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Every so often a car swept by the graveyard, and I wondered why they didn’t stop and join us. It felt like everyone should be there with us, remembering. The sky was blue and we walked back through the headstones. There, my grandfather’s grave. There, my cousin who died at 18 months of age.

One of my cousin’s kids, a small boy with white-blond hair and fresh skin, toddled around the gravestones. He would stop, bend awkwardly at the knees and study the flowers left by recent mourners. He was fascinated by the American flags that quivered in the breeze.

Then he meandered over to the large pile of dirt just behind my grandmother’s grave site. He considered climbing it, then decided against it, and off he went through the green grass, moving slowly over so many buried stories.

They lowered my grandmother’s casket into the ground, and my aunt surprised us by saying that she wanted to bury Grandma in the Amish tradition, with family members shoveling the dirt back into the grave by hand. So my cousins and I stepped forward, each of us grabbing a shovel. At first the crowd was quiet, and I could hear the chunks of dirt falling into the hole. But as we progressed, something changed.

The crowd that was my family loosened up. They started to talk and laugh. Those of us digging broke into a sweat and, chuckling, asked for someone to take our place. The children joined in the process, adding their own feeble attempts, dumping tiny amounts of dirt into the hole.

And the dirt was a muddy clay that stuck to my boots, made my feet feel heavy. It was messy. And it was beautiful.

* * * * *

Ours is a culture obsessed with sanitizing life, and not just in the physical or chemical sense. We want everything to line up with some unattainable standard, devoid of messiness or intrusion. Funeral services are to remain silent. Learning should be on point. Churches present their Statements of Faith as things which should not even be discussed. Children are expected to behave like robots.

Can we become brave enough to leave room for some mess? Can we care less about modern sensitivities and more about meaning? Can we come to appreciate life in all of its unsanitized beauty?

* * * * *

Later, when the grave was filled, all nearly-100-of-us walked back to the church. We took off our shoes and left them outside, went in and ate lunch. Our voices grew louder and louder, the collective effort of people trying to be heard. 31 great-grandchildren finished eating quickly, raided the dessert table, then turned the hall into a race track.

When I left with Maile and the kids, I marveled at all of those shoes lined up outside the church. Their tangled laces and muddy soles were a testament to the woman we had come to mourn and celebrate.

Life = mess.

There’s been a lot of death and disappointment in this part of the world recently. There was my grandmother’s passing, but there was also something else, something that I’ll write about when it’s time. For now the whole thing is still seeping through my consciousness, and it will have to wait.

It’s hard to know when the time is right, you know? It’s tough to tell when that thing can’t be held in any longer, when it demands the attention that only words on a page can give – words that stare back up at you defiantly, or shrug indifferently, or meander over into dark corners where they turn their backs and cast leering glances over their shoulders.

Words can be so petulant. And untrustworthy. And crucial.

* * * * *

During my grandmother’s viewing, my friend Tom came up to talk to me. He’s a trucker and has been for as long as I can remember. Maile and I met up with him in Iowa once, about a million years ago, and he and I ate at a diner and I ordered chili and grilled cheese and he told me all about life on the road.

So I was glad to see him when he came to the viewing.

“You’re not going to believe what I read in the paper last week,” he said. “A truck driver went over the Teton Pass, lost his brakes, and crashed at the bottom.”

“What?” I asked, shocked, and that eerie feeling rose up inside of me, the same feeling I get whenever I remember what it’s like to push a brake pedal all the way to the floor and still be picking up speed.

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “He couldn’t make the last turn. The truck rolled over the edge, and the driver was killed.”

* * * * *

I remember that last turn going down into Wilson. The picture above is of our bus being towed around the last corner, where we so easily could have lost our lives, had we not driven up the emergency truck ramp about two miles before.

And with all of that comes the realization that, even with all of the recent death and disappointment, there is still so much grace. So much mercy. Mercy enough to keep me going.

Mercy enough to keep me looking for the next emergency truck ramp, because right now it sure feels like we could use one.

“So you’ll be here when I get back?” he asks, climbing into the back seat of the car.

“Yep, I promise,” I say from where I’m standing at the door inside the garage.

“And your sure everything will be okay?” he asks.

“I think everything will be fine,” I say.

“Will you wave from the front porch?”

“Um, no I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I”m in my boxers,” I say.

“Oh, right,” he says, laughing.

For all of his delay-tactics and stalling, I have to give my son some credit: he sure knows how to make a good-bye last. Me on the other hand? I’m not a big fan of good-byes.

Whether I’m faring-thee-well to my favorite season, people I love, or hopes for a particular future, I’m just not very good at saying good-bye. I’m lousy at remaining in that moment of relinquishment. I want to barely wave and then run to the next thing.

Recently I’ve started to wonder if my good-byes are deficient because I force myself to get past them. I don’t embrace the farewell. I push myself away from the point of divergence as quickly as I can and try to forget about it instead of facing it, savoring it, even when it hurts.

Today we say good-bye to my grandmother. We’ll have a service commemorating her 92 years, we’ll laugh and cry with friends and family, and then we’ll all stand around a hole in the ground and lower her body into the earth. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.

There have been other difficult good-byes in the last few days. Feels like it’s been hailing good-byes! Painful ones, too, the kind you want to sprint away from as fast as possible. But I’m determined that this time around I will not rush it. I won’t push the farewells away. I’ll soak them in, learn what I can from them, and even allow them to change me.

“And your sure everything will be okay?” he asks.

“I think everything will be fine,” I say.

* * * * *

How do you make your good-byes count?

The things that Ric Elias realized in what he thought were the last moments of his life are illuminating and challenging:

Some excerpts from blog posts you should check out:

“But at the big church, there is art everywhere. A painter in the front. A sculptor in the back. Scraps of paper and the smell of vinegar and video clips strung together like the most delicate collage work.”

“It is tangible and different and it moves through me in a different way, finds the soft places in my hard heart. Makes it all the way in.”

“And what I want to say to my pastor, to all pastors, is this: Ask your artists.” 

* * * * *

“But here’s what my mom told me about fear – You go after it with whatever tools you have, and you don’t let it best you.  For me, the trick is to acknowledge the fear and then call on the tools I have to cover me while I write – the kind words people have said about my writing, the publications in my name, the strong sense of peace that comes over me when I put down words.”

* * * * *

“I forget that sometimes. Or I try to forget it, at least. Frankly, I like to be in control. I like to think I’m managing this tenuous writing career; I like to pretend that I’m making this all happen on my own. I like to imagine that if I work hard enough and push long enough, I can make a book deal happen.”

* * * * *

“I used to hear that “Happy All the Time” song constantly. It was on a children’s music CD we played for Elli. I must have been too exhausted or distracted before, because I don’t remember being appalled before.”

“Jesus makes me happy all the time? Who wrote this? In what alternate universe did they live? How insidious and disgusting to fashion this lie into a catchy action-packed children’s song?”

* * * * *

The fact that the Bible lends itself to competing interpretations should be cause for celebration rather than dismay, for these competing interpretations among people of faith who love and value Scripture help bring us into relationship with one another and with God. They bring us into conversation.  They remind us that faith isn’t simply about believing something in isolation, but about being part of a community.

* * * * *

Burke is particularly irked by the inclusion of Rachel Held Evans in Christianity Today’s list. Well, at first he just seems irked, but then when you read through his own comments in the long thread for his post it’s clear he’s not so much angry as afraid.

When I saw the subject of the email, I knew it wasn’t good news.

Call it a gut feeling. ESP. The Holy Spirit. Whatever. I instantly had this sense that something had gone wrong.

And I was right. My main client had second thoughts on writing their life story. Even though they had given the verbal go ahead, even though we had met a few times, even though I had planned the next six months of my life around this project, and even after making the first of six payments, they changed their mind. They didn’t want to do a book after all.

Five months of income down the drain. My main, present source of income. I felt sick to my stomach.

* * * * *

To read the rest of this, check out my article over at Prodigal Magazine.