the house that love built

'it is a curious sensation: 

the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling.

when your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. 

it is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.'

-george bernard shaw

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so i thought i was done with blogging for awhile,

but then adrian died.

adrian is one of the guys that lived at 'alpha house'.

alpha is part of the harbor community that i'm apart of in houston.

the house is run by my friends josh & aimee who have two beautiful daughters, shaun and rebecca.

over the past years they have worked with men that are recovering from drug addictions.

they have given them a place to stay with low rent pay, a safe place to get healthy again, and a family that loves and hopes for them.

they are very, very brave.

after hurricane ike there was some damage done to the apartments that these men have lived in. 

adrian was the last guy living there and he had moved into the house during the construction to fix the apartments.

on april 18th, after a morning of running errands in a thunderstorm, josh, aimee, and their daughters came home to find adrian slumped over in his room.

he had overdosed on heroine.

apparently he had been clean for about a year until a month ago when he has used again.

aimee is somewhere around 6 months pregnant and was the one to help do CPR on adrian.

the other house connected with harbor is right down the street.

it's the house where jim, betty, jovon and ryan live and were called over to the house when adrian was found.

they were able to help get the little girls out of the house and help josh and aimee as they go adrian's heart beating again.

one week later adrian was buried after having several of his organs donated to transplant patients.

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i didn't know adrian very well.

he was super shy and i am super not.

i wish i had known him better.

he was 23 years old.

i also don't know the kind of pain that adrian lived with.

as far as anyone can tell, he hadn't meant to hurt himself.

i do know the kind of pain that all of us are dealing with in 'the after'.

i see it on josh and aimee's faces.

i hear it in our community as we try to figure out where to go from here.

adrian is the only death in 10 years of working with people recovering from drug addictions.

his death changes things though.

it brings out things in each of us.

makes us ask some questions.

makes us look at ourselves a little differently.

in the end, i hope that adrian knew peace.

i hope that eventually we will all heal,

and that we may too know peace.

.

i'm not sure if this means i'll keep blogging,

or if it's just gotten me wanting to talk again.

i'm still a happy little girl,

but i felt the need to remember adrian.

that's why i made the video above.

i don't have any pictures of him,

but i have pictures of the harbor children.

one of the reasons i love community is because of the children.

most of them will never know what a 'big church' is like.

what it's like to sit in pews,

or be put into a bunch of church programming.

i like having them around.

i like when they see all of us together working on the alpha house construction.

i like how all of us get to help raise the children together.

so i made the video for the kids and to remember adrian.

may he rest in peace.

in the end.

it has been a long time since i blogged.

recently i've tried to figure out why that is,

and the best answer i can come up with is...

because i'm happy.

it seems silly really,

but it's pretty much the truth.

after returning from my 5 1/2 month trip across europe i found myself to be a different person.

blogging about pain and suffering and deep change is a lot easier than simply saying that,

'today i am happy'.

it just isn't quite as profound.

so where am i now?

despite the recession i have found a great job:

i'm lucky enough to spend my time planning summer camps for kids.

the work behind camps is tons of fun,

and really rewarding as well.

i am still loving my communities and learning how to be loved by them.

my family is alive and well...

learning how to heal and how to grow.

ryan and i are still dating and still working on our relationship.

we will have been together 3 years this september.

but does love conquer all?

i suppose only time will tell.

and God and i?

well,

we're still working on our relationship too.

and lastly, i've found something i'm really passionate about:

taking pictures.

my parents were lovely enough to buy me a new canon 50d dslr and i've been snapping photos every chance i get.

in fact, i've started a new blog to track through my picture-taking progress.

and so, for now, i'm happy.

it's time to move on and start something new.

maybe you can visit me there

'happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth...

we are happy when we are growing' 

-yeats