Benny Boes

I found a thin place yesterday, the thin space between heaven and earth when it feels as if earth is just barely separate from that place. When God is in the room. When you can feel Him so present, like He is breathing right behind you onto your neck, and goosebumps traveling up and down your spine. Some spaces are like that, you know. 

I've been thinking a lot about death. I know, I know, morbid and dark... but I prefer to not think about it this way. I pray that I think of it more so that when I could choose to be sharp or pointed with my husband (& my God knows I'm good at being sharp and pointed with my husband... about the boxers on the floor or the salsas and dips left out all night).... I pray I think about death more so that when I want to be cross I can look at his face and instead see that this moment, this breath of air, this time frame with him is a gift... and I want to use it to love him because I won't have him forever. 

Every year Ive made it a habit to pray this verse "teach me to count my days." It's one of my favorite passages, and it's followed with "remind me that my days are numbered, how fleeting my life is... my entire lifetime is just a moment to you, at best, each of us is but a breath. We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing how to spend it. And so Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you." (Psalm 39 NLT) 

Yesterday we celebrated a mans life. His name was Benny Boes. They carried his body (he is somewhere else, watching us? Dancing? His brain, tumorless) in a long cedar colored casket, and every one stood. There were hands laid on the wood of the frame. Ever face was wet. Cal was clinging to his mother as she stood bravely at the front watching her husband carried past her. 

"You don't know how much the music/band needs a drummer until the drummer isn't there"... it was something like that anyway. Words of Isaiah Kallman. 

What will this world be like without the drum of Benny Boes? 

It was a perfect day. The leaves were falling, the sun stretching his long arms through the church windows and across the aisles of Benny's loved ones. Coldplay filled every single crevice of the church with the words of "fix you," as they carried him in... the same song Elise walked down the aisle too, in this same space where she vowed "in sickness and in health." The last six months she fought for love just as he instructed us today. 

The place was full with Liverpool & tigers jerseys, and more people than I thought I'd know. I didn't know Benny, but the people he influenced, lived daily with, showed me the person that Benny was. 

"Be yourself. Live urgently, fight for love," Benny left us with these life instructions and Elise carried them into the room and into our hearts with an unwavering voice of confidence and strength. 

Elise encouraged everyone today to "come as they are" because Benny would want all of us to be ourselves, with bravery. Benny's mother in law wore jeans. Josiah and Hannah, full of water on their faces wore two shirts that still smelled like Benny. 

& Friends and family said goodbye to Benny, while the boys choir sang in Latin, while everyone raised Bennys favorite beer singing his favorite song, it felt like something electric was closing... the waving, the weeping, the chandeliers hanging, there were so much beauty in this goodbye that I don't think the impact Benny made on people's lives will ever wilt. 

It left me wondering what I'm doing here. This space, this tiny life I get to live "each of us is but a breath." I want Benny's life and testimony to change me. 

"Saints touch and transform people's lives wherever they are" the pastor said, wiping his nose from his own tears. And I could see that Benny had done this well, so well with his life.