What is Life?

What is this thing we call life?   What does it mean?  Why is it so unpredictable, always twisting and turning so that it is difficult to know what it's true purpose is?  I'm writing these questions, and, yet, there is a part of me that doesn't actually care.  My thoughts?  Why waste energy on trying to understand that which is incomprehensible?  Of course, I don't really feel that way, but some part of me does, at least a little.  I always say to Mr. Darcy, "If I could just understand it, then I would be ok with it."  In so many ways that is true, but in so many others it is not.  Or perhaps it's that I have learned there are so many things in this life that I cannot and never will be able to comprehend, so I know that I will never truly be ok with all things.  I don't know.  My head hurts from thinking about it and pondering all the what if's and why's, yet, my desire to understand is not satiated. 

I'm a bit of a mess at the moment, in case you missed it.  My life feels like a vast unknown wilderness that just keeps spreading out in front of me, bringing new meaning to the terms loneliness, desperation, emptiness, and loss.  While I feel so overwhelmed at times, there is this odd steadiness, in the depths of me, that can't seem to be shaken.  I joked to a friend a few weeks ago that I feel like Job from the Old Testament, except that I still have my sense of humor.  I cannot see that there is any hope of an approaching dawn, but something on the inside of me knows it will come.  I do not know where my next footsteps will take me, but I am sure I will arrive at wherever it is I am destined to land.  How strange is this dark, wandering existence I am currently apart of.  I cry, I hurt, I grieve, and still I can laugh, can enjoy, can hope.  I feel like the ultimate dichotomy, but I am still functioning.  Life!  What the heck do I make of it?!?!?

I am truly at a loss for how to make heads or tails of what is happening in my life right now.  I am equally at a loss in knowing how it will affect my future.  Yet, somehow, for the first time in my life, I am tired and weary of the worrying and fretting, and I am content to just ride the storm through.  I have no idea how I will get through this time, I have no idea if I am doing it right or wrong, and I don't really care.  I am finding that what I care most about during this season is living well.  What I mean by that is living with the intention and purpose of doing my best in each area, being pleasing to the God who is ever beside me and always faithful, learning to take each moment and live it to its absolute fullest - be that the fullest depth of suffering, the fullest depth of joy, the fullest depth of sorrow, the fullest depth of knowledge.  I want to experience life, really experience it, and learn and grow from it.  I want to come out of this experience knowing that I have changed, I have traded some of the dark, terrible pieces of who I am for something more wonderful, more reflective of the One who is working on me and in me.

I know that life is a journey and that each person must travel the journey laid out for them.  I just hope that as I am traveling my road, taking my journey, that I am doing it with grace and strength.  I hope that when I finish this journey I will not look back and see the way behind me is filled with more regret and brokenness than it is hope and grace.  No journey is complete without both good and bad; My hope is that, in the end, the balance created by the two will equal a life well-lived.

To My Baby

I never knew you, but I did.

I never met you, but spent time with you.

I never had the chance to hold you, but I carried you.

There are so many things about you that I never got to know – the color of your hair and eyes, the joy of your smile, the facets of your personality

But there are so many things I do know about you – you don’t like sugar; it makes you sick.  And you inherited my passion for hamburgers and Rueben sandwiches.

You kept me up at night and gave the term “aches and pains” a whole new meaning.

You made my skin look great, made each new day a wonder to experience, and softened my heart to everything.

You would have been mischievous and curious, like your parents, no doubt,

And we would have loved you fiercely and unconditionally.

I can hardly believe the short time I had with you is already gone, but I am forever changed by my brief encounter with you. 

You gave us hope and joy beyond belief. 

You gave us the wonder of creating life and watching it grow inside me. 

What an unbelievable miracle you made us a part of!

Your departure made us grieve and experience loss at a whole new level.

You left me with a giant hole in my heart, but I’m not so sure I want to fill it.

There is no way to replace you; there is only grief to bear

But the sadness is a reminder of the blessing you were

And that is not something I want to forget.

I’ll wear the scar of your loss always, just as my heart is forever changed by the love you awakened in me.

My Thanksgiving/Hanukkah Miracle

The Thanksgiving holiday is all about taking time to reflect on the blessings we have experienced in the past year and giving thanks for those blessings.  The Hanukkah holiday is about remembering the faithfulness of God to His people and the miracles He performs in keeping His promises.  This year, for the first time in over a hundred years, the Hanukkah holiday started on Thanksgiving, causing the celebration of both days to be joined.

I love Thanksgiving.  It's one of my favorite holidays for many reasons, but mostly, I love the family element to it.  I also love the story of Hanukkah and love the idea of celebrating God's faithfulness and His miracles.  This year, though, both holidays were particularly special because of what I experienced.  I call it my Thanksgiving/Hanukkah miracle.

This story starts 22 years ago, when my dad took six of us kids to visit my grandparents on their farm for the first time.  It was the summer of 1991 and it was the first time my siblings and I would meet the majority of my dad's family.  For the first part of our lives we didn't even know we had family outside of Tucson and we had only just met our grandparents 2 years before that.  This might not seem strange to many of you, but my dad's family has been in East Texas for generations and everyone has grown up around each other with their kids all playing together and knowing everyone in the family.  My dad was the only one of his brothers who did not live near by and whose children did not really know the family.  So, our trip to Texas that year was pretty important.

During our stay in Texas that summer, we had a mini family reunion so that we kids could meet all the family, and it was pretty amazing.  I had no idea there were so many Winchesters in the world, much less that I was directly related to so many of them.  It was a great trip, and I remember thinking that for the first time in my life I really felt like I had family roots.  My grandparent's farm instantly became a home away from home, and I place I would always love going back to.

In the summer of 1991, my parents were going through a separation and my family was a split one.  There were many broken relationships and it didn't look like things were going to be fixed any time soon.  My grandparents longed to have a relationship with all their grandkids and they wanted my dad to be reconciled with my mom.  At the end of our stay with them that summer, my dad, my grandparents, and my siblings and I all gathered in the living room of my grandparent's farm and said a prayer before we headed out on our drive home to Arizona.  As my grandfather prayed, he asked the Lord to one day bring us all back safely to the farm as a whole family, my mom included.  At the time, it didn't seem like that would ever be possible, but my grandfather prayed for it anyway.

Twenty-two years passed and during that time, many things changed.  In 1996, five years after my grandfather prayed that prayer, he passed away from a brain tumor.  He did not live to see the whole family together at the farm, but he did get to see all my dad's children make separate trips to the farm.  In 2007, my grandmother passed away.  She got to enjoy seeing all my dad's children make several trips to the farm and even got to see my dad's first grandson make a trip to the farm, but still, she never saw the whole family there.  My mom and dad were divorced by this time and the family had not been whole in almost 20 years.  It seemed like my grandfather's prayer on that summer day so long ago was not going to be answered.

In 2010, after 21 years of separation, God did a miracle.  My parents reconciled and were remarried.  God had done the impossible in bringing them back together.  Last year, my mom made her first trip to the family farm with my dad.

This year, on Thanksgiving, my mom and dad and all their children and grandchildren made the trip to the family farm in East Texas.  It was the first time all of us has been at the farm at one time, as a whole family.  For the first time, all of us participated in one of the traditional Winchester Thanksgivings on the farm, and after 22 years, my grandfather's prayer was answered.

I cannot tell you what that meant to me; to be a part of that; to watch it happen.   I am still in awe at the faithfulness of God and His ability to make the impossible a reality.  While I wish that my grandparents had been there to see this miracle happen, I know that they must have been watching from Heaven and their hearts must have been bursting with gladness.  How great is God and how faithful is He??  I am so thankful that He is all of that and more.  I am thankful that He answers prayer, even if it is not on our timetable, and even if we don't ever see it.  I am thankful that He steps out of Heaven and inserts Himself in this broken, chaotic world, working miracles and creating beautiful masterpieces that proclaim how great and marvelous He is.  This Thanksgiving season I am giving thanks, and this Hanukkah season, I am again reminded that God is faithful and He works miracles.

Cheese Sandwiches and Sundays

Dad, This one is for you......

Today I am feeling very emotional.  I don't know why exactly - it might be that I am feeling a little sick, or that I am exhausted from my hectic week.  What ever the case may be, I am emotional.  When I get emotional, I tend to reminisce, a lot.  When I am reminiscing, I tend to want to write about it.  When I am emotional and reminiscing, food is sometimes involved.  You know that feeling when you want something that your mom used to make for you or that one dish that you used to love when you were a kid?  Well, that's what happens to me.  Food is comforting to me, and when it is a food that I have fond memories of, it is even more comforting.  So, you take the fact that I like to write when I am emotional and the fact that I tend to reminisce about food when I am emotional, and you get this blog post. :)

The food memory that struck me today as I was driving home from church was that of cheese sandwiches on Sunday afternoons.  When I was kid, my parents were split up, so we divided our weekends between them.  We went to church with my mom on Sunday mornings and then my dad would pick us up in the afternoon and we would spend the rest of the day with him.  At my mom's church, they usually served the same thing every Sunday - bean tostadas for lunch with cake for dessert.  Being a kid, I did not always want to eat the same thing each Sunday.  When it happened that the usual meal was not appetizing to me, I would wait for my dad to pick us up and them eat at his house.  By the time we got to his place it would generally be later in the afternoon and there would not be enough time to eat a huge meal, so I would eat something that was filling enough to tide me over until dinner, but light enough that I would still want dinner.  Enter the cheese sandwich.

The cheese sandwich was a staple in my dad's house.  We ate it on Sunday and Saturday afternoons, and we packed it for school lunches religiously.  It was a favorite of mine and my younger siblings, no question about it.  The cheese sandwich held a very special place in our hearts and on our lunch plates, and there were very specific requirements that had to be fulfilled in order for a sandwich to qualify as a cheese sandwich.  Those requirements were as follows: It had to be made with Miracle Whip on both sides of the bread, it had to be made with mild yellow cheese, it had to be cut in two before eating it, and it had to be eaten with some sort of side like corn chips or cut veggies.  There were variations to the cheese sandwich that were acceptable, but not necessary.  For example, my oldest brother would smother his sandwiches in ketchup - eventually he would substitute the Miracle Whip for just ketchup, but that is another story.  Occasionally we would add lunch meat to our cheese sandwiches, but never so much that it would drown out the strong cheese flavor.  Sometimes we would add lettuce or other condiments such as mustard and pickle relish, but always the cheese must be the main part of the sandwich.

Making and eating those sandwiches was an experience.  You would start with the cheese and a cheese slicer.  You always adjust the slicer so that it cuts the cheese in slices about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch thick.  This was thick enough to get a nice flavor but not too thick so as to be overpowering.  Then you would put the Miracle Whip on the bread.  You had to make sure that the Miracle Whip covered every part of the bread and was on thick enough so you could taste it when you bit into the sandwich.  After that, you laid the cheese on top of the Miracle Whip, added whatever extras sounded good, put the pieces of bread together and cut the sandwich in two.  Done!  Your masterpiece was ready to eat.

I cannot tell you how many times I enjoyed cheese sandwiches when I was a kid.  I never got tired of eating them.  They became a comfort food for me.  On Sunday afternoons when I was hungry and waiting for my dad to pick me up, I knew that the first thing I would do when I got home was make a cheese sandwich and head to my bedroom to enjoy it in solitude.  Usually, that cheese sandwich would make me sleepy and I would enjoy a nice Sunday afternoon nap before I participated in whatever the family had planned for the evening.  To me, cheese sandwiches represented everything that was good about food.

Since I've become an adult, there have been several occasions when the desire to enjoy a cheese sandwich has overcome me.  The requirements are still the same - Miracle Whip on both sides of the bread, mild yellow cheese cut just perfectly, the sandwich cut in half.  Each time I make a cheese sandwich and enjoy eating it, I think of all those wonderful memories as a child.  This simple food takes me back to a place where I was happy, to something I shared with my brothers and sisters, and suddenly, I don't feel so lonely or sad.  Today was no different.  As I was driving home, I suddenly felt the intense need to have a cheese sandwich.  The thought of the cheese sandwich sparked the memory of all those Sunday afternoons when I was kid and had enjoyed a cheese sandwich at my dad's house.  When I got home this afternoon, I prepared my cheese sandwich.  As I ate, the smell of the bread and cheese and the flavor of the sandwich took me back to when I was a child.  I found myself laughing at the memories, enjoying the reminiscence, and once again thankful for cheese sandwiches and Sunday afternoons.