Older Than

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I am older now. She has undone me, the ravishing redhead with innocent blue eyes, about to don the cap and gown that I never wore.

I’m older now than my mother was when I remember her seeming old to me. The wrinkles show, my hair I keep much shorter now. My eyes are not as wide as they were when I was a girl and my glasses obscure the angles of my face. I am easing into another life, or so it seems, one not riddled with the insecurities every young woman carries, but a woman now with more comfort in her skin. I am enjoying this stage where vacations are possible, choices are easier and I care less about what others think of me and more about the relationships I’m building with my children.

Older they are, older than I want them to be growing faster than I had anticipated and time, passing through open fingers as I grasp it’s liquid form begging to have some of it back.

Older are the stories I tell, the memories I cherish, and the photographs that fill the shelves where once a single scrap book stood, lonely and alone.

Older are the thoughts I have of returning home again to live in the places where my children were given birth to, somewhere between mountains and sky in the Denver of my adolescence. Older are my parents, my grandparents are fewer now, and I carry some with me through the vague remembrance of faces and voices from an ancient past I now tell my children about. How I long for them to know those who came before them and enabled their being through the DNA I carry in my bones.

Older, yet not expired, older but not unable, older and perhaps a little bolder.

Sea Of Forgetting-My Post from the Beach and last Social Media Contact Until We Return.

 In scripture it is written that the Father will cast sin into the depths of the ocean, into the place of forgetting. It’s like the forgiveness found in the arms of a lover that has released you from the place where you are obliged to love him and in doing so allows you to love freely. Our wounds, both inflicted and those we did inflict carry a great weight of expectation. We react or act based on what those expectations are and we live in the place of fulfilled or unfulfilled obligations. Obligation isn’t love, and dedication that brings obedience and the dedication of a lover is beyond what we could ask for in the sober realization of the damaged lives we lead.

                This week my family and I have accompanied my in-laws at a beach house that is nestled quietly on an obscure piece of beach on the Florida panhandle. As I watch the changing of the tides, the temperature of the water and how it differs from day to day I am amazed at the wondrous beauty. This ecosystem is vast and complex, delicate and severe all at once. Nature is said to reveal the glory of God. I believe that is true, but I believe that we have misunderstood some fundamental truths. God is a God of mercy, peace and grace, but he is not only those things.

                I remember speaking with a Pastor friend of mine one morning at Starbucks, he made a simple, but powerful statement, “You cannot have mercy without justice, the minute we forget that truth and begin to apply mercy without first examining the offense and the just punishment it requires we nullify the power mercy has to transform a life.” Wise words from a very wise man and I’m thankful to have heard them. Mercy and justice met on the cross, where Jesus took the full weight of sin on his own shoulders and with the crucifixion took the just punishment, and in doing so released mercy from the Father.

                An ecosystem can seem harsh, the death of a creature, the devouring one of another and then another. The severe weather conditions, the magnitude and the vastness of such things is beyond a lifetime of understanding. I am unable to examine or appreciate them all but this I do know, that a profound truth exists in understanding that God works in rhythm, seasons if you will. Though things change, a sin is devoured and taken to the depths of the ocean of forgetting another is allowed to roam freely. We exist in an ecosystem that is imperfect in it’s severity and it’s beauty and only through God's perfect sacrifice can we truly see them all as they are. 

                Today as I write this I have the ocean before me with little sign of land except for the small mass that curls around to the left of the horizon. Today, as I walk down upon the white sand beaches I will release to my Father some of the things he has been urging me to, but until now I had not possessed the strength. Obligations I feel are more a weight than a willful obedience that exists in the form of loving God back, and in doing so release this great need for acceptance from mankind. I have no illusions about walking away and not being challenged in this choice, but I do believe in the moments of choosing when we erect alters in our hearts, remembered times with the Father where we have a shift of thought or choice.  I will receive the mercy he offers, and I will release to him my sins, and with those quiet understandings tucked neatly in my heart I will be thankful.

 I have a few quiet days left here, and I hope to immerse myself in them all. I will not be participating in any social media forms from this time on so that I may be in a place of meditation, contemplation and appreciation for this gift. I do pray that as you read these words you are well and blessed. Much love, Apryl.