All Things New

Come broken and weary
Come battered and bruised
My Jesus makes all things new
All things new

Come lost and abandoned
Come blown by the wind
He'll bring you back home again
Home again

Rise up, oh you sleeper, awake

The light of the dawn is upon you
Rise up, oh you sleeper, awake

He makes all things new
All things new

Recently, at Salt & Light, we had something new happen. Someone who was a part of our community left us. By itself, this isn't unusual. We are creating a motley, beautiful, strangely assorted family here, and it's messy. People often leave for various reasons--some exciting, such as a great move or a new job, and some a little less joyous, such as incarceration, hospitalization, or job termination. This time, though, one of our community departed through death. We lost our longtime volunteer and receptionist, Donna.

Donna was on my reception team, and she and I got to know each other well over the years we have worked together. There is pain in her story, as with many who come to Salt & Light. (If you are interested in hearing more about her journey, the first two minutes of this video will paint a better picture, but I'll warn you, I need the tissues at 1:47 every. Single. Time.)  Her unique experience equipped her with a few of what her son, at her funeral service, lovingly described to me as her "quirks".

It would be easy, if you didn't know the whole story, to see some of these quirks of Donna's as flaws, instead of the remarkable gifts that they were. For example, at first glance, she may have seemed like a fragile person. Even she felt that way sometimes, I think, as we all do. But in her life, the things she had overcome seem nearly insurmountable. She had carried a heavier load than I can imagine bearing. She had endured things that might have ended me. Even now, her own medical issues were overwhelming, and every day, her body tried to betray her in some new way, but no matter how exhausting or difficult her circumstance became, she continued to find new ways to work around, to accommodate, to overcome and keep going. Her strength amazed me--I wish I could aspire to a fraction of it.

She also seemed to be easily frightened, sometimes by small things--it was easy to startle her by appearing too suddenly in the doorway behind her. But in reality, her bravery was astonishing. She had faced terror and death in her own experience; she had taken enormous risks to save her life, herself, her children. She was intimately aware of every way, every day, that danger and harm lurk just out of sight. And yet she faced those odds, on her own, unblinking, every day that she went out to face the world.

Sometimes Donna seemed to say just the wrong thing at just the wrong time, in just the wrong way. But in my office, next to the reception desk, I can overhear the conversations with callers and people who walk in to the front desk, and I know how many times Donna's "wrong thing" was just the right thing for someone. She spoke to everyone with a response she thought would be right for someone who was hurting or afraid; she assumed that was true of everyone she spoke to. And isn't it, really? I have heard her throw that lifeline out to so many, and many times she has thrown it out to me, by making that assumption. I envied her the wisdom, sometimes, to have the right words for people who are barely hanging on.

Donna saw the darkness but looked for the light. Every day I saw her we laughed. She knew how to find happiness and gratitude in the smallest things. I believe this is not in spite of, but because she was so well-acquainted with all the ways that pain and loss can come to us in this life. Heartache sharpens your senses for joy. It's a heavy burden to carry, however--this load of suffering that is not only your own, but belongs to others, belongs to the world. That wisdom in grief comes at a cost. Your spirit, however content, grows weary.

I was on a six-week medical leave when I got the call, and hadn't seen Donna in person for more than a month. I didn't get to say goodbye. I miss her. I take some comfort, though, in her last words to me, a text that said, "I know, because you always tell me, that I am so strong." I hope that this small gift I seem to have given her was even a small bit of what she gave to me in the time we knew each other.  She had begun to talk, recently, of moving to Florida, a place she had only visited once, but she spoke with such longing of being somewhere that her soul felt at peace. Donna was not afraid to die, and I admit, my grief at her passing is not sadness for her, but selfishly, is simple pain at my own loss.

I realize that since the moment I heard that she had left, had gone to sleep and kept on sleeping, I have been thinking of this Andrew Peterson song, All Things New, as "Donna's song." I think it would speak to her, my friend who knew so intimately about brokenness, pain, and loss, and who nevertheless celebrated each small joy in the world.  Every day, Donna got up again, no matter how huge the obstacles or how great the cost, to face the darkness and to try, once again, with all her might, to make things a little brighter. And now at last, there is nothing left to do but rise up--wake up to what she hoped and longed for.

My Jesus makes all things new.