I'm sitting in Starbucks...avoiding the very thing that I need to do - finish a resumé update.

It's all there, it just needs to be finished and sent.

Today was yoga, walk with a friend, a surprise lunch at Mellow Mushroom (YAY!), bill paying, recycling, and hard important phone calls.

And lots of face time with the floor and prayer.

So I am here, getting caught up.

Facing reality.

Grateful for the kind and caring folks who have kept me prayed up when prayer was an offense in my grief. 

As I washed dishes this morning, I thought that if I get out of this thing unjaded and whole, it will be on the prayers of people who walked with me through this valley in the shadow of death.

But then I thought about this meme (see above right) that had splashed across facebook last week, "Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the One who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference (Max Lucado)."

If God is very present and our prayers invite him even closer still, then it is all of your prayers that have helped to crack the sky and draw him near. Thank you is too feeble, but it is all I have to offer.

These days, there is something so foreign about feeling abandoned by God.

To wonder if he set me up to be damn near destroyed so that somehow he could get some sort of recognition later. 

Alien.

Anomie.

This has been a dark night of the soul. 

A wandering in the desert.

And now, as I emerge through the far boundary of the storm's eye and re-enter the chaos - both destructive and temporary, your prayers have returned me to a posture of prayer...a child's pose. 

Thank you.

What is faith for If not for times like this?

There will be no victory lap, no waving of Medusa's head, no bands - wedding or otherwise.

There will be pain and peace and prayer.

Rinse and repeat.

And my hope is that this God who hears will bend low and rid my heart of the searing curse and in its place put forgiveness - though never "forgetfulness."

A sweet and wise friend reminded me today that justice is not my job. It is God's job.

I guess my job is to continue to speak the truth, cling to what little hope I have, and let the rest just go.

Justice. I'm a big fan. Kenan's middle name is Justice. 

Justice. Not Vengeance. 

Truth telling. Repentance. Accountability.

None of these are guaranteed. In my life, under similar circumstances, decades of death were never accounted for in justice. I bore shame and wounds that were not mine to bear. We bore them - tow-headed and rosy-cheeked kiddos. 

For two days, I've caught myself uttering a prayer again and again, "Peace. Hope. Worship. Freedom. Love. Justice." A list really. 

And if it's true that even silence is prayer to God, then I have been bathed in the harsh solitude of silent prayers.

Yesterday, I finally realized that I would be okay.

Changed, but not destroyed. 

Thank you for your prayers.