November 30, 2006
Fading Reality
Wailoa Stream, in Wailoa Park Hilo Hawaii
Post written November 27, 2006
Hoku, its so strange, its like I cant remember... it all seems unreal now that we have settled down. Mike has his old job back and we see our son... People cant believe that we'd leave Hawaii, they have this idea that its perfect there, you know...But its strange, like a dream I had that I cant quite remember... you know what I mean...
I know what she means perfectly well. Like the times I search for a word in Hawaiian that I used all of the time but cannot now remember... unless it is triggered by something elss... like a sound or a smell. Last night on
Extreme Make Over they had on a Tonga family and we both Woody and I found ourselves relating to the situation as though we were sitting in Hilo...Two things about that show. First we have seen Polynesian people live like this often. Not because they are trash, but because homes like the one they were living in were mansions compaired to what they left and they do not know as a rule how to handle home maintainance. In the Islands often you have cinder block on a slab, or post and peir single wall construction. Both nearly always have a none insulated tin roof. In Utah these folks had winters where the pipes froze, Composition roofing that ripps off or loosens letting snowmelt seep in unseen, causing rot and decay...Also I think the father that had died was too proud to accept help from his church and the people around him. Once the need was known, between the new home, all that went into the home and the commercial kitchen that was installed... was 1.25 million dollars poured into the lives of this family. Thats a miracle...
But I say all of that because so much of the story triggered memories that I am fighting hard to keep. Good things and bad things. There were so many good things that I want to never forget. But like Claudia said "You wake up and think..."was I really in Hawaii for all of those years, or did I dream that?""
I dont want to forget life lived in a different world, that ran on a different clock. The sense that you were living on the edge of the world 2750 miles from anywhere, at the center of creation where Kilauea's lava was in constant motion creating new land at a record rate. I want to grab onto and hold onto the memory of dreaming a big dream and seeing it flow into a reality, only to be challenged by that reality to cling to the Unseen Reality of a God bigger than any problem I faced, that would come to my aid when it was His time and in His way... not mine... I dont want that to fade away into the bottom drawer of my memory...
But daily more and more things press into me and its hard to remember the truth of Hawaii. That its beauty is more than skin deep. Most people just take the skin, but I have seen to the bone into the heart and soul of a place people just dream of and never see.It is a part of my very being now, I will never look at life quite the sme way again after living on an island full of unique places and people... I want to carry that with me, that while "Aloha" has come to be a casual greeting, it really means "to be blessed with the breath of God" to be loved by That which is greater than anyone or anything that comes against me.
Labels: Faith, Hawaii
