I Can't Find Words

I haven't written in awhile.  And it's not because I don't have anything to say.

It's because I have so much to say I don't know where to start, and mostly it's about things I can't even seem to find words for.  I want to write about sunsets and healing and running and friendships and prayer and grief and a table and chairs.   

But I haven't been able to seem to find words for these things and string together coherent truths about them.  Some days the only thing I can think to write about is how you should put Oreos in the refrigerator because they're so much better cold.  It will change your life.  But that's not why I'm writing tonight, even though I'm serious-you should put Oreos in the fridge.

So where do I start when words don't do these things justice?  Let's start with how you don't always need words.  Let me tell you about these speechless moments I've had lately (and lets avoid acknowledging the irony of me writing about not having words).  

Sunsets.  There's something about sunsets, isn't there?  I love sunsets and I most of the time they legitimately take my breath away.  Sunsets make me stop, take a break, just be.  Sunsets make me quiet and reflective.  Sunsets don't need words.  There's something so refreshing about that-there are so many things that require words and you have to be careful about what you say and how you say it and when you say it and worry about how the other person will receive what you're saying.  Lately I feel like I've had so many important conversations with words that I've become more aware and more thankful for the moments that don't require any. 

 Friendships.  Some of my favorite or most important moments with my friends have been when we weren't talking: the time with Khrystian on the beach in Virginia when we sat and listened to the ocean and watched dolphins jump out of the water.  When I got the phone call that Spencer had been killed in Afghanistan and Katie, Taylir, and Logan sat on my kitchen floor with me and held me and cried with me and didn't say a word.  There aren't words for heartbreak like that.  When my roommate Rachel and I finished our last nursing final, we just hugged and got teary-eyed and couldn't even talk and it was beautiful.  When I was sitting alone after church last Sunday and my friend Josiah came and sat by me and we didn't talk for awhile, we just sat.  I needed someone to just sit by me, and he did.  We didn't have to say anything for awhile. When Brittany, Jacob, and Josiah helped me move my table and chairs and we stood there and stared at them, it was a really cool moment (which Josiah writes about here, josiahtaylorrerick.blogspot.com, and it's beautiful).  My friend Chelsey and I have had more serious and hilarious speechless moments than I could ever write about.  Tonight when I ate dinner with my friend Logan, and we both knew that I've come so far and things are happening for me and we just looked at each other, crying, and couldn't even speak.  I've learned that the friends who don't always need to use words are the best kind.

Healing.  How can you put healing into words?  Healing is so many things.  Healing is when over 750 people come together on a muggy Kansas Saturday morning in August to run/walk 3.1 miles for Spencer and other fallen heroes, and laugh, and cry, and remember, and tell stories, and laugh and cry some more.  Healing is when his friends, whom I hadn't met when he was alive, take me in and become my friends.  Healing is sitting around with his family in their living room and laughing and looking through pictures and knowing that even though there is always an ache and emptiness in the room that we can still laugh and appreciate all of these memories we have of Spencer.  Healing is when I visit his grave and pick out white flowers instead of yellow flowers, because it's ok to start doing things differently.  Healing is when your friends send you text messages about how they've prayed for you and this hurt in your heart and that they care for you and want you to heal.  Healing is when I sat next to Spencer's grave this Friday and truly knew I was going to be ok, that I'll never forget him, but that it's ok to stop waiting for him to come home from Afghanistan because he's not coming home and I still have to live.  Healing is when I realized he would want those same things for me.  Healing is when a wise person gives you permission not to feel bad for choosing to live and move on.  Healing is when his parents gave me his dog tags and made me promise that I wouldn't be stuck in grief forever, and I promised I wouldn't, and I'm not stuck anymore.  Healing is when his mom and I look across the room at each other and smile and we don't need words, we just know the love that is there.  Healing is when I make choices differently because of the lessons I've learned in loosing him and refusing to make those same mistakes again.  Healing is when I can appreciate the memories I have of him and not be angry at the ones we never got to make.  

Prayer.  I love praying.  It's something I didn't do for awhile, and now I can't stop praying.  But I don't think that when I wasn't purposefully praying, that Jesus didn't know what I meant.  Some of the best prayers are when you don't have words.  When you're too angry, too tired, too happy, too full of life.  The prayers where I'm speechless, I think those are my most honest.  I love in Romans when it says, "For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words."  I serve a God so big that I don't need words sometimes.  There is a freedom in that that I'm so thankful for.  Sometimes I suck at words.

Running.  I love running.  You don't have to talk, you just run.  It's free, it's good for you, and it suffices when I'm too angry to talk or too confused to try and make sense of things or too happy to just sit still.  Running is something I wish I would've discovered earlier.

I'm sitting in Starbucks while I write this, because I don't have wifi in my apartment yet.  I'm sitting here typing and crying.  They're about to close and the staff keeps looking at me like I'm crazy...It's getting a little weird, I think I'm freaking them out.  But I don't care.  I'm crying because there aren't words to explain what this day is like for me.  It's my birthday, and I've felt so full of life and so loved and so celebrated.  And then I'm so heartbroken because I lost someone two years ago today that I cared for so deeply, and it still hurts.  We share this day.  We'll share August 6th on our gravestones.  That's hard.  I can't find words to explain the amount of bitter and sweet one day can hold.  This is only the second year so I'm still a new at this, but it's a forever thing.  Trying to find the line between allowing myself to feel loved and celebrated, and still remembering Spencer and allowing myself to miss him and know what this day means for so many people that knew Spencer is a weird line to find.

Wherever you're at, whether it's grief or joy or confusion or heartbreak or peace--wherever you're at with those things, I want to give you permission to be speechless.  Sometimes words won't suffice.  Sometimes words aren't enough so there are sunsets, or friends, or tears, or prayers, or running, or blogging at Starbucks and freaking the Baristas out.


May you live in the deepest parts of your heart even in the speechless times.  Because sometimes there aren't words.