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9/10/2019 5 Comments building a home in september 2019on september first, ben & i started to build our first home. that day, we walked in it & around it — excited & aimless — tossing ideas back & forth about where to hang our jackets, how to arrange the couches, where to declare the coffee station. the second day, we hauled box after box inside our new home, bumping our armfuls against the doorframes & exhausting the phrase : “we’ll put that there, for now.” (“that” is still “there,” by the way)
& it wasn’t until the first morning we woke up in our new bedroom it hit me : we’re building a home. we’re really doing it. this is it. we’re actually creating a life that revolves around this central word : home. so here we are : making berry smoothies & pumpkin muffins, figuring out household chores & the most cost-effective way to buy just about anything & trying really hard to understand each other — like why i prefer our deep conversations to happen at the start of any NFL game. we’re creating habits & rhythms, priorities & preferences, that embody what we hope our home will continue to be & we’re celebrating this. every day, we’re celebrating this. & yet, i’m incredibly unsettled about the fact we’re building a home in september 2019. because in the same moment that i’m putting sunflowers in a vase & arranging them on my windowsill, thousands of people are grieving all they lost from hurricane dorian. i am sitting on my front porch, which is next to my neighbors’ front porch, which is next to my other neighbors’ front porch & “nearly three out of every four homes on Grand Bahama are under water” & i am wondering why the water pressure in my shower seems lower than usual & in another part of the same world there are “approximately 70 percent of the homes underwater” & i am about to walk down to my local coffee shop & “entire neighborhoods have been wiped out, with houses turned to rubble” in a place — a home — that is not mine, but is someone's. (the washington post) i don’t have answers, only more questions. what can i do? read more articles? buy a flight? put the dishes away & thank God for my home? raise awareness? send an email? pray for the people who are living this moment in devastation? then go reheat & finish my coffee? of course, there is a larger question looming under the surface of these words : how can i celebrate _____ when another human is grieving _____? i don’t know. & although i don’t know the answer, or whether there is one, i do have a poem : “the slippery green frog that went to his death in the heron’s pink throat was my small brother, and the heron with the white plumes like a crown on his head who is washing now his great sword-beak in the shining pond is my tall thin brother. my heart dresses in black and dances.” // after reading lucretius, i go to the pond // by mary Oliver // i revisit this poem often. incredibly — almost embarrassingly — often. because it seems the longer i live, the more i am convinced that being human is less about tirelessly racing up the mountain so we can reach the peak & stay there & more about holding two handfuls — two hands. full. — of celebration & of devastation. & this is how we go about it : we give in to celebration & we give in to devastation & we do not hold one handful above another. we embrace them. we unify them. we live them. we share them. then, we press on. together. we build & rebuild. together. this september & every september.
5 Comments
Mandy
9/10/2019 04:54:33 pm
b. e. a. uuuuuutiful. all of it. and so are you.
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Jenny
9/10/2019 05:27:04 pm
Soooo eloquently and beautifully written, Bethany! I love your writing style and what you have to say, and I love YOU.
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9/11/2019 09:02:41 am
Absolutely beautiful. Exquisite thoughts and eloquent words.
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Marilyn Rozema
9/11/2019 09:21:11 am
Wonderful and Caring.
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Bethany this is so achingly lovely. God has blessed you with that home in that place for His special purpose. As the sea billows roll in the Atlantic that you are too far away to help with, remember that there are quiet devastations all around us. Needs we can meet, sometimes right next door. Your post reminds me of a song my grandma taught me, "Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light, like a little candle burning in the night, in this world of darkness we must shine, you in your small corner, and I in mine." You are shining in your small, Colorado corner, dear one. It is enough. And keep writing. We are reading. Many blessings to you and your husband as you build your home on the Rock.
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