Good morning, friends.

I could say it’s been too long since I last posted. That would be true. Let’s cut to the chase.

I’m posting a poem today, and I may post more poems and things in the days to come. No one really knows. These last 365 days have been everything I didn’t expect, and while I will not explain it here at present, for those who are concerned (or may be at the end of this post whoops): never fear, for I am well. Jesus’ grip of grace is strong. This is a lament; it is not meant to be anything else.

Whenever I post on here, I remember myself at fifteen–alone among the corn fields, following after God and encountering so many things I had no concept for, and the books and blogs my Father in heaven gave me to help me along the way. I pray this poem finds my fellow pilgrims at the right time.

Sometimes it seems
Like all the endings are sad.

The baby is unrecognizable because it’s been too long since I’ve seen him,
The pastor lies and manipulates,
They smile at me but hurt the ones I love,
The dog is buried along with my childhood,
The church falls apart,
Too many goodbyes must be said,
The brotherhood between Cassius and Darrow and Roque is destroyed and so are real life brotherhoods flayed before my eyes,
Harvey becomes Two-Face,
Theoden buries Theodred,
The Tales of Goldstone Wood go unfinished while lesser stories are penned,
The voices of the children no longer fill the meadow,
The brother lives too far away,
It really was just a dream,
The girl calls and tells me her mother has died,
All these ghosts
They haunt me.

There are days
And battles
And parties
And conversations
And dance floors
And forts
And joys
That are irretrievable
Dead now
Existing only in memories
Joyful yet
Unmistakably
Colored with loss
For I cannot return to them
And sin has assured
That they will never live again.

These ghosts
Are like
Hunger pains
Or swallowing a sea
Or suffocating
Or endless bleeding.

Must it all
Come to grief?

Is anything safe
From sadness?

Is any
Friendship
Memory
Hero
Joy
Safe from the loss
That seems
So inevitable
So inescapable
So irreversible.

Will they by my enemies until our resurrection?
Does the hero have to die?
Why do I have to watch as my sister cries?

Longing and loss
These twins.
The longing for:
The lost things to be found once more
The unfinished things to be written
The dead things to rise again
The return and redemption of it all.

Why must I now regard
All warmth as fleeting
All safety as illusion
All belonging as temporary?

In these times
I groan with the earth from which I was taken,
My soul crying out within me:
Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Come make all the sad untrue.
Come reign in unmitigated goodness and might.

Help me, oh dear God
For I am sick with longing for home.
To bid longing goodbye
And always be satisfied
To tell loss farewell
And hold all joy securely.

For until I go
To the New Jerusalem
All good things must come to an end.

---

This poem ends sad, but in the words of Dave Radford of The Gray Havens: This is not the end.

Further up and further in,
Rosalie

p.s. – seriously, I promise I’m okay. I’m coming out on the other side of these things, and that’s why I’m posting this here at all. Jesus is really as strong and good as he said (I don’t have a specific verse to reference, just the entire Bible), and he gave me a beautiful set of parents and siblings who have pointed me to the Bible and fought with me and for me.

p.p.s. – if you didn’t get that reference about Cassius, Darrow, and Roque, you should read the Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown. You’re welcome, and I’m sorry. Also, if you didn’t know (as I didn’t know) that Anne Elisabeth Stengl stopped writing The Tales of Goldstone Wood (arguably some of the most beautiful Christian art of the 21st century) to write spicy romance novels (trash), now you know. I am still not over that. In fact, I’m getting upset right now just thinking about it.

p.p.p.s. – if you want to talk about God’s providence, we have to talk about the release of Benjamin William Hastings’ Sold out, sincerely album coming within days of life as I knew it coming apart.

p.p.p.p.s. – okay, I’m done for real now.