The Greatest Love I've Ever Known

She lived her life
loving Him
beyond oceans

He was her shield
Her very great reward

The Greatest Love she's ever known.

His favour will last us a lifetime!

The "Grievable" Life

One of my favorite theoretical pieces is the first chapter of Judith Butler’s book, Undoing Gender. In this chapter, entitled “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, Butler discusses the issue of a “griveable life” i.e. what kind of life should we mourn? I had time to think about her words a few days after the terrorist attack on Westgate mall, after the death toll kept rising, and the individuals became more faceless. I thought about her words after a Pakistani friend first told me of the terrorist attack, his words of comfort being, “Don’t worry, this happens all the time in my country and I’m still okay.” In truth, we are surrounded by so much terror and death, within and without our country, and as humans, we pick and choose the grievable lives, we mourn the ones that catch our attention, the emotive ones, the young ones, the ones that jar us to the reality that we are all headed to the grave. But who mourns for the un-grievable lives, in our case, the ones that are far beyond us, the kind that are “Oh I didn’t really know that person” or the “I’m not from that country, it’s all happening far away from me.” The indiscriminate shooting in America, the bombings in Nigeria and Pakistan, the chemical attack in Syria. How do we situate ourselves when we encounter “un-grievable” lives?

I don’t know the answer, and so I turn to Christ in moments like this. What Would Jesus Do in such a hurting world? Does he pick and choose between lives, the griveable and un-grievable ones? I think he grieves for us, all of us, he mourns for every life that is lost. He wept when Lazarus died. And if he promised to wipe away every tear from our eyes, then it can only mean that death was never in his plans, even though it would be my joy, one day, to be absent in the body so as to be present with my Lord.

Meanwhile, I pray that God would grant me the grace to see each life as he sees it, grievable or un-grievable, because if I am his hands and feet, then I also want to be a vessel of his sorrow.

That time

I didn't know what love is until he was gone
Until we stood holding hands whispering our prayers to the
God you loved
Until I saw you and crumpled to the ground in fear of
the future that my eyes could no longer see
Until I spooned with you through the night listening for
the nightmares that keep you awake
Longing for a morning
When you will wake up and sing your Methodist hymn
"It is well with my soul".
I ache for you
Because you loved him
And I love you.

An odic essay for my Father

I will buy you shirts and cologne and ties and cuffs over the years, walk with you into the sunset days. But I know that the best gift of I can give, is this, I hope. My offering of love in the art that you so encouraged me to take up. You have covered me in your prayers each day, I know, since my first breaths in half-caste skin and baby hair. You have called to check up on me each week. And even as I pursue my dreams, the ones I am too scared to even mouth, I am surrounded with comfort, because there's the beauty to having a father like you, someone who runs alongside me and makes sure that all the doors are open, all the paths stripped bare for my feet to graze, who believes in my unending strength to give life to those dreams, who forgives. I have never known a love like yours, and in the silence of my days, I pray that I don’t, so that the taste of your love will hover over me all my life, and I will sing today and everyday like Miriam did when they crossed the Red Sea. And I will call myself blessed. Because I know you, and I am yours. The man who loves God so wholly, so perfectly. When I curl into sleep I pray that I grow into your kind of faith, your stillness in the turbulence of life, your assurance that no matter what, God will provide. I remember praying once that God would make me fifty-years-old, your age then, when I first realized that your kind of faith was something I did not have. And on that day, more than anything, I wanted to be you. I can't wait to see you again, to be swept up in the embrace of your arms, to know how I am always home in your presence. In the man who has given me a Father's love, and more. I often write how I live my life through Mum's eyes and love, but I do so, I know, because she chose well, because I have this great foundation in you. You have made it possible for me to be me. And I call myself blessed because I am your daughter.

Happy Father’s Day everyone!

My favorite songs about fathers: Luther Vandross, Dance with my father, and Steven Curtis Chapman, Cinderella

Want to read more about fathers? Click here :-)