DAY 4: CONNECT #40acts

Not until I graduated college and moved to Chicago, I didn’t realize how important it was to connect.  Because my family, friends and the usual surroundings that I’m used to are so far away from me, I take fewer things for granted.  I enjoy reconnecting with people every time I come back to Seattle.  The constant coming and going does take a toll on me sometimes because people’s lives are constantly moving and changing.  When I finally finish catching up, I have to leave so the endless cycle seems to circulate itself when I come back again.  I guess partly it’s the life that I have chosen.  Like any vocations, along with the many joys, there are sacrifices.  I miss a lot of life events of those that I care about.  I’m not there as often so I don’t know the inside jokes.  But it’s easy to look at the glass as half empty and forget the bottom half sometimes.

The theme for today is connecting.  We in the United States do a bad job at this.  It is unusual for a person to initiate a conversation with someone sitting on a bus or train on their way to work because we are loyal in keeping our urban solitude commandment.  Thanks to technological advances, physical distance doesn’t mean much anymore because our neighbors can be physical close to us for years and we still aren’t as close to them in relationship as we are to someone who is thousands of miles away.  I envy other cultures that are more communal when I travel outside the U.S.  Sometimes I yearn to be acknowledged, to say “hi” to and being asked “how are you?”  I love hugs and smiles, it brighten my day. 

I say this because I wish I knew all of these things ten years ago.  It was about ten years ago that my family lived next door to an Irish-American family.  They had four daughters, one in particular had pretty blue eyes.  I can still remember and visualize even today holding her because she was probably 5 or 6 at the time. And just like that, 10 years later, I recently found out that she took her own life at a mere age of 16.  Thinking back, I regret not keeping in touch and reconnecting when we moved out that neighborhood.  I really wish I did because maybe I could have changed her mind, or at least be there to tell her in her last moments of life how much I loved her.  Maybe that would change something, or at least made her feel that she's not alone.

Of course life is full of “could have’s” and “should have’s” but the past can be looked at as a precious gift in itself.  I will always have that image of me holding her in my arms.  What gives me hope is that I know at this moment, she is in arms that are more tender than mine, more loving, and more gentle.  However, consoling as that may be, it doesn’t fully take the pain away.  When someone we care about dies, it leaves a scar in our heart.  This is especially agonizing when the death is from suicide.  But in the end, if we truly believe our God is one who is loving, compassionate, and understanding, we can rest assured that through God’s infinite mercy, my beautiful blue-eyed girl will be embraced by arms far gentler than mine running to hold her.