from the southside, vol. 1

"only love

can bring the rain

that makes you yearn to the sky.

only love

can bring the rain

that falls like tears from on high"

--pete townsend

so i'm sitting at my desk, wrapping up a short day in the office. there is plenty to do to fill this whole day, but i have other things to do. i'm waiting on an email to tell me that caro and alex's little girl made it into the world safely. today is cate's birthday. today is a pretty sweet day. later today, i'll drive across a stretch of texas, so i can attend the funeral of a great lady, with whom i shared my birthday. in a few days, i'll celebrate the birthday of one of "my babies" first baby. next weekend, i'll go spend some time with my brother and sister-in-law, who just lost a dear friend. and in a few short months, two new babies will make their presence known in the world, and just knowing that is coming down the pike is pretty incredible.

life and death are so very intertwined. i say that, i write it, and i think that it's too simple to just say it like that. but maybe it IS that simple. maybe solving the mystery, whistling in the dark, trying to make sense out of something that is so far beyond what we can even start to comprehend is just an exercise in futility. i wish i knew why and how babies really were made. i mean, i get the mechanics, that's not the issue. i wonder why some people can have them, why some people can't, why some people choose to raise other people's babies. at the same time, i wonder why some people get sick, why some people get well, why some people die with a whole life behind them, and why some people die with a whole life unlived in front of them. i don't understand it at all. and i don't want to want to understand it, anymore. i want to just accept the mystery and the ultimate gift that each life and death offers to us. even if i had the answers, who's to say that i would even understand them. they would probably make about as much sense as the quadratic equation, which is none. so, i imagine that's just as well.

God's ways are so much higher than my own. and i suppose that knowing that makes all the difference in how i feel today, a day of very mixed and very different emotions.

a friend sent me a message last week about rain falling from the southside of heaven. i like that thought. it means we aren't so divorced from heaven, after all, and i think that's a good thing. in church, i spend a lot of time wrestling with the idea of the already and the not yet, the Kingdom of God between us, and the Kingdom that is coming. so to think of myself as just on the outskirts, the almost/the not-quite, of heaven, seeing things through a veil, that makes me feel like all the emotional whiplash of the last few days is much less severe.

the births, the deaths, the miracles, the meanings in the tea leaves, and all the different journeys down all the different roads... i am learning to lean into them. and thanks be to God for favors large and small.

mil besos,

rmg