Day 293 Wash Away

Dear friends,

The Dunkin’ Donut Decaf is drained (alliteration – ha!), and I’m getting on fast to tired. Still I had to check in with my cyber homies, and give you yet another update on the good, the bad and the ugly in the life of yours truly, pilgrim blogger.

Too many sad things happened at the hospital tonite. Some days I kind of get into that mode where I run and hide from sorrowful stories. I was thinking about the song I heard on one of the “Lost” episodes. The song is called “Wash Away” by Joe Purdy. The melancholy strings in this song nearly perfectly mirror the mix of heartache over tragedy and joy over grace I think most everyone experiences on the human highway:

“I got troubles oh, but not today
Cause they're gonna wash away
They're gonna wash away
And I have sins Lord, but not today
Cause they're gonna wash away
They're gonna wash away...”

Truth is we can’t carry all the bitterness of life in a fallen world. Heck, we can’t even manage our own personal demons. The child who arrived at the hospital tonite after a near drowning is a pit so deep only The Savior can plummet the depths. There’s a balance to be found between becoming cold and callous, and losing our way in darkness over the pains of worldly disasters. I have not achieved that balance. I tend to swing from one wrong side of the line to the other. But I stretch. I strive.

So many of you entered in to our black cave back in November. You brought cheer and hope where it could have been airless and sunless. Somehow you struck it perfectly. You didn’t run away, and you didn’t become so overwhelmed that you couldn’t respond. I’m looking to learn how to do that far better than I do. Even when I don’t know what to say, I want to be there. Even when I feel awkward, I want to have the right words to speak or the wisdom to keep my mouth shut. And when the time comes to go and take a shower and look up at the stars and rejoice in all that is good, I want to do that too.

After a relaxing time of “looking up at the stars” (metaphorically) this weekend, it’s time to go back to the testing grounds of learning to love like Christ through the trials of the everyday, big and small. Things are about to change again, with school starting and summer’s unstructured, breezy days ending. We rocket toward November 8, and the end of the public record of this particular stretch of our road. I can hardly believe it.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Dessert Nite by going to http://www.smittythanks@gmail.com/. There are details on the sidebar of the blog, but all I need is for you to let me know your name and how many you’ll be bringing. It will be one of the great moments of my life to publicly thank the best of the best. That would be all of you.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann