It’s been six months since my father died. In a way, I am experiencing the grieving process for the first time. Yes. I have grieved for others—grandparents, pets, relationships lost to distance and time. But grieving for my father is different; the pain of his loss cuts deeper. I’ve been writing out this cutting pain through poems, essays, and remembrances. I sometimes feel I’m observing myself from outside of myself, attempting to make sense of what I’m feeling. I’m not yet ready to share most of these thoughts. Just revisiting them in my journal can cause me to close my eyes and shut them out, shut the book, grasp for something, almost anything else. Someday I’ll be ready to face them and to savor their sacred beauty. Encountering them now still takes my breath away. But this most recent observation is ready to be released into the world—or so I believe. If you are experiencing a season of grief, I pray you’ll find some solace here. A few weeks ago, I realized that every death ...
As I enter the Autumn of my life—Autumn, not Winter, Autumn—I’m beginning to realize that a lot of the things I once had the potential for, I no longer have the potential for. For instance, a professor of mine once told me I could be our denomination’s first female professor in one of our denomination’s universities’ religion departments. (This was the same professor who gave a whole lecture with my shoe in his pocket when one of my classmates stole it off my foot before class and slipped it to him by sleight of hand. Being one of only two female religion majors had its perils.) That nonsense aside, my professor’s compliment still means something to me, but teaching wasn’t my calling. The potential was there. Now that potential has passed. Our denomination now has several female religion department professors teaching in its universities. This example shows how our lives are built on choices: some that we make for ourselves, some that others make for us, and some that are determine...