The Pizza

In my family there's an epic story that gets told and retold almost every time we're together.
The truth is, it's a dumb story. But my younger brother can't stop telling it. He likes to remind us about it, and bring it up whenever there's occasion. Now we bring it up as a joke on him, but we're still telling the stupid story.
It was one of those nights when mom was gone or sick; can't remember. she wasn't there so we were having freezer pizzas, which we hardly ever did. One of them happened to be particularily nasty-looking with bally sausage clumped in the middle and melted between some sparse cheese. The other one was OK, so we ate all of that. Then, because we were still hungry, my dad took the gross sausage culprit and went to the bathroom with a knife. His words were, "I'll scrape this poop off into the toilet where it belongs."
Being eight, six and four, it was hilarious.
And ever since then, no one has forgotten.
Every family has one of those storytellers. The ones that remember the details no one else cares about. The one who brings up the embarrassing moments at the most awkward times, like when your first boyfriend is over, or at a meet-the-parents kind of thing.
The truth is, we would have forogtten about that pizza twenty years ago if it hadn't been for David, always telling it to us. The phrase he uses is, "Remember that pizza?"
We used to all giggle. Then we'd ask what about it. Then we'd laugh again. Then we'd have to tell it to whatever company we were in. Now we all just kind of roll our eyes or resign with a little smirk. It's funny, but it's not the story itself that's funny anymore. It's the remembering.
So tonight, while my girls were eating and one of them said, "Remember that..." I realized they're the right ages. They'll have some night with Dad that they always remember. They'll have TV shows they watched and talk about, movies they quote, songs they sing. The rite of siblinghood, I guess.
The thing about the Pizza, though, is that the whole thing happened in only five minutes. And it was such a regular day. So mundane, really. Dad making freezer pizzas. Americans do that every day all over, and most of them don't go back and remember that "one time".
But I want my kids to have those "one times". I think they will remember stupid things, silly things that we do. And I think that they'll end up with their own pizza story. That's how it works as generations grow. we share our memories and stories with each other. I hope that we aren't all too absorbed in media and phones to have moments like that, forgotten and thrown away. I hope that my kids get to laugh hard together for thirty years about something stupid. Though hopefully it's not about pizza with dog poop on it.

The Flight of the Robin

Robin and I met because we were in science class at the same lab table. We became friends because we had the same birthday. And we had one of those epic friendships. Where you do all kinds of stuff together and you talk about whatever’s on your mind without filtering it, and you just exist as yourself, comfortable, because weird was status quo between us. Seriously, I think I knew she was best friend material when I noticed that she wore a bracelet made out of a melted toothbrush. That's how awesome she was.

We were both fringe people, I think. I think that ended up being what made us better friends than the rest of our groups. There were two groups of people we hung out with together. One were the church kids. They all went to church together. Except me and Robin didn’t. I went to another church and she didn’t go to church. The other group were the smart kids. They’d all gone to elementary and middle school together. Robin and I had come from separate schools, but separate from theirs too. So they had some kind of camaraderie that we weren’t part of.

We all got along fine, but I think that both of us always felt like we didn’t truly belong. So we sort of had our own thing going even though we ran in the same circles. We were with the brilliant kids who got great grades, but our grades didn’t make us salutatorians (well, maybe she was. I don't remmeber now). We were both in the music ensembles, but we didn’t live and breathe it like some people did. We weren’t first chair material. We were both religious people who knew God, but we weren’t part of the pastor’s kids inner circle that understood things that we didn’t. So being different made us the same.

I was clueless and it took me a long time to realize that she and I were more different from each other than I thought, too. We were so similar. We liked so many of the same things. And we thought the same way. And I always knew there was a sadness that followed her around but I didn’t really put it all into place until later. I always felt like there was something I didn’t know about her, but I didn’t realize that her hiding was a way of protecting herself.

We spent four years together in high school, but after I got married I felt a rift developing. Too clueless to see that she’d sort of shut me off, I pursued our friendship thinking it was me. I know it partly was, but I guess part of it was her too. And I wish I’d known what to do then. But it seemed like I’d lost her. After a year or so I stopped trying. I missed her horribly, but I sort of figured things had just ended and there wasn’t much to do to change it.

I’ve written about her before on here. I just never wanted our friendship to end. I’d pray for her sometimes. I’d think of her often, and I kept most of the things I had that reminded me of her. Batman and Robins, pictures, stupid notes we’d written, moose slippers. They hurt to see but I didn’t want to forget her either. So I just kept her in my heart.

I’d just prayed for her a few months ago, and just sort of decided to let it all go, when out of the blue I got a message on facebook from her. What a surprise. What an answer to prayer. I thought I’d lost her forever, but that's not true anymore. I know this, because she sent me a picture on facebook of a Batman and Robin monster keychain… and I think that just sealed the deal. Things are different, but in a lot of ways the same. And I’m overjoyed to be sharing life again with her. The moral of the story is, if you don’t want to give up on someone, and even if you do want to, just don’t.

The Broken Songs We Sing

This week has been a helluva. It just seems to get worse for people around me, and it just... feels like the darkness is getting a little too close. The last two weeks have been so full. Good and bad, mixed together, but f course the bad comes out stronger, uglier and seemingly triumphant. I'm really tired of bad news.
It's not just that two things got stolen from me. Because I know they weren't that big of a deal. It's just more and more bad news. People are dying a lot in the local news. I had to report my stolen kindle to the police today which made me so sad. But it's not even a big deal because there are some people I know whose lives aren't ever going to be the same this week.
And sometimes there just isn't much to say while we stand around in the aftermath, the ripples of the troubles floating out around us. Sometimes ther'es not much to do when brokenness encroaches when we realize again how hard this life is, when reality hits too close to home.
We stand there, hands in pockets, staring into space, thinking maybe there are answers out there, maybe if we think harder or prayer harder or just cry a little more, some how it will patch itself back together and then, maybe, maybe things won't seem quite so black. Maybe it's just a little blip on the radar in the scheme of it all. But that doesn't make it any less dark.
And maybe we'll never be the same.
What's there to do for that friend whose life just isn't going right? For my relative who's marrying her girlfriend and whose family emits the hatred vibe toward her? Whose husband lost his job? For the little girl who grew up among us at church and is now going to bury her husband of five weeks? For that family of fifteen kids whose mom won't ever kiss them goodnight again?
Anger and rage surround the questions that burn in my chest, and they mostly just come out in tears or in painful questions I can't answer. Sometimes I wonder why I believe in anything. Sometimes I question if what I do believe is really just some well-crafted lie that people made up to make themselves feel better. And just when I get to that point, I step back and remember.
Love gets the final word.
It isn't really a consolation when you're in the middle of the pain. It doesn't really change how crappy it all is. But it opens up a door that lets a little light in. Jesus gets the final say. And he's going to wipe tears from our eyes and tell us it's all all right.
He's going to build a new kingdom of perfection where sorrow dies, where lies are not believed, where love and light dwell eternally.
And even while we wait, He's good. His promises are true, no matter how we feel. I wouldn't have been able to say that seven years ago. Maybe not even five years ago. But the song that grief sings is temporary. And when joy seeps back in, you look over your shoulder and find those dark days were covered in something inexplicable, something mysterious and untouchable, and yet so reachable, so personal. Something that heard all of those lonely cries in the night, something that worked behind the scenes, moving people to do the right things, patching the broken pieces of your heart into something new and beautiful. Something that spoke to you at the point when you were ready to give up and let go. Love. And there, in that place where grief drops off and love takes over, we find fortitude and Strength, we find Hope, and we find Peace.