Did you know that the phrase "God will not put more on me than I can handle," isn't found in scripture?
Did you know that the phrase "When God allows a door to close, He is ready to open a window (or another door) isn't found in scripture?
Did you know...
I have a horrible, horrible ache this morning and only portions of it come from my wretched knee. For the third time, second since I left that other world (of journalism, specifically The Times-Picayune), friends' jobs have been axed like so much wood.
Friends with families, mortgages, bills of all kind were unceremoniously dumped. Oh, severance pay was part of the saying goodbye, but my, oh, my oh, my they just sent them away -- again.
I talked with, or messaged, my two closest friends still left in the building last night and this morning, and one made the cut though if I get it he won't be writing (there's a great idea by the way, let's have newspapers without writers, because, you know, people don't read -- which makes the rest of all this quite superfulous doesn't it?) and the other was shown the door.
My friend was as I knew he would be. He asked about those doors that will open. He talked about what God has in store for him. He talked about not being surprised. He talked about the future.
Did you see the photo of the one dog grieving and refusing to leave the dog who had died after being hit by a car a while back? That's what being a friend sometimes amounts to. Sometimes all we can do is grieve, privately or publicly.
My training tells me this of grieving:
It is hard.
It is long.
It never ends till we move on, and there is no set time and date for moving on.
It is something we hold on to because we're terrified of being disloyal by letting go.
It is common in all our loss.
It, to quote someone, somewhere, sucks. It always has. It always will.
I believe my friend Jeff Duncan said it best: We lost a friend yesterday. Oh, this friend didn't suffer at the end, and the end came quickly despite the friend being ill for quite some time. Even though we absolutely know it is coming, it always shocks us how quickly it comes. We're never, never prepared.
Like Icarus, we fly too high., then we crash and burn. And this time things are worse, because this time it is giving up.
But beyond losing a friend, yesterday, there was a loss of a way of life. Oh, how hard that is to get past, to grieve, to mourn, to feel like shards of ice on a bare hand.
I've had a subscription to a newspaper, a printed newspaper, the kind of item one can hold in one's hand with one's morning coffee, since I was, well, counting the years of the afternoon newspaper The Meridian Star, all my life. Daily. For 40 years, I've missed maybe a day or two at a time of reading a newspaper, of home delivery, of treasuring good writing and searching into the small print for box scores and such. Heck, I learned to read by studying baseball box scores. Really. I did.
I wrote my first story for a newspaper when I was 15. I wrote roundups for the local newspaper as a senior in high school, still playing football at my high school. I did my own sports newspaper for my high school because I felt the campus "newspaper" we had wasn't good enough. I was paid for my first story in the spring of my senior year.
I stopped writing for that newspaper five plus years ago, taking what they call a buyout and early retirement to pursue my true love, being a pastor. But I've never stopped reading. I thought I never would. Perhaps now, with the loss of that friend, I will. I can. Perhaps even I must.
A while back, The Times-Picayune, announced it was ceasing to be a daily. I worked for the newspaper in management in the sports department for 14 years, then demoted myself to return to writing and did that for another five or six. From the first time I went there, looking out at the Blue Plate sign in its blue brilliance late at night, I felt a sense of home that I didn't always at places like USA Today, the Reno Gazette-Journal and even Jackson's Clarion-Ledger. It was where I thought I would be till they pried my arthritic fingers from my PC or my laptop. I was wrong, again.
I get that things have changed. I understand all that. It lessens my grief not a bit. People who were good at what they did have been sent away.
I guess it was not enough to make a profit.
I guess it was not good enough to do the job.
I guess it's goodbye, again.
I wrote a poem once during my college days and young love. I remember little of it, except this one line: Being young is just a preparation for being gone.
I get that God actually opened that other door for me. I get that there have been bumps and bruises and potholes galore along the way. But mostly I get that God has always given me some sort of challenge and some sort of blessing to go with that.
I will praise Him even in the storm. I will pray for Jimmy Smith, Mike Strom, all the prep staff, and especially Trey Iles.
They were better than what they got yesterday.
Goodbye TP. It truly was good to know you. I'm done, this time.
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