"Why burn poor and lonely?"

A common theme I find in conversations I have with friends, all of us now in our mid to late twenties, is a romanticized cherishing of some era that has now past in our lives. The range of time differs for everyone, but the common thread is that we all felt so much more present in those years than we do in our lives now. We felt more fully known, more fully expressed, more fully alive.

"I haven't felt like myself in five years."

"That was the one place that has ever really felt like home."

"No one has really loved me that deeply since then."

I'm right there too. For me, those years were 2004-2006. Life wasn't perfect; if anything it was one of the hardest times living in my home. But I was in a youth group that loved me so deeply and taught me so much. I had wonderful friends who worshipped with me and laughed with me and did real talk with me. I shared a love with a boy that was one for the books, a love I haven't seen the likes of since. And to top it all off, some of the best music I have ever experienced was being created and performed in those years, some of which I believe I owe my sanity to. Very few bands have hit my heart like the bands of that era.

Ten years later, and my life is unrecognizable, other than my relationship with God. New old friends, new NEW friends, a new city, college come and gone, life-changing memories come and gone, chapters and chapters and chapters of my life now in the past. I can't begin to tell you how much I love my life, and how blessed I feel to have walked every step of it.

But damn. I'd be lying if I said I felt 100% at home anywhere in that decade. It always felt like someone was missing who I wished I could tell my stories to. Like I was lacking resolve. Like I was experiencing life, but never resting in it. Like I was traveling and having a wonderful time doing so, but I'd left people behind or had people ahead of me who were missing out. It felt like I was a widow rebuilding my life in the wake of a loss, my late husband being an entire community and a timeless romance that slipped through my fingers. People have known me and loved me in that decade and vice versa, but never in quite the same way. Somewhere along the way there was a line drawn in the sand between Before and After, and I have always been aware of that line, even a decade into living in the After. My relationships in this After space have been informed by my life in the Before, my ever-increasingly romanticized ideal state of existence. "This reminds me of how things used to be, so that's a good sign." "They remind me of so-and-so, and I LOVED that person, so I'm getting close."

Like pictures and artifacts that people collect and save to remind them of their own story, and who's loved them. I tote these memories along with me everywhere like an anchor keeping me from some form of "unbeing".

I have longed for the day when my life feels like it is fully mine again, with everyone present who needs to be, and I can bury those memories respectfully. Then have the freedom to run around without that baggage, and "use both hands" in engaging with life, and be present NOW. Letting this moment and these people move me like I used to allow to my past moments to do.

Enter: mewithoutYou

This is one of the bands I mentioned that I have to thank for so many aspects of how I look at the world and how I approach my walk with Christ. They were a mentor, a friend, a musical therapy for me. Specifically their record Catch For Us the Foxes. It contains some of the most honest writing I've ever heard.

I saw them live twice during that cherished era of mine. One of those shows was in 2005 and entailed the entirety of that record performed, and I went with my most beloved humans. It is a specific memory I've held onto that captures the magic of my life back then musically and relationally. I was on cloud nine.

Enter: A decade later in the After space, new to Nashville, new everything, in the wake of closed doors and at the threshold of new ones to open.

mewithoutYou is on a ten-year anniversary tour of Catch For Us the Foxes, and they played in Nashville last night. I knew it would be great. But I didn't know it would catalyze the change that it has.

For starters, everyone in the place was in their mid-twenties or older. Which makes sense, given how old the album is. The opening bands got the casual attention most opening bands get at shows, so no surprise there. But the moment mewithoutYou were on stage and began the intro to "Torches Together" the place exploded. You could smell the catharsis in the air. You could feel how influential this record had been on every single human in the room. Not a soul was standing still. And there's something about yelling raw and honest words that helped you love your God as a kid, along with everyone else in the room doing the same thing, that feels a whole lot like worshipping together. Every single one of us a completely different person than who we were when we first fell for this album, maybe a bunch of us not caring for the Christian notion of how God interacts with us, but every single one of us yelling the likes of "we all have our beliefs, but we don't want our beliefs...God of Peace, we want You" with our entire being, moving to the haunting riffs and syncopated drumming mewithoutYou has mastered. I found myself grinning through the entire show because I knew on an elemental level that we were all celebrating the times of life this band had been part of in our stories. We were all celebrating what "home" had been for us.

I thought about the people I'd seen them with ten years ago, thought about where they are now and where I am now. The same songs, the same humans on a stage in front of me, the same feeling of being alive, but without those souls at my side.

I felt the smallest sensation of you can let go now. those times were beautiful. but so are these times.

Perhaps what makes our younger days feel so much more vibrant is that we lived without question or hesitation. We had nothing substantial to compare it to. Life was life, and we lived it, and everything since has felt like a comparison to that freedom.

But we are always that free.

Life is always worth fully engaging in, and we'll never fully understand why until we're in it and we discover its worth for ourselves. So BE HERE. NOW.

I think I'd been waiting for someone to rescue me from an underwater state, pulling me to the surface, and suddenly I'd be able to fully live.

Last night, in contrast, was a gentle tap on the shoulder and the notion of "Did you know you can swim?" If I am under water, I have been choosing to be there. The surface has been worth my time all along. We all get older and have more complexities in our hearts, more stories to tell and more scars to heal, but that doesn't take away from our ability to fully be with one another. If anything, it enhances it. If anything, our interactions here in the After space can be even more beautiful and meaningful than before the pain.

Healing and growth happen over time and in waves. But this is a wave long awaited for, and I am already feeling the freedom I've been longing for. The burying of the old and the full awareness of the now.

Once again, mewithoutYou has helped me know myself and know Him deeper.

Typical.

So nevermind our plan-making

We'll start living

Anyway, aren't you unbearably sad?

Then why burn so poor and lonely?

We'll be like torches, we'll be like torches

We'll be like torches

We'll be torches together, torches together

(Torches together, hand-in-hand)