It Is All Dust

Mark likes to joke that if a holy card with his image is ever produced, he will be holding a broom. In the words of a friend, he is a "tasker." When we have company, I could sit for hours and talk, but at some point Mark gets up and grabs the broom.

Similarly, I think Heidi would be holding a binder. From what I can tell, she had binders for everything: recipes, finances, meditations, literary ideas, etc. I had to laugh when a homeschooling mom recently began, "I'm pretty sure she had a binder of..." Yes. I'm sure she did.

I have to admit, at first I was perplexed by her preference for binders over notebooks or computer files, but I'm beginning to come around to her way of thinking. Binders allow so much more flexibility, rearrangement, addition and subtraction of contents. I kind of love it. Thanks, Heidi. :) 

Kevin recently offered me the opportunity to go through one of her binders. Each page is a conversation I only got to begin with her, or hadn't yet had. I am so grateful she left us pieces of her heart like this, written in her own hand. 

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Lent is a hard season, made all the more difficult in this dark, cold climate. "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return" sounds like despair, and who needs more of that when you're already fighting against a tide of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)?!

January changed that. 

When Heidi was sick and we were being tremendously, TREMENDOUSLY materially and practically  supported, often very sacrificially, by people near and far, I woke one morning and realized that as deeply grateful as I was, it wasn't enough. From then on, when I asked for prayer, it was because I knew truly that our greatest and most desperate need was for prayers - not [just] for healing, but for sustaining grace. Nothing, no one, was enough to be the "stilts of grace" that supported each step I took. Only Jesus. At that moment, for the first time, I knew, viscerally, what Lent is: It is all dust. 

Lent - or rather the particular emphasis that we are dust - isn't an affected despair or depression, it is a reorientation of our eyes from our present reality toward the light of eternity; it is a doorway of Hope. 

In that dawn of reorientation, I sank into Jesus's arms - his arms that weren't healing Heidi's body, but were holding my crumpled soul more closely than words can describe - and cried (I'm sure Heidi would appreciate that it was Shakespeare that came to mind in that moment), "I do love nothing in the world so well as you." 

Never have I been so utterly dependent on what only He could provide, and that put everything else in proper context. Dust. If it is all passing, there is no need to be preoccupied - more than is necessary for stewardship - with any of it. Two months on from her death the grace of that season has passed. As I've written before, in that season my gaze was held, but now I must make the effort to fix my gaze, and there is grace for that, but the choice is mine, and each moment offers another distraction. Come Holy Spirit.

Recently, Mark and I went to Florida for a few days of respite. We were in an area with more wealth that I can even comprehend. The unquenchable thirst to "purchase a sense of belonging" hung heavily in the air and filled me with sadness; we're made for so much more than to be lured by dust, or count our dignity, beauty, or belonging by how much dust we've collected. All the wealth in the world couldn't have saved her, nor restored her body had she lived, nor will it defend us in the only battle worth fighting.

It's all just dust, but I too choke on this dust. Lent is a gift.

In the words of a Luke Spehar song, "Father, you are all I have, but you are all I need...and my heart shall be glad."