Monday, March 24, 2014

leaden echo, golden echo

I've been wanting to write about this for two weeks now, and after a few false-starts think I might actually finish.  I'm waiting to do a skype interview for a teaching job and I'm nervous.  I hope writing can help relax me a bit.

We attended Sarah's memorial service a few weeks ago; it was such a beautiful tribute to an amazing woman.  Many emotions rolled through me that morning as I listened, felt, and watched.  I could only sob as  her two youngest kids walk out of the chapel with their arms around each other, the last ones of the family to exit.  I try to banish the feeling of helplessness that begins to well up within me with sights like that.  I hope my hugs to them, given later, portrayed at least a portion of the love and hope I have for them.

During the service many beautiful lines of literature were shared, from C. S. Lewis to Marilynne Robinson.  Sarah's father, Sterling Van Wagenen, read a stunning poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.  I had never heard it before and he breathed the words so movingly that I was in awe.  I wanted to stand up and applaud; it was that beautiful.  I got home and looked it up and found a reading of it by Richard Burton.  If you have three minutes and four seconds, read the poem while you listen.

I'm grateful for these words and how they were shared with such deep feeling.  I'm eternally grateful to have known Sarah for the year I did.  She inspires me to become better in many ways.

I'm so grateful for heavenly goodness.  Despair takes over my heart easily, but as long as I turn to my Savior I can be uplifted and find comfort, peace, and rest.

Take courage.  Our God will never us forsake.

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