A few days ago, I was walking along the Seine River and observing the new construction of Notre Dame de Paris. Most of the work being done right now is on the inside of Notre Dame’s building and not seen as much from the outside. There is still debate on the final plan of Notre Dame de Paris’ structure…if it will look the same as it did or if it will take on a new look.

 

I understand and respect the tension of that debate. The previous design was gorgeous. Why change something so beautiful and revered?  You can see some of it’s former beauty in this picture I took 3 days before the fire…

 

 

Yet, I can also relate to the desire and intention to build something not only new but different from an old foundation. The night Notre Dame de Paris burned, I stood among thousands of people and shared the grief of something cherished being forever changed. But in the midst of that grief, I was not alone in sharing a hope that something new and different would rise from the ashes.

 

I’m often reminded of a sunny but cool spring afternoon five years ago when I stood on a sidewalk in downtown Salt Lake City and watched a building be demolished. I was mesmerized. My eyes could not look away and my feet could not walk away. Captivated, I stood watching this building being gutted and tore down. Strangely enough, I felt a deep peace as I watched this destruction…

 

My marriage was falling apart at that time. No matter how hard I prayed for God to heal my marriage and no matter how many different ways I tried to fix it myself, the relationship continued to crumble and collapse. And over those next four years, I not only experienced the death of my marriage but deaths of many other parts of my life as well. Every aspect of my life was having something stripped away from it. My life was being seriously deconstructed. And the image of that demolition and the feeling of peace I had stayed with me and gave me courage to surrender into that season of my life.

It sucks having your life feel like it is being stripped down, gutted, razed to a bare foundation. There’s no ignoring that akward, shitty, messy feeling when your life is changing out of your control. And in those seasons, you have to make a choice on how you are going to get through it. For me, I chose to surrender to the reality that my life was in a season of loss. Some call it a dark night of the soul.

So I got myself a theme song for that season (cheesy? maybe, lol, but check it out: Unsafe Building – The Alarm). Not sure how many hundreds of times I listened to that song…and I could never tell if I liked the song because the words spoke to me or if I felt the song was singing my words to the world. But in that song I found safety to be just as I was. As a teenager and now as a middleager, music has always been salve to my soul. Martin Luther said “beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most maginificent and delightful presents God has given us.” In my personal deconstruction, all types of music constantly surrounded me. I would nap to Bach, dance in my kitchen to Alabama Shakes, drive around the city for pastoral visits listening to Josh Garrels, bake zuchinni bread to Thelonious Monk, cry to Leonard Cohen. Music is an ethereal bridge for me to connect the physical world with the spiritual world in my own reality. Within a good song, I can pray, pout, dream, rage, hope and grieve. To be honest, music is a wonder to me. I don’t understand its power and magic. But I’m ever so grateful for it and that it has such value with God. Throughout the stories of God in the bible, the music of the heavens and the music of the world is desired and beloved by God. Perhaps music is a portal for us to touch the sacred and the eternal?

There are other meaningful ways I experienced healing and guidance through that season of surrendering to loss, and I’d love to share those with you later. There has been much for me to learn as I give God and myself the benefit of believing that good change can happen within me. Like the internal structure of Notre Dame de Paris now being restored, my internal existence is also being restored. We don’t know what NDdP will look like on the outside, and I don’t know what my life is going to exactly look like either. But I am hopeful in rebuilding it and I’m pretty sure it is going to look different from before.