our eyes say the words our lips cannot speak
and no one else can hear.
we tear out the pages of our lives
replacing them with new chapters
of you and me, imagining what might have been.
if choices were reversible, but
the last note plays the spotlights on us fade
and reality…
it returns to the foreground.
I made the mistake of visiting your Facebook page.
What can I say that justifies my silence 11 years ago?
Five weeks of friendship, forged in the Austrian Alps, and neither of us said a word. I remember the sadness when you got off the train and the emotion swelling up from my heart, constricting my throat. The impulse to say something and never let go when we hugged goodbye.
Instead I let uncertainty win and pushed the feelings down.
A year later, we reunited in Colorado for a single day. But a lot changes in a year.
Continue readingI identify with the heroes of books and movies, imagining myself capable of the same courage, the same love and leadership and sacrifice.
Then a new day comes, and I’m faced with the tedious things of life. Small annoyances and hurts. Frustration and lack of control. Things that can’t compare to the great deeds of imagined heroes, and so the choice, the opportunity, to do right feels insignificant. It feels hard. Boring.
How many times do I just react because it feels better in the moment? But character is forged in the mundane choices of everyday life. To say nothing when I’m tempted to spread the flame. To love and speak up when I’m hurt.
How many of us are waiting for the grand adventure while ignoring the tiny ones, the unglamorous training, afforded by monotonous life?
Without proving our faithfulness in the small things, we may wait forever. And without that training, would we be ready if the adventure did come? Would it be what we expect? Would we even see it?
Adventure in real life doesn’t look like the movies or books. It’s not theoretical. It’s not a highlight reel. There’s no inspirational montage. Everything doesn’t simply work out okay In the end. It’s slow and painstaking and humbling and a hundred other things, but most importantly, it’s infinitely more rewarding.
when we were young and together you spoke about the size of your heart. how you love too hard
i felt bad i didn’t love you in the same measure
now that we are older and apart, i realize you were flattering yourself
does love hold grudges. does it hate.
does it speak lies with just enough truth to sound right.
some of the lies vanished from my memory that night, snuffed out by grace. others i chose not to read because i already didn’t trust you. but even still…hurt begets hurt, hate begets hate, and i have tasted both in some measure. the sweet venom the silent rage the subtle but sure hardening of the heart
now that we are older than the years that have passed, i realize your love was diluted with blood.
still seeping from old and deep wounds,
and I understand.
you lived in hyperbole when we were twogether.
and though the hyper– has remained the same
the –bole has worsened; i feel every stroke
what your words lacked in wisdom and love
they made up for in arrogance and presumption.
sometimes words say more about the person speaking.
there is a number that follows us our whole lives and every year it’s different. one to two digits and maybe three. it feels personal. it feels like ours. and as the number gets bigger it becomes less good, and then bad, and it usually happens around the time our number stops matching our expectations. why do we let something so trivial characterize us? as if we’ve succeeded or failed based on the milestones we’ve hit, the societal norms we’ve checked off, by a certain number. we are words incarnate and our lives tell the most beautiful stories, but we let a number define us? two digits compared to the novel of our lives. it only has the power we give it
Sometimes I plant regret in my past like a flag, claiming a portion of my life or any number of decisions as regrettable. Sometimes I use the word regret as a sword, a flank attack on anyone who has hurt me. What better vengeance than to audibly dismiss someone as a regret? And what words could better echo the tone and tenor of my heart?
Regret is a sweet poison. It almost tastes like nostalgia going down, but it erodes the heart in the end. It’s a toxic balm applied to wounded memories. It’s passivity cloaked as responsibility.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is accept past decisions. Life is full of choices, and barring blatant immorality, my choices are right because I made them.
Much of life is gray, not black and white as I would prefer, and I’m learning how to trust past Mike. The way he felt. The decisions he made. Which means regret is pointless, at least in the long term. In the short term, regret, better called conviction, can be healthy as long as it leads to repentance, growth, etc.
I have the freedom to choose and to fail, to trust and be betrayed, to love and be let down. We all do. And that’s the beautiful thing about this life. We are not marionettes, and God is not a puppet master. He is a loving, empowering father who is bigger than our failures and the healer of our wounds. Are the implications of our freedom still scary? Yes. But it’s even more exhilarating.
Mike Tannian, Troubadour 