bridges

I really love reading a good book. In university, I thought I would pair math with my history degree, but when that led to several days ending in tears, I shifted to English as my minor and fell in love with studying literature. I love a book that gets better when you break it down and uncover connections you missed on a first reading. I love a book that you can read again and discover new images and themes woven into the fabric of the story that you missed the first time through.
I also have a hard time not finishing any book that I start to read. I can picture several novels in my mind that I didn’t finish, and they haunt me like an incomplete task on a checklist that never expires. I really want to believe that if I can just stick it out long enough, surely these books can redeem themselves, or uncover a story arc that will magically connect all of the seemingly random pieces… but sometimes I give up before I can find out.
I want each story to wrap up, to resolve, to tie-in all the intricately woven ends to a glorious and insightful finish. It’s not so much to ask, is it?

I’m not big on New Years’ resolutions, but I do appreciate and try to take hold of any opportunity to pause and reflect on where I have been and where I’d like to be heading. So, maybe I am more into resolutions than I like to admit…
As we sat around with family this Christmas, we were taking about what had happened and orienting ourselves in the mixed up, hard to frame timelines of the last few years. Something about the pandemic and the flow of life within it has seemed to warp and shift time in bizarre ways.

It is two years this month since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And somehow that seems both too long and too short of a time to be true. Two years this week that we found out for sure, and started into the process of what treatment would look like; how we would move ahead from that moment of knowing.

It’s the kind of moment that halts the rest of the story; everything else can wait. This is what we’re doing now.
And we did. We did it and it’s done. It’s a story arc that in many ways has come to a close.
Thank goodness for that.

But it’s also a story arc that won’t ever quite end. This is true both because the realities of screening and checking will continue on for the rest of my life, but also it’s true because this chunk of life led to many new beginnings. There are pieces of who I am, and who we are as a family, that were changed, remade, and rediscovered as a result of this arc, of this road that we walked. Some parts are scars, literally and figuratively, that remind me of the trauma and challenges of a season of fighting cancer. And some of the beginnings are the contrary, not scars at all, but beautiful brush strokes of new possibilities, new colours, new life, and new dreams that literally budded and bloomed in the midst of a season of death.

I have been thinking about the story arcs of our lives, and how it is good and right and important to notice where we’ve come from, and to think about where we’d like to be heading. And it’s true that some storylines in our lives seem to come to an end; some relationships, jobs, challenges, joys, seem to live out their course and then fade or resolve. But in the story that is our lives, these tidbits have more than just come and gone, they have shaped and contributed to who we are. They have become a part of us, and in fact, when I have taken time to pay attention in the midst of these pieces, I have come to know more of my truest self, more of who I was created to be, and more of what I have been given to offer to others. So much of what we face in life is a hidden opportunity to know ourselves and God more fully. Not hidden because God wants to keep it a secret from us, but obscured so that we need to slow down to notice, tucked away so that we can uncover it as the treasure it is when we stop to listen and to learn. What we encounter, what we walk through, will always be a mixed bag. But we will be us. And God will be God. And those two truths hold just enough goodness and possibility, I have found, to keep hope and purpose alive.

My brother-in-law, sister-in-law and their kiddos moved in the last few years to Pittsburgh. We had the chance to visit at last this past year, and it’s such a gorgeous city. Mountains everywhere, with roads that seem to go up and down endlessly. You get an impressive calf workout just by walking to get the mail. The peaks, the valleys, and the yellow bridges everywhere that link up these seemingly disconnected chunks create a wide, integrated community. And those yellow bridges have been pinging in my mind this week as I think about story, as I think about books, as I think about the last two years.

More than an arc that has a beginning and an end, the stories of our real lives are bridges that lead us to new pieces of ourselves, and new invitations to what is next. When there’s an ending to be achieved, or an outcome to arrive at, there is so much tendency to rush, to pursue, to just survive through to the finish. But, oh this is so not how we are meant to live. I certainly have no desire to just survive through the arc of my life. I want to live it. And I want to live it fully.

I have no illusions that living fully will mean living in comfort, happiness, or calm. In fact, I believe it will often mean the exact opposite. But in the middle of whatever comes, I choose to remember and know who I am in God; I can be assured of God’s faithful presence and love, and I can trust that each day, each piece of this life is a bridge, because God is writing a story that doesn’t start or end with me or the outcomes I experience.

Our lives are not stories that wrap up neatly and succinctly, but really would we want them to be? I am praying for myself and for you, that this year, this month, this day, we can choose to be present to the real lives that are right in front of us. To pause, breathe, and notice where we are and who we are. And to listen to the invitation from the Spirit about what he is doing in us and around us right now. He is a God of stories, and to him, yours is always full of possibility and rooted in unconditional love. May we know both the deep grounding and the vast freedom that comes from living into a story rooted in that truth.
To me, it sounds like a bridge to all kinds of wonder and beauty. Let’s go! xo