Again, we stare at the screen in disbelief. Hooked up to our individual devices, still we are one in the grief. At our bagel bar this morning, my man and I don’t say much, as the CNN live stream in the corner continually bleeds over all of us this latest tragedy. A bearded man with a weary face enters with a laptop under his arm, and just says one word to the weathered waitress: “Orlando!” She shakes her head and brings him coffee.

She was quoting to me the exact same chapter from the exact same book I so often use to help people understand boundaries. In the hour we spent together, my counselor said nothing new to me, nothing I myself don’t regularly say to others. And yet it was hugely helpful.

Materially, I am among the most privileged in the world, but by American standards, I live in a shack. Two bedrooms with one bath, our 1,000 square foot home is old and in need of continuous repair, which we are slowly and methodically undertaking, as time and finances allow.

Rays of sunshine finds you pressed into the shadows of familiar fears. The unexpected light makes you close your eyes, the warmth relaxes your tense face. I watch the tight armor loosen its grip on your vigilant muscles.

We’re here to study and write, leaning into the sounds of silence together, my man and I. Books and iPads, hot tea and coffee ready, we hope to hear from God. Like Moses outside the camp, but with Sonny’s BBQ instead of manna. The flame in the propane heater is no burning bush, though.

I write the date in my journal. January 21, ’16. I stare at the apostrophe before 16 and rub my eyes. 16 years in this millennia already, and life goes on as always. I remember when Y2K seemed the abyss of the unknown in front of us, and we expected computers to crash and and therefore bank systems to implode; we expected the domino effect of the apocalypse to begin then. And maybe it did.

A week ago, we greeted everyone from our dearest to strangers, “Happy New Year!” Sometimes sincerely intended as a blessing for their year, other times more in the thoughtless vernacular of “How are you?” that doesn’t expect a real reply. In those days surrounding January 1st, most of us took some kind of inventory, trying…hoping… to nurture a happier new year.

We embark on the journey exhausted. Increasingly, a gazillion details interrupt our sleep, and we need this vacation the way an overstimulated toddler needs sleep after a day with too many birthday parties.

Pain pours though her eyes. From the well of countless disappointments, where confusion and dying dreams decay, words, like polluted fish, escape towards the light.

I open my hand. Etched into my nerves there are all those I love. No, love is too generic a word – more precisely, those I carry under my skin, inside my soul. When they hurt, my stomach knots into a fist. When they laugh, sunshine floods through me.

Bypassing the psychedelic theology of “Lost,” what is it about that last scene, when everyone gathered in the church, young again and free of old tension while the violins breathe that sense of eternity over the slow motion film? Our hero is dying, we know it’s sappy, but it still rings true.

Predictions have swirled for years. Distant hooves galloping towards us with warnings, almost too surreal to be believed. Though mocked as “sensationalists” and “extremists,” the watchmen nonetheless can’t un-see the approaching dust clouds.

Whipping me with debris from old insecurities and new responsibilities, the cold gusts from a tumultuous encounter at first evokes the gut-response of curling up in a self protective ball.

Survival has been my mode for so long that I just assumed it’s what life requires. Not that less is demanded of me now, but like a dog sniffing into the autumn wind, I’m sensing a change.

They took my breath away, my own weary people who came trickling into church after a long day. After what happened in the Emmanuel church in Charleston, still they came to this house of God.

That dread of looking into a calendar so overflowing that the obligations are scribbled all over each other. That thousand-tons awareness pressing down that it can’t all be done, at least not well.

Let’s just say that our house was never featured on anyone’s Pinterest board. Nor was it ever the chosen location for anyone’s baby/bridal shower. Twice, in fact, separate friend-groups staged an intervention in response to my pioneering pastor-man’s stress level.

Life is hard. Why make it even harder? I don’t like stress, I hate what it does to my husband, and I fear its affect on my children. So it’s tempting to create protective barriers that ensure my preferred calm life rhythm and give the illusion of a “balanced” life. Isn’t that what we are taught to value?

“No one can really spare a woman the process of labor,” the doula muses. Pale and dehydrated, she herself is hooked up to an IV in an overflowing labor ward, nearing the end of her own excruciating pregnancy.

The final storm is approaching;

Hellish stressors, diseases, and lies.

The dreams we held as human rights,

Torn from us, pulverized.