Friends,

There is a stereotype that certain people only show emotion when it comes to their dogs or horses; however, I don't think this applies only to the English aristocracy and their stiff upper lips. I often have the privilege of catching glimpses of the hurt that people carry. They’ve done it for so long that the hurt feels normal. It’s not that they don’t have the emotion; it is that they have so much of it that they have learned to keep it in. People are sympathetic when tragedy first strikes, but they move on quickly, and they no longer know what to do when you break out in tears weeks or months after it happened. You crave normalcy, while you have an overwhelming sense that you are no longer normal, so you fake it in order to survive. Those things cannot be talked about without the whole dam crumbling apart. Dogs and horses, though? Sometimes it’s easier to talk about them than the source of the grief tearing at our souls.

I still miss Vanilla Bean. I can feel tears form as I write these words. Considering she was such a huge part of the Church, I felt ok preaching about her the Sunday after she died unexpectedly. After that, I knew I needed to keep the conversation moving forward. My position is unique; I need to tap into my feelings to help create vision and direction for the Church, and I need sermon illustrations that feel real and not just a thought experiment. However, St. Luke’s cannot be just about what I am feeling. If it were, then I would have declared a month of community mourning and draped the whole Church in black banners. Even though I am still mourning, the Church needs to move on. When I was working from home last Friday, I finally deleted her staff profile on the Church’s website, and that was hard.

I needed to be sure the public conversation in the Church moved on, but others helped me mourn. The vestry bought a plaque in her honor to be placed somewhere in the Church. I have a beautiful ornament from the Whelen/Seese family, and insanely beautiful drawings from the Jonas family and Mary Parrish. I cherish all these things. Leandra and I still talk about her, but it’s hard to make that our conversation every night after the boys go to bed. Sometimes I think she’s on both of our minds, and we silently decide to talk about something else, because we just can’t.

This doesn't mean she is slowly being forgotten. I will not see someone wearing a baby and not think of how Bean would ever so gently take off any baby’s socks and clean their feet while they were tapped in those carrier things. She did this to every baby, even total strangers at the farmers market in Columbus, Georgia. Every single time I leave for Church on a day she would have gone, I slam on the brakes at the end of the driveway because I have the overwhelming feeling that I’ve forgotten her, and she’s just on the other side of the door. The grief we have for our dogs is real. They leave us with a final gift. They can teach us, especially our children, how to mourn, and they can give us a way to talk about grief that feels tragic but not as terrifying as the grief we keep hidden. When we cry for our dogs, we are not just crying for our dogs. The dam's floodgates open to relieve the pressure.

Vanilla Bean was a dog, and if I feel this deeply about her, then just imagine what others are carrying into the Church. This is not a self-help organization. Whether you are wearing your Sunday best and have a normal pew on Sunday, or you are watching from home in your sweatpants not ready to risk showing up in person, we all need help that goes beyond ourselves. We trust in Jesus to meet us when the dam begins to fail, and we look for ways to talk about the impossible, and then there is that dog, cat, or even hamster that comes to us when we walk into the room, and we feel something.

Blessings,

Nick