a life lived.

I just can’t believe it.

I think I look to hope that they weren’t real. But they always are.

I look up the loved ones too. To study the faces of the people who yesterday were living as normal but today everything has changed. They will be me someday. We all just take turns with loss. I pray for them. I pray for the peace of God to wrap them up like a weighted blanket. To whisper yes it hurts, but that the promise is for a reunion someday not too far from now. It’ll only be a blink. I pray they would eventually see their grieving as an honor to be had, the mark of a life well lived. The hope yet to come. But not today. I know these words mean nothing today. Today we cry. We steep in the pain and we let them steep in the pain. It’s the beginning stage of healing. The holy baptism of pain.

And this morning, I am reminded of all I have. I don’t think about what I don’t have. Not today. I don’t focus on the sufferings of parenting a handicapped daughter unable to speak, or that I’m going through what seems to be a mini midlife crisis of answering the question “what am I supposed to be doing with my life?” I don’t grumble that I’ve got to figure out what is for dinner and fold the laundry and call that person back that I don’t want to. Or resent that I can’t take a nap today even though my head hurts and I’m tired.

How dare I do any of that anyway. I know that we cannot always live through the lens like this precious day grants us. I know I’ll complain again and it’ll be okay. This is life.

I’m reminded of what David Cassidy said on his deathbed…”So much wasted time.”

So much wasted time.

The regret in that statement is heavy.

We cannot live everyday like it is our last. And we cannot be grateful for everything, and love everyone perfectly, one hundred percent of the time. And yet, that’s what we ache for. That’s what we wish we could do. When faced with the end, that’s the lens we wish we would have seen the world through more.

I hate being a flawed human.

But also, that’s all I can ever be.

The flawed human who grumbles and hurts people but wishes they could live and love and pay careful attention to everything perfectly. How do you reconcile that?

I happened upon an essay yesterday written by my favorite, Glennon Doyle, about the difference between Chronos time and Kairos time. She explained that there is this idea in the world that you need to MAKE THE MOST OF EVERY MOMENT and ENJOY EVERYTHING, but how, in her experience, as well meaning as this is, it’s also…impossible?

It’s also only usually said by people not in the messy middle of things. The older women in the Target checkout line would tell Glennon to enjoy every moment of raising her children. Just every moment. They say it to me too. They say this because they are afforded the benefit of coming at it with nostalgia and perspective. They are no longer in the trenches and feeling guilt about just having yelled at her children because they needed to be disciplined but you just couldn’t summon the resolve to go about it in a more constructive way, and now they are crying and probably need therapy.

The idea behind Chronos time is that, this is the time we most live in. It’s the time where all the kids are crying, or you are in pain or complain mode. It’s the daily grind. it’s the distraction of having to get everything done. It’s the hard, meaningless, slow passing time.

Then there is Kairos time, which is God’s time. Glennon describes Kairos time as, “time outside of time.”

It’s the time that takes place when you actually look at somebody. When you notice and connect. When you pay careful attention to the warm tea cup in your hand and the cinnamon smell coming from your cup and it makes you feel grateful and safe. When you witness a spectacular pink sunset and it captures your attention for more than 10 seconds and you don’t even take your phone out to take a picture because you just want to behold. You behold a lot in Kairos time. When you bury your nose in your children’s hair and soak in the warm sleep smell of the early morning. When you laugh hard with your husband after tequila and pizza on the porch and never want the night to end. Kairos.

I think what David Cassidy meant when he said “so much wasted time” was that he wished he’d known to spend more of his time in Kairos and less in Chronos.

Kairos time shows us the abundance and sweetness in our lives. It’s slow and healthy and gift. When we live in Kairos time, we feel most alive and we hold court with peace and joy. It’s where we find richness and meaning and beauty.

I think this is because God is there. God is with us. He always is, but Kairos time helps us notice Him a little better, amongst everything.

If death is a perspective shifter, then I think the best way to honor those who have helped us see with their passing, is to keep trying to live in Kairos time. Because it’s the only kind of living that matters in the end.

We won’t get it right, by any means. We won’t always remember, but we must be gentle with ourselves. No need to feel badly about that. We can’t live in Kairos all the time here. I have a feeling that’s reserved for heaven. So no need to grieve the time lost, or chances wasted in the past. There’s always more.

There is more time. More chances. More life.

Even after death.

More Kairos.

God is with us.

Filed Under: Stories Tagged With: death, family, god, kairos, life

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Krysta MacGray

Wife of one, mother of four, lover of books, seeker of growth, hunter of beauty, gatherer of inspiration, student of wisdom, maker of art, spreader of wildly inappropriate humor, and writer of longer than necessary texts.
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