Some posts don’t need to be rewritten. They just need to be shared again.
I wrote this last year when I was more or less face-down on the floor trying to pick myself back up. Trying to learn how to love myself again. Trying to figure out who I was and who I was becoming.
My time in the wilderness of KCMO and Kansas made me question just about every life choice I’ve ever made.
There were moments earlier in my life when I struggled with intrusive thoughts, especially when I was younger and trying to understand my sexuality. After one terrible breakup. Then another. The thirteenth one probably should have been my clue that maybe the problem wasn’t just a bad picker.
There were moments when I wondered whether my life still mattered. Whether staying was worth the pain I felt in my head, my heart, my soul, and sometimes my body.
So I understand something about the darkness that lives in people.
I understand the moment when someone decides, "Nope. I’m done. I’m out."
We don’t talk about that enough. Somewhere in some research study, someone decided that talking about suicide might give people ideas. But the truth is simpler than that, the people who are thinking about it have usually been thinking about it for a long time.
No one suddenly hands them the idea like a lightbulb moment.
Sometimes it’s a long quiet erosion.
Sometimes it’s an impulse.
Sometimes it’s a plan.
A permanent solution to what might have been a temporary storm.
So today, let’s talk about Robin Jorden. I think what people want to believe is that if everything is perfect, the perfect job, the perfect spouse, house, and dog, the perfect children, then you’ll be happy.
Maybe.
But no one is happy all the time.
Happiness is fleeting. And without sadness, you can’t truly appreciate happiness. Without tragedy, you can’t fully understand joy.
Life isn’t just a roller coaster.
It’s a freakin’ funhouse, a carnival, and one of those spinning rides that makes you want to puke. That’s what life feels like sometimes. A gosh darn carnival ride.
Mine certainly does.
This one is hard to talk about because I didn’t answer her last call. It was November 2013. Thanksgiving week.
Robin had called to talk about a movie she had just watched, "Blue Is the Warmest Color." It’s a movie about exploring sexuality, falling in love, and experiencing heartbreak... the kind that changes you.
She was trying to heal a broken heart and wanted to talk about it. The movie had made her think about everything she had been struggling with after that breakup.
Robin and I talked a lot when I lived in California. And we kept talking after I moved to Minnesota. She was one of the only friends who braved a Minnesota winter to come visit me. She knew, just from the sound of my voice on the phone, that I wasn’t doing well. That I was homesick. That I needed someone to show up.
And she showed up.
She loved tennis and went to the US Open every year.
She asked me to go with her that year.
I told her I’d see if it worked with my schedule.
It didn’t.
So I didn’t go.
She did. And that was the year she took her life.
I knew she wasn’t doing well. I could hear it in the way she spoke. In the silences between her words. But I was a thousand miles away and I didn’t know what I could do to help.
I listened.
I talked.
I tried my best to be there for her.
And yet…
It still wasn’t enough.
I saved the last message she left me. Sometimes I listen to it just to hear her voice again. I don’t talk about Robin enough.
Maybe because I still feel guilt.
Maybe because I still can’t believe she’s gone.
But I know she’s gone.
Because if she were here, we’d be on the phone right now talking about how completely messed up the world is. Goddess, I’ve had so much loss in my life that sometimes I don’t even know how I get through the day.
But I do.
I always do.
My world has not been the same since she left. It is still a struggle to make sense of the nonsense, but I persist. Sometimes I think I try to live a good life because that’s what she would want.
Maybe I’m just hoping to find some way to fill the void her friendship left behind. But it doesn’t work like that.
The void stays.
The missing stays.
You just learn how to live around it.
I want to believe that her essence, her spirit, her energy, her ancient universal dust, has moved on to the next life. The next dimension. Some corner of the universe where she is finally happy and no longer in pain.
I want to believe that.
But the pragmatist in me sometimes thinks it’s just emptiness. That she is gone and there is nothing where her life used to be except this strange quiet absence.
And still.
We carry on.
We carry the memories of the people we loved.
Their hearts.
Their names.
Their laughter.
I still catch myself looking at my phone, hoping her name will pop up.
I know it won’t.
I know it never will.
And yet the world keeps turning.
Round and round.
There is so much more I could say about Robin, and yet I struggle to say it. My feelings are tangled. My heart is heavy. Sometimes it feels like my grief is a dam holding back an entire river.
I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse to love people so deeply when you know they will eventually leave.
But I do know this.
Loving her was worth it.
Our friendship was worth it.
And that is what I carry with me.
Lenten Reflection
Lent is a season that asks us to sit with difficult things, loss, grief, uncertainty. But it is also a season that reminds us we are not alone in those moments.
Psalm 34 tells us:
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
That verse doesn’t promise that heartbreak won’t happen. It promises that God is present when it does.
Grief is the weight of love that suddenly has nowhere to go. When someone dies, the love we had for them doesn’t disappear. It lingers. It searches for a place to live.
Sometimes it lives in memory.
Sometimes it lives in the way we care for other people.
Sometimes it lives in the quiet ways we keep someone’s story alive.
Robin is gone.
But love stays.
Her kindness.
Her laughter.
Her friendship.
They remain in every memory I carry forward.
Maybe that’s what faith really is.
Not certainty.
Not perfect answers.
Just the willingness to keep loving, keep remembering, and keep moving forward. Even when it hurts.
Life isn’t about flawless filters, curated perfection, or pretending we’re fine when we’re not.
Life is about loving people while they are here.
And honoring them after they are gone.
I honor Robin by remembering her.
By living a life that still has room for joy.
By carrying her love forward.
She loved mint chocolate chip ice cream.
On her birthday, April 4th, I’ll eat some in her honor.
You should, too.
Love stays.
Always. 💙
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of each other.
For years, people have argued about whether Jack could have fit on that floating door with Rose in the movie Titanic.
Personally, I’m not convinced he could have. Physics aside, the door was already barely holding one freezing person above the water. Two probably would have sunk it. But that debate was never really the part of the movie that stuck with me.
The moment that always stayed with me is when Rose realizes the rescue boats are coming. She understands she might actually survive. And then she has to do something almost unbearable.
She gently pries Jack’s frozen fingers off the door and lets him drift into the dark water below. All the while she promises him, “I’ll never let go. I’ll never let go.”
Which of course sounds like a ridiculous contradiction.
Because she literally lets go.
And yet… she keeps the promise.
Rose survives. She builds a life. She has adventures, loves, children, and memories. She lives the kind of full, complicated life Jack believed she deserved. And at the end of the story, she drops that enormous diamond into the ocean.
People always ask why she did that.
Maybe it belonged with the memory of that moment.
Maybe it was her way of returning something sacred to the past.
Or maybe she just didn’t want treasure hunters and film directors fighting over it.
Who knows.
Jack and Rose aren’t real.
But the truth the story is trying to tell absolutely is.
Life continues.
Even after loss.
Even after grief.
Even after the moment when you realize someone you loved is no longer walking beside you.
A few years ago I was golfing alone on a cold, windy day. The kind of Minnesota day where it’s about forty degrees and the wind is blowing thirty miles an hour. Most reasonable people stay home in that weather.
Minnesotan golfers do not, and apparently neither do I. Sometimes I have no good sense. If you love the game enough, you’ll play until the courses finally shut down for the season.
The course was mostly empty that afternoon. Just the sound of wind and the occasional thud of a golf ball.
Earlier that week I had seen a news story about something called a “wind phone.” Someone had mounted an old rotary phone to a tree so people could call loved ones who had died.
It sounded a little strange.
A little woo woo.
A little mystical.
But also… kind of beautiful.
I didn’t have a rotary phone on that golf course. But standing there alone in the wind, I thought about my friend Robin. Her death anniversary was coming up. This was in November.
I remembered our last conversation. She had asked if I wanted to go with her to see the U.S. Open in New York. It had become a tradition for her.
I told her I couldn’t make it that year. “Maybe next year,” I said.
Of course next year never came for her.
Standing there on that quiet golf course, I found myself talking into the wind.
I told her how much I missed her. I told her I thought we would have had so much fun golfing together. She played tennis in college before a hip injury ended it, but I always thought she would have loved golf too.
We would have had so many ridiculous golf outings.
Bad shots.
Good shots.
Laughing at each other’s terrible putting.
But then another realization hit me.
We will never make new memories together.
That’s the part of grief people don’t talk about enough.
The memories you already have become incredibly precious.
But the future you imagined together quietly disappears.
And my friend Kimi once said something that stuck with me.
“It’s really sad when you look at it that way.”
And it is.
Because grief only exists where love existed first.
You don’t mourn people who didn’t matter.
You mourn the ones who changed you.
Which brings me back to Lent.
Lent is often framed as a season of sacrifice or discipline. But at its heart it is also about learning how to live with loss. The entire Christian story moves toward the cross. Toward grief. Toward the moment when people who loved Jesus believe everything they hoped for has ended.
And yet the story doesn’t end there.
Life continues.
Love continues.
The people we lose never completely disappear from the story of our lives. They become part of the way we move through the world.
Part of the way we love other people.
Part of the courage we carry forward.
Rose let go of Jack’s hand. But she carried the life he believed she could live.
I think grief sometimes works the same way.
We let go.
But we don’t forget.
I don’t have many regrets. But the regrets I do have are the things I didn’t do. The choices and chances I didn’t take.
Tell your friends you love them.
Do the thing.
Go to the U.S. Open.
Because maybe that’s the last adventure you’ll get to have with that person.
Her birthday is in April, and like on that cold November day, I’ll walk a golf course alone and speak into the wind. I’ll have that familiar conversation with Robin. I’ll tell her all the ridiculous stories I have to tell her since we last spoke. I’ll tell her I miss her. I’ll tell her the world is on fire and that my world feels less bright without her.
I wish I had some uplifting thing to say.
I don’t.
Because grief is like that.
It’s about sitting in the sadness and experiencing the loss. Letting go isn’t just about moving on. It’s about accepting what is no longer there.
Lent Reflection:
The apostle Paul writes in Epistle to the Philippians 3:13–14:
“But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal…”
I don’t think Paul meant pretending the past didn’t matter. Paul carried a complicated past with him... loss, mistakes, persecution, and people he loved who were gone. “Forgetting what is behind” was not about erasing those things. It was about refusing to let them anchor him in place.
Grief, love, and memory travel with us. They become part of who we are. But they do not have to stop us from continuing the journey.
Faith, like life, keeps moving forward.
And sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is carry the love of the people we’ve lost and keep living the life they hoped we would have.
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of each other. 💛
Some lessons apparently need to be repeated over and over again because people either refuse to learn them or keep pretending they didn’t hear them the first time. You know the saying that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result is the definition of insanity? I’m starting to believe that might actually be the unofficial motto of my job at Circle K.
At the gas station on 4th St SE, we currently only have 87 and 91 gas available. One of the underground tanks is broken. Fixing it would require digging up a huge section of the station, which means it’s not a quick and easy fix. So for the time being, that particular button on the pump simply does not work.
There are signs everywhere explaining this.
Stickers on the pump.
Labels on the button.
Big bold words that say OUT OF ORDER.
And yet people still press it.
Every single day.
Then they come inside and tell us the pump is broken. "Yes, sir/ma'am that has been broken for six months." For a long time, I would politely explain the situation. “That button doesn’t work right now. Just hit the other one.” Most people would nod and go back outside. Some people would insist the machine must be malfunctioning. Occasionally, someone would suggest we should “get that fixed,” as if we had not already noticed the giant underground fuel tank problem.
Recently, I decided to try something different. Now I simply say, “You hit the wrong button. I reset it. Go back out and hit the correct one. The one I told you to hit the first time.” Then they slowly walk away, looking like a child who just got caught doing something they absolutely knew they weren’t supposed to do.
And honestly, a large part of my job is trying to understand how some grown adults have survived this long.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize this isn’t just a gas station problem.
This is a human problem.
The instructions are clear.
The signs are visible.
The outcome is predictable.
And we still push the wrong button.
Then when nothing works, we look for someone else to blame.
The traditional scripture reading at the beginning of Lent comes from Matthew 4:1–11, the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. After forty days of fasting and isolation, when He is physically exhausted and vulnerable, the devil dude shows up with what honestly sounds like a pretty reasonable offer.
He tells Jesus to turn stones into bread and prove His power.
Then He challenges Him to throw Himself from the temple so God will rescue Him in dramatic fashion.
Finally, He offers Him political power over the entire world.
Each temptation is essentially the same offer wrapped in different packaging: take the shortcut. Prove yourself. Take control. Accept power without sacrifice. In other words, press the easy button.
And if we’re being honest, most people would probably take that deal.
You’re wandering around in the wilderness, hungry and exhausted, trying to prove your faith and resilience, and some devil-looking guy shows up and says, “Hey Jesus, bro, if you just do these things your life will be a lot easier.”
Most people would say, “Oh hell yes. Where do I sign up?”
Because who doesn’t want an easier life?
Wandering around in the wilderness trying to prove something about faith and purpose sounds… exhausting. At some point you’d start asking yourself, Wait, why am I doing this again?
But Jesus refuses every single time.
Not because the temptation isn’t real. Hunger is real. Doubt is real. The desire for security and power is very real. But He recognizes something deeper about the offer being made to Him. Each temptation requires Him to compromise the very thing He came to do. The easy path would lead to the wrong outcome. So He doesn’t press the button. And when I really think about that story, I can’t help but see pieces of my own life in it.
Sometimes it feels like all I’ve ever done is wander around in the wilderness, fighting for justice, equity, acceptance, and basic human dignity.
And the whole time people keep asking me the same question.
“Why are you doing this, Vangie? You’re making your life harder than it needs to be. You could do something easier. Make more money. Stop worrying so much about other people.”
In other words, they’re telling me to press the easy button.
But something deep inside me has never allowed that.
Because that’s not who I am.
And it’s not what I’m here to do.
The hard truth is that sometimes the road has been uphill both ways. But the reason people choose the harder path isn’t because they enjoy suffering. It’s because they believe that if they keep pushing forward, the road might become a little smoother for the people who come after them.
So young LGBTQ+ people don’t have to hide who they are.
So they don’t grow up feeling ashamed, unseen, or alone the way many of us did.
In a lot of cultures, especially BIPOC cultures, there’s an understanding that when someone makes it through struggle, they reach back and help the next generation climb out, too.
My ancestors did that. They struggled so their children could have something better.
And when I think about Jesus in the wilderness, refusing the easy path that would have made His life simpler, it feels like the same principle. He wanted his people to have an easier life.
Sometimes the reason someone chooses the harder road is because they believe it might lead to freedom for someone else.
And if you ask the question:
If not me, then who?
If not now, then when?
Well… that sounds a lot like the wilderness too.
Lenten Reflection
Matthew 4:1–11 | Resisting Oppression in the Wilderness
The traditional Lenten reading from Matthew 4:1–11 tells the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. After forty days of fasting, isolation, and vulnerability, the devil appears and begins testing Him.
But these temptations aren’t just about hunger or power. They’re about manipulation.
Each one tries to push Jesus to prove something about Himself, to compromise His mission, or to trade truth for power.
The first temptation is the demand to prove His worth.
“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
That line should sound familiar to a lot of marginalized people. Trans and queer people are constantly asked to justify their existence, to prove that they are “respectable enough,” “palatable enough,” or “good enough” to deserve basic dignity. Jesus refuses that game. He does not perform His identity for the approval of others.
The second temptation is about conditional acceptance.
“Throw yourself down,” the devil says, suggesting that God will rescue Him if He proves His faith dramatically enough.
This is the same logic many LGBTQ+ people hear from religious institutions: we will accept you, but only if you suppress who you are. Only if you conform to our expectations. Jesus rejects that idea entirely. Faith is not about proving yourself to systems that demand your erasure.
The final temptation is about power.
“All this I will give you,” the devil says, “if you bow down and worship me.”
This is the oldest temptation there is: trade truth for comfort. Accept power if it means compromising your values. Politicians and religious leaders still use this tactic today, dividing marginalized communities and offering security to some if they abandon others.
But Jesus refuses again.
Justice that requires someone else’s oppression is not justice.
Liberation that leaves others behind is not liberation.
The wilderness story reminds us that resisting these temptations is part of the spiritual journey.
For LGBTQ+ people, that resistance can look like refusing to justify our humanity, standing firm in our identities, and continuing to advocate for those who are still being pushed to the margins.
For allies, it means refusing apathy. Speaking up when harmful theology is used as a weapon. Making sure our communities are places where dignity and belonging are real, not conditional.
Lent is not just about giving something up for forty days. It is about transformation.
It is about choosing truth when compromise would be easier.
It is about rejecting the systems that demand our silence.
The story of the wilderness is not just an ancient text. It is a reminder that every generation must decide whether it will take the easy path or stand firm in the pursuit of justice.
Jesus came out of the wilderness stronger.
So will we.
This Lent, let us choose resistance, renewal, and justice.
As above. So below. Amen.
Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. 💛
