hannah and dirk

Published by bryan | Filed under journal entries

August 15th.

John MacMurray and I will be speaking together this Sunday at Imago-Dei. We will not be talking about “To Own a Dragon” rather we will discuss John’s views on nature. John will be showing slides of his photographs, and we will talk about what the landscape teaches us about God. If you are in the area, Imago now meets at Franklin High School. There is a 9 A.M. service as well as an 11 A.M. service.

I also want to post a short piece a friend wrote for the most recent issue of The Burnside Writers Collective. Hannah and I have been friends for a long time. She and her husband Dirk were married only nine months ago, and he has been deployed to Iraq. We all love Dirk very much, and Hannah’s prose about living in a temporarily empty home was especially moving, and will guide me in my prayers for she and her husband. We miss you Dirk. All of Christ to you as you serve our country. Our community will take good care of Hannah.

From Hannah:

“a holding pattern, like in a plane, when you wait to taxi and take off, and see the ground shrink below your window and the shadows of the wings sweep the tops of houses, and cars and people, then and only then is there movement.”

“absence is learning to waltz alone, to recreate routines that were held together by the presence of another. putting pillows by your side to not notice absence - marking off dates in a mental calendar when absence will be no more, brushing your fingers over clothes and your nose over smells to remember presence. reading notes written in a final farewell before departure, kissing the handwriting of the absent. absence is processing loneliness.”

“unknowns are heavy. lingering around the corners of every “what if” and “what about” hanging heavy like the air on muggy afternoons on any southern summer day. unknowns create trust that clings to every promise, an aching desperate pleading trust.”

“grief is consuming. though most grief is temporary it dulls the senses. sunny days aren’t so sunny, green isn’t a brilliant color, daisies don’t smile, flowers don’t smell nearly as sweet. absence is a word that cannot be weighed by other words. it speaks for itself in the depths of each heart as it experiences absences of its own.”

Do pray for Dirk and Hannah Thiesen, and for our soldiers in Iraq.

Don