Friday, April 15, 2011

On Distance (A Five Minute Post)

Lisa-Jo asked me to write about distance in just five minutes.

It looms large in my peripheral vision, the word and its connotations. the mile count that racks up when I think about the time zones I need to transcend to be with, to be present, to love. I hear it wash softly over me when the words, I'm leaving enter the conversation and the finality of the distance creeps into my heart.

I remember England and the distance between me and that Hilary - her hair mussed by wind and English damp rain, her feet in rainboots and tramping their way through fields, believing in the power of that air to breathe God's love into her.

Distance promises challenge, a knuckle-to-knuckle fistfight of me with time and space, those limitations I want to overcome like a superhero in a cape. I want a big house in the country, maybe a farm bursting with the people I love just in one place together so we can live in the same air and drink the same life-giving water and sing the same psalms of praise in the morning and evening and teach each other the language of faces and hands and sighs and hearts and the million small things you have to feel and taste and touch and see in others.

I want that. Distance looks at me and dares me to believe it is yet possible. That yet a sunrise, yet a love beyond those limits, beyond the horizon lines I can see, beyond the practical. That yet, there is a glorious love that flows from us in grace waterfalls across Rocky Mountains and the Mason-Dixon and the Atlantic Ocean and between the states and the years.

Love,
Hilary




11 comments:

  1. Goodness! Your writing is overwhelmingly beautiful! With Joy, Carey

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  2. How lovely and sad and poignant and true! I believe in your vision!

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  3. To long to be with those you love and yet be separated by distance-you have put it so beautifully. Such a tremendous tug on the heartstrings!

    You said, "Distance looks at me and dares me to believe it is yet possible. That yet a sunrise, yet a love beyond those limits, beyond the horizon lines I can see, beyond the practical.
    I love that phrase, beyond the practical.

    Keep the faith and remember what Jesus said in Matthew 19:26: ...with God all things are possible.

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  4. This is a stunning testament to the sheer force of a dream. And know that if that dream is not fulfilled here on earth, it will be in heaven; where we will all be bursting through with love one another.

    Distance is an obstacle, it can be conquered. :)

    Alita

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  5. Oh Hilary, how is it that each time I come here, I leave with tears in my eye? Your words seem like salve that Father purposed for part of my healing. "Distance looks at me and dares me to believe it is yet possible. That yet a sunrise, yet a love beyond those limits, beyond the horizon lines I can see, beyond the practical." Thank you for this!

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  6. Sweet Hil -

    I am always awed at what you can put into words at your age. I don't mean that to sound condescending - just to highlight your gift. You spin words like so much straw into golden thread. You are beautiful. Inside and out and on the page.

    Big tight hugs and you struggle through distance, both in miles and worlds these weeks,

    Lisa-Jo

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  7. Lovely, lovely words. There is so much yearning in them!

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  8. Hilary, your words are beautiful. Keep dreaming. Keep believing!

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  9. Simply lovely - thanks so much for your thoughtful, delicate and beautiful words.

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  10. "Distance looks at me and dares me to believe it is yet possible."

    Yes. Yes! Thank you for the reminder that distance speaks of possibility.

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