Last weekend, several girlfriends and my mother went to Chicago with me.  Ostensibly, it was to celebrate my graduate school commencement, but I had an ulterior motive: making another memory in the transformation of a lifetime with my mom as we celebrated her birthday.  She had never been to Chicago before, and more importantly, she witnessed all of my graduations.  Fifth grade.  Eighth grade.  High school.  Baccalaureate, and now my second graduate school opportunity.  There was an unmistakable lift in my heart as I looked out into the Navy Pier Grand Ballroom and saw my family beaming at me.  No words were exchanged, but when I saw my mom’s quiet smile, I knew that this was the right call.

And so it is so often in my life, even before I fully embraced the turns on the course.  Stepping out in faith, going outside my presumed comfort zone, digging deeper, reaching farther…making memories that change, grow, and challenge me.  So while I did not write a piece for my mother’s birthday this year, this one that I wrote three years ago speaks to a truth that I am humbled to witness:

How do I tell the story

That has such a good end,

One so unexpected

That has yielded a friend?

Do I talk about the one

Who sometimes misunderstood,

Who couldn’t always see

Past the bad to the good?

Then first, I must talk about me

Because I am the one who could not see

And who had to grow deeper

So that I could be free.

Free to love and live

And to learn how to give

From the one who gave me life.

That one is you

And you often knew

That your yes to my life

Would get you into so much too.

You care, and you share

You give, and you live

You press on and go

And most of the time

No one knows

All that you do.

But I do.

And so does God,

Who regularly gives you the nod

Of a Father who knows

That the seeds that were sown

Fell on good ground in you.

What is written here is just a start,

For this story of love

Is written in my heart.

© 2008 Roxanne E. Barnes.  All Rights Reserved.

Indeed, every race has a purpose greater than myself…and some races, such as our trip to Chicago, was serendipitous.  As the hood denoting my degree was placed on me, I looked out and saw my mother, and as if crystallized in a single moment, all the love that brought me to this moment overflowed me.  Serendipitous-yes.  Sacred-even more so.  May I never stop seeking the serendipitous, for therein lies a reflection of love.  To this I will never cease running.

Come, run with me.

While walking this morning, I found myself amazed that though music piped through my earphones, a certain silence enveloped me.  Yes, I was grateful for the sun’s warmth after an astounding cool down this week, and I basked in its glow.  Yet with each step, I pressed through a gossamer veil…into silence.

Tomorrow marks an anniversary no one in America wants to celebrate.  Into our beloved nation’s history now stands another stark reminder of what our brothers and sisters around the world endure more frequently, the rebuilding of lives after terrorist attacks.  The relational brokenness that permeated my life that fateful September 11, 2011 Tuesday morning as I worked in a community pharmacy melted into near-nothingness as my heart ached with my nation’s at the loss of thousands of lives in New York City, Washington, DC, and above the sky near Shanksville, PA.  The sinewy fingers of death sought to silence us, but it failed.  Resoundingly. Failed.

A prescient silence fraught with the untold miracles, stories, love, and potential of lives whose earthly sojourn ended that day rewrote the song of the universe forever.  Silence, yes, but also the song of sacrifice.  Oh that we could have more gracefully entered the dance, but sacrifice is never so convenient.  Two thousand nine hundred and seventy seven people laid down their lives, and thousands of others bear in their souls the indelible mark of the sacrifice of their beloved.  How dare I attempt to write of a sacrifice so great?  I must lay down my pen, still my typing fingers, for I have no idea of what I attempt to speak.

So I step, no, I kneel, with my nation and the world…in a certain silence, and I remember.  No matter the mode by which we journey, the sting of death is always surpassed by Life.  Every race has a purpose greater than us.  Truth never changes.  Therein is the beauty of sacrifice and freedom.  We live on and are the blessing…and so are they.

I am empty,

Empty like the tomb.

I am light

That leaves the day too soon.

I am dark,

As the third watch of the night.

I am song,

With wings your soul takes flight

I am freedom,

Encased in pots of clay.

I am life,

That can never be taken away.

© 2006.  Roxanne E. Barnes. All Rights Reserved.