Monthly Archives: May 2012

Farewell to the Shadow-Lands by Brothers

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If you love Narnia even half as much as I do, you will love this song by Zach Zurn and Julian Flores (the duo known as Brothers), available for a free download here.

Inspired by C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle

all is bright, greenest of greens and bluest of blues
the sweetest of fruits and freshest of springs
Our heart’s desire stands before us. the time has come
stars come home, night falls and the door is shut
“and marvel of marvels, he calls a dog like me Beloved”
we run for miles and miles, further up and further in
saints are home, we are home
Look now here He comes!
“the dream is ended: this is the morning”
“Farewell to the shadow-lands” we cry
Further up and further in, we are alive!

from Brothers, released 24 April 2012

Guest blogger: Broken

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If you follow my blog, then you’ve already been introduced to my roommate Desiree.  She is a wonderful woman of God and one of my very favorite people.  Because we have lived together for five years, she is one of the people who has seen me at my very, very worst, OCD-wise.  I asked her to write a guest post about living with an obsessive-compulsive.  Here it is:

Broken
by Desiree Wood

I don’t know how to describe what it’s like to live with someone with OCD, but you all know.

I’m sure Jackie told me that she had OCD while I was in college. She told me how hard it was—about thinking friends were demons or that she was destined for Hell, about sharing her struggles at camp the previous summer—but it just didn’t register. She hid it well for the first year or two that we were friends and roommates, an impressive feat.

And then came the day that I realized this was a problem. Jackie had talked through some other obsessions before, but this one was big. We had been on a retreat with the youth group we volunteered with for the weekend, and on the bus ride home, one of the teens dropped a bomb on Jackie about something he had done. I’m a teacher, so it takes a lot for an experience to blow me out of the water, but what this kid shared did just that! I was shocked when Jackie slid into the bus seat next to me and shared the news. And at that moment, I pleaded with God, “Why?” Why would He allow it to be Jackie who had to shoulder this news? Why the one with OCD triggered by thoughts of guilt? It was so much pressure figuring out what to do with this information. As she sobbed and we tried to work through the news at home that night, my heart broke for her. I felt completely lost and helpless.

To be honest, that’s how I’ve felt through most of this journey through OCD—through the changing meds and different reactions, triggers that come out of nowhere and take days or weeks or months to move past, through the CBT techniques that I felt really unsure about—it’s all a bit lost on me whose mind can just let go of thoughts as I choose. Looking back, I kind of like that I was so lost and helpless, because even though OCD has been hard to deal with for me and a million times harder for Jackie, I know that it has ultimately pushed us both closer to Christ. I love that He redeems the brokenness in our lives.

We all know what it’s like to live with someone with OCD because we are all broken people. Whether you live with family, friends, or a spouse, you battle the brokenness. We’ve all got our issues, sickness, and sin to overcome, and the people around us have to be our support. I pray that I continue to learn how to do that for Jackie.

Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  I am blessed to live with Jackie—to have seen her struggle through OCD with Jesus, to have learned from her, and to have her in my corner as I battle my own issues.

What are your experiences with friends or family with OCD?

Me (bottom right) and Des (beside me) BEFORE we were roommates … she had no idea what she was about to get herself into!

i ♥ Billy Collins

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How to describe Collins?  He is a poetry rockstar.  A brilliant poet who is famous while he’s still alive.  A comedian with words.  The king of the killer last line.

Billy Collins is so popular that it’s almost a cliche to like this former U.S. Poet Laureate.

I don’t care.

Enjoy:

No Things
by Billy Collins

This love for the petty things,
part natural from the slow of childhood,
part a literary affectation,

this attention to the morning flower
and later in the day to a fly
strolling along the rim of a wineglass —

are we just avoiding the one true destiny,
when we do that? averting our eyes from
Philip Larkin who waits for us in an undertaker’s coat?

The leafless branches against the sky
will not save anyone form the infinity of death,
nor will the sugar bowl or the sugar spoon on the table.

So why bother with the checkerboard lighthouse?
Why waste time on the sparrow,
or the wildflowers along the roadside

when we should all be alone in our rooms
throwing ourselves against the wall of life
and the opposite wall of death,

the door locked behind us
as we hurl ourselves at the question of meaning,
and the enigma of our origins?

What good is the firefly,
the droplet running along the green leaf,
or even the bar of soap spinning around the bathtub

when ultimately we are meant to be
banging away on the mystery
as hard as we can and to hell with the neighbors?

banging away on nothingness itself,
some with the foreheads,
others with the maul of sense, the raised jawbone of poetry.

Edmund Pevensie

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Edmund Pevensie of The Chronicles of Narnia is one of my favorite characters in literature.  Jack Lewis sometimes writes small phrases about Edmund that have made me think far beyond the Narnia cannon.

***SPOILER ALERT***  If you have been living under a rock and have not read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, then please stop reading this blog, get yourself to Barnes & Noble, and purchase and read the book already!!!

I am fascinated by Edmund’s transformation.

I love when (in Horse and His Boy), Edmund argues against killing Rabadash, saying, “Even a traitor may mend.  I have known one who did.”  In Dawn Treader, Edmund admits to Eustace, “You were only an ass, but I was a traitor.”  It has been so interesting to me that he became known as King Edmund the Just.  For years, I believed that his experiences ought to have led him to be called King Edmund the Merciful.  After all, justice had once demanded his own death, although Aslan took his place.  But then I realized that Aslan’s substitutionary death was also just– that is, it satisfied the debt and kept Narnia from perishing in fire and water.

I always wonder what it was like when Edmund first returned to England after growing up and becoming a king in Narnia.  In fact, I wrote a poem about it.

EDMUND

The wardrobe door was its own sort of holy baptism—
to push past fur coats with a spiteful heart of stone
then to reemerge moments—or years—later
with one of bold flesh that brimmed with nobility.
I like to think of you returned to boarding school,
a ten-year-old king and warrior, able and just,
your thoughts far from arithmetics as you plumb
the treasures in your core and find there grace—
grace overflowing, for you know as well as anyone
that even a traitor may mend.

I think this song by Kutless is actually about Edmund, and it asks some of my same questions.

What do you think: am I waaaaay too into Narnia?  What are your thoughts on Edmund Pevensie?