Reconnection ~

My past has been finding me lately. My past in the names, the faces, the stories of some people I once shared a connection with.

An old roommate, a grade-school chum, a woman I met at a community meeting, a high-school friend.

There was that sideways glance on a downtown street corner where I recognized a once-familiar face. Then, a missed bus that led to a different ride, a different route, and then a friendly voice from a few seats back, a hesitant, "hey, how... where have you been?" An email that found its way to me through the net, though I'd not given out my address, a phone call from an area code I didn't know.

Connections... they fray, they strengthen, they deepen, they unwind. I look at my life and see who is with me, who has left, who has stayed. I know the names, the faces, the stories of the people I am growing old with. I wasn't looking to tamper with that picture.

If I let myself think about it too much, I wonder if Dickens is lurking nearby, giving backstage cues to ghosts from the past.

There's a Patty Griffin lyric that resonates. She writes, "as far as I can tell, most everything means nothing, except some things, that mean everything."

It's too soon to tell if it all means nothing, or if, maybe, it means everything. I understand that there's plenty on any given day that's random, mundane, serendipitous. But when the same song plays over and again, like an old, scratched LP, I pay attention.

I welcome some of these reconnections with hope, with delight. My memory's been leafing through a scrapbook, a diary, a collage. I smile at the thought of who we were then, who we are now, and how it is, like that lost pup in the news this week that found his way home months later, to find myself feeling at home again too, at home with people who knew me so long ago, and, despite the distance that comes with time and change, want to share the journey from here.

Other possibilities at reconnection leave me wary. There's a bit of fear, regret. There are wounds there, self-inflicted, imposed, long-forgotten until I remember how I got that scar, that limp, that ache.

My friend Judy has been reminding me for years that nothing is wasted with God. I look at what seems frayed, what feels broken, and it can feel like a waste sometimes. We're not meant to be alone, we're created for connection, for community, but brokenness and misunderstanding, neglect, and life, just life can cause paths to unwind, bonds to strain. I can consider these disconnections in my own story and ask, "what was that all about?"

God looks at the same and reminds me (from Psalm 139) that He searches me and knows me... that before a word is on my tongue He hears it... that He knows when I sit and when I rise... that there is nowhere I've been, nowhere I could ever go that He would not be with me, that He is familiar, deeply, intimately familiar, with all my ways. All my staying, leaving, fraying ways.

When I was a child, a young woman, I dove in, all intensity and excitement to the possibility of belonging, of being known. Not a child anymore, I understand what it is to be open, and yet to guard my heart, or, to allow my heart to be guarded. I am my Beloved's and He is mine. His banner over me, over this heart, is love, protection, refuge, help.

So I will do my best to set aside fear and regret, to allow for meaning, to be open to possibility. I will trust that it's not Dickens, after all, who is allowing for this song to play over and again, but my Father, who's written all my days in his book, who knows every name, every face, every story that is part of my own.

What I trust finally, is that the connection that heals my life and redeems what feels wasted is connection with my Father.

It's not the old roommate, the grade school chum, the woman from the community meeting or the high school friend who decide if I am a person to grow old with. It's my Father, my Brother Christ, leaning in to remind me, through a glance, a call, a note, a voice, that nothing is wasted, nothing is forgotten, nothing is undone that will be left undone.

Forgiveness and grace. Hope and peace. Healing in the brokenness. Transformation. Reconnection. Some things, they mean everything.