When The Bottom Falls Out

We live in a world where the bottom falls out.

The regularities and relationships of our lives collide violently with change, and sometimes these collisions produce abrupt endings.

2013 was a year of deep collisions for me.

In May, my pastor of eight years unexpectedly resigned after disclosing a crushing moral failure on his part to our church’s elders team. Four months later in September my beautiful grandmother Lena suffered a heart attack and died unexpectedly. Three weeks after her death, I was hit from behind while driving home from work and the accident totaled my car and required six months of neck and back rehabilitation.

October also signaled the abrupt closure of Restore Hope Orlando, a local community center where I invested my heart, my tears and my prayers into the lives of elementary and middle school children for four years. Post-traumatic anxiety from the car accident along with a blanket of grief from my grandmother’s death gripped me through November and December. The experience caused me to wonder if I was on the brink of an emotional breakdown.

December also brought the awareness of significant transitions taking place at my job of 12 years. Several people I developed close relationships with would be leaving the organization the following spring. Leadership changes were on the horizon as well.

Life felt unstable and I was in turmoil on the heels of so many collisions and changes happening at the same time. My world became this concentrated funnel of pain. The bottom fell out. Grief simply overtook me. Mourning peered over my shoulders. The reality of loss ached in my soul until numbness set in and my goal each day was just to make it through that day.

The residue of grief created splinters in my spirituality. I’d spent 14 years of my life following Jesus. But the hell cascading all around me like millions of fiery darts began to shake up my theological surety. Almost two years later I’m still dealing with these splinters.

In pain you begin to ask questions. Pain clarifies things. There’s no room for the fake or the flimsy. These questions come out of you from a place that doesn’t even need an answer right now, you’re just compelled to get out the words that form the “why” “how” and “who” causes of your pain.

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to unpack each of the specific collisions that affected me and how my life changed as a result. I’m curious: what collisions have taken place in your life in the last two years? How did these collisions affect you? 

Finding Melodie

We are inclined to search for things that we lose. I feel I’ve lost parts of me – maybe even all of me – in the waves of unique losses and deep pain that etched themselves into the fabric of my soul during 2013.

Deadened emotions and numb feelings place their victory flags in the fertile ground of the heart. Fragile flesh and bone try their best to cope with the shock of intense things: deaths of loved ones, physical traumas, sickness and illness, damaged relationships, wrestling in theology and wondering is God really good.

Unspoken questions linger like musty cigar smoke, pungent in the soul, sticking to you:

Why is life so hard?

Did that really have to happen?

To me?

Where is God in all of this hell?

Real questions. True questions. Human questions. A non-stop march of change continues upon the calendars we make for lives, calendars that really should be written out in pencil and not pen. Something is always erasing what we thought would be what we wanted with those we chose to do them with.

The presence of pain continues to ebb and flow in and out of our lives.

Philip Yancey says that pain is a gift from God. In his book “Where Is God When It Hurts?” he writes: The pain network (in the body) deserves far more than token acknowledgement. It bears the mark of creative genius.”

I agree with him. Pain tells me that something is wrong, something is not right and I need to be fully aware in this moment about this pain. Pain can come physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and relationally. The pain alerts me to pay attention to ME. It whispers in my body as it stings its gift of awareness, “Melody you are hurt. You are bleeding. You are broken. You are burned. You are wounded. Listen to me. Listen to ME.”

Keys
Writers need new spaces for their words.

One way that I embrace this awareness of my pain is by writing. I’m creating a new space for my words in this world through this new blog, Finding Melodie. In this place I will explore and converse with you on themes that include losing, grieving, mourning, loving and living.

I’ll unpack these themes via weekly blog posts. As I pull out my feelings in these experiences I pray for authenticity and vulnerability with you, my readers.

I am on a journey that’s years in the making. A new chapter is being written for me and about me. The gift of my words changing me will be beautiful to witness. The gift of them changing you will be a sweet honor that I welcome with anticipation. Buckle up for the ride. Let’s get ready to find some melodies and hopefully, a bit more of ourselves.

Vintage Melodie: first twitter, now blogging…uh-oh

Originally posted on my first website via Blogger

finally – i have arrived…to the incredible world of bloggs. can you sense my excitement! no really, i’m looking forward to writing and sharing my thoughts on everything you could probably imagine through this communication medium. also, wondering who will be reading my creative ramblings and views on life and this wacky world? hmm, that will be fun to see, indeed.

so many of my friends have been blogging for quite a while now and one has even invited me to join a blog she’s created with several authors…now that i officially have launched my own blog, i most definitely need to get in the groove of dropping by as a guest blogger on that site too.

mmm…various topics, diverse persuasions, unique perspectives. i find myself tapping at my laptop keys, wondering, hmming, hawing, what exactly do i have to say, what WILL i say through my blogs?

only time will tell. but know this for sure: i’m gonna write to be real, so get ready, get ready, get ready: for the ride.

the one and only. ~ m