It is finished

I begin this day listening to the "Pray as you Go" app and spend time with Mary at the cross watching her son die.  She stands with her sister and a friend and the disciple John.  Jesus looks at her with love and tells her that John will be her son and she will be his mother.  He takes her into his home.  And when he dies, he says - It is Finished.

It takes me back to the death of Chuck and what I think is - it is finished.  The life that we knew before together and now there will be a new life.  A different life without him.  And so for Mary, she will move into a new home and be cared for and part of a new family.

So, I start this day, this week, thinking about transitions.  It is May and soon 2 of my grandchildren will be graduating from high school and in the fall they will move away and start college.  The life that they knew is over and a new life awaits.

All of this is easy to write but hard to live out. I have been reading slowly Pema Chodrens book Welcoming the Unwelcome which is about being open to the difficult feelings that are part of life.  It is about "wholehearted living in a brokenhearted world."  Our world is brokenhearted because of these transitions - there is a part of us that wants everything to stay the same and it will not.  People will die and these kids - like it or not - will grow up and move away.

Right now we are in the midst of a lot of the fun parts of the transitions - proms and graduation parties and planning for college life.  It is exciting to see all of it happening.  At the same time - there will be some adjustments on both sides - the parents empty nest and the girls getting used to living with others in a new place.  

What is for sure is that all of this is cushioned by gift of love.  Jesus is the example of love incarnate and at the end gave his mother this gift of a new life without him.  I was blessed to be loved and to love Chuck deeply and they makes an enormous difference in going on without him.  My daughters have loved their daughters intensely over the years - enough to let them grow and to let them go on without them. 

With all of this, it is good to know that God is near and providing peace for all of us as we try to let go and live into the new life.  Here is a prayer by Ted Loder

Gentle me,
Holy One,
into an unclenched moment,
a deep breath,
a letting go
of heavy expectancies,
of shriveling anxieties,
of dead certainties,
that, softened by the silence,
surrounded by the light,
and open to the mystery.
I may be found by wholeness,
upheld by the unfathomable,
entranced by the simple,
and filled with the joy
that is You.