To Political Pistachio

There comes a peace in believing both beginnings and endings are not only envisioned in the here and now, but really are already finished in the story of the Creator. All I really have to do is just live through until the manifestation of His perfect will is unfolded before my very eyes.

In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.” Her husband dies suddenly, in the middle of conversation as Didion builds a fire, starts dinner and pours her husband a Scotch. The couple has just returned from their only child’s sickbed. Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, sits by the fire reading and conversing.

Didion writes:

At one point in the seconds or minute before he stopped talking he had asked me if I had used single-malt Scotch for his second drink. I had said no, I used the same Scotch I had used for his first drink. “Good,” he had said. “I don’t know why but I don’t think you should mix them.” At another point in those seconds or that minute he had been talking about why World War One was the critical event from which the entire rest of the twentieth century flowed.

I have no idea which subject we were on, the Scotch or World War One, at the instant he stopped talking.


Over. No more. Done. Her book carries the same tune throughout. Totally understandable, but it just doesn’t work for me. After the initial blow, the unbelievable belt in my belly, out in my front yard, there with my two pecan trees and a flapping U.S. flag, sometime after, I don’t know how long, a day, two days or two weeks, but sometime thereafter I do remember bowing to my LORD on my bedroom floor, the carpet scratched my knees, there was a plant, big and green, I forget its personal noun, but Jerrod’s dad sent it when Aaron was killed. The sun is always beautiful through this southern window that was built high on the wall in my bedroom. It requires looking up, a strained neck and cramped knees, nothing more, save the pair of orbs in my head and then a cry, silent or loud, I can’t remember, but a cry. And an awe-inspiring grasp of the power my Heavenly Father holds. It may have been the miracle of Aaron’s birth that introduced me to true faith that had been nurtured all along, but it was the Angel of Death that brought me into a peace that has yet to leave. It’s not a warm and fuzzy peace. Sometimes it is a hard cold one. But it is there and no matter how hard I try to break it down, it never leaves. It is the mark of God set upon my spirit long ago and though I possess the power to rattle it; I have not the authority to create or kill God’s plans. I am not that big.


Most of us have experienced that instant change in our lives where come what may, death of some sort has taken place in our lives, the death of a loved one, the dreaded “C” word or the betrayal of this world’s love, for each of us, our lives changed that instant. Our lives changed as we knew them. But I believe this: our lives acted out in God’s plan.

He is All Powerful. And what He says He will do, He must hold to it. God cannot lie. He is bound by His Word. At times that’s difficult for our earthly lives, but it is security beyond comprehension for me.

For my friend Douglas, a fellow writer, blogger, parent of a son who is just twenty-two, such a beautiful age and so very young to be diagnosed with testicular cancer, but I tell you this my friend, there couldn’t be a plausible age for this diagnosis. As much as possible, go in peace dear family of Believers. And if you can’t, that’s okay too. Just live through it. Breathe. And as much as is possible, trust. Trust is different from faith. God had his eye on those He sent this child to.

All truly is handled.

Please pray for the Gibbs' family as their son goes into surgery tomorrow.