When I lost my sheep, I did just what the parable says.  I left my ninety-nine behind and recklessly ran through the woods, over hillsides, into caves, calling out to him, leaving voicemails, opening every portal of vulnerability– being a fool on a journey, looking more like a crazy person on a spin out– begging her sheep to come home.

In the parable, Jesus says that when the shepherd finds her sheep, she is so glad that she swings the sheep on to her shoulders and carries him all the way back to the other ninety nine left behind.  And there is rejoicing.

When I found my lost sheep– our best pal– I was told that the sheep does not want to be found.  In fact, the sheep had plans to build a fence, find a different flock, and– though he would quietly continue to follow me on Instagram and Facebook– he was otherwise uninterested in hanging in any more pastures connected with mine.  I went back to my ninety-nine empty handed.  A new hundredth sheep has been added, but there is still a missing sheep.  Like a stillborn.

While I see myself as more of a fellow sheep than a shepherd, the metaphor still seems to hold up.  And my wool was really in a tuft.  Even though my flock is healthier without that hundredth sheep, even though as I am recounting our history I see the pattern of a sheep who could not love the flock he was in, I am still missing a sheep.  It would take a major shave and regrowth for that sheep to fit in again.  But there it is– on the far side of the meadow– a tiny sheep-shaped hole I’ve cut into the fence myself.  Just in case.

And for this reason, I don’t believe in Hell.

It goes like this: God has a flock of sheep, and that’s us, and we wander around and get out of the fence sometimes and occasionally get eaten by wolves if s/he’s been careless.  S/He comes to find us when we are lost, and sometimes we say– nope.  Not coming back.  I want to hang in greener pastures for a while.  Maybe forever.

So what if this: if I have the capacity in my sheep brain to continue to hold a place for a missing sheep I don’t intend– and don’t even really want– to have back in my pasture, isn’t a God who is supposed to have more advanced feelings and capacity for love able to hold a place for me without, I dunno, hardening his heart or mine for the short span of a human lifetime?  I mean, s/he’s eternal, right?  What’s the matter with holding back the fence for the blip of a lifetime?  It’s no wool off her nose– she’s still got ninety-nine sheep to party hardy with in the meantime.  If I am feeling the distinct missing-ness of a sheep in my own flock I didn’t create, how much more would the God-Shepherd feel the missing-ness of a sheep s/he took the time to fashion each hair on its wool coat?

It’s his metaphor, for Chrissake.

If my sheep doesn’t want to hang with me anymore, I think he can still live a full and happy life.  God must be bigger than me.  So a fiery dungeon pit Hell as an alternative to being in hot pursuit of a higher power seems illogical.  Narcissistic.  And from what I’ve read, and what everyone seems to be saying (aside from the sign-carrying Turn-or-Burn variety) is that God is nothing if not loving and compassionate and selfless.  Hell doesn’t make sense in God’s own construct.

There’s a theory out there I’ve heard that Hell is actually the time we spend apart from God.  I think I could buy it.  I’ve formed a sort of Hell-shaped hole for my missing sheep, too.  It’s a hole that looks like hurt feelings and snarky comments and the time we are missing out on.  But it’s a Hell I can live with.  And I’m pretty sure he can, too.  In this way, I think we live in our own personal Hells all the time.  Occasionally, there is restoration.  Sometimes there’s not.  And out of those Hells, there grows a thorny wall that separates us from that person, growing thicker all the time.  We can choose to see that wall and believe it’s unsightly or painful.  Or, we can see it as potential.  It will produce some fine roses someday, and excellent shade from the scorcher of a summer we have coming up.

And in a strange way, even while we are in Hell, we are in Heaven, as well.  Finding ways to be happy in spite of or because of the one we are separated from.  We could live this way forever.  For eternity, even.  I think God would be as happy with one side of the thorn bush as the other.  After all, if we ever really needed to, there is likely a sheep-shaped hole in the bottom of the wall that makes it easy to crawl back and forth.  Because walls, just like the holes we put in them, are self created.  Kind of like Hell.

My sheep nosed his way under my fence shortly after I started unpacking this.  He said he’s ready to come around again.  I left the gate open, but I kept a safe distance.  A couple days later, he said he changed his mind.

No need to throw the gates open all at once.  All Hell might break loose.

We are wading through the thickness of it, trudging up hills and keeping an eye on the trail marker behind us and in front.  Every few steps, we are sure we’ve lost it.  It’s disconcerting and exciting and scary.  We squint through our sunglasses, occasionally lowering them for the exhilaration of the blinding light and blue sky.  I’ve only ever felt this way in the snow.  But here, it’s nearly 80 degrees and is only past noon.

“Is it up here?” I ask, unsure of the next few steps.

“I think it goes both ways– I followed it twice and didn’t end up in the same place,” a stranger’s voice responded.  I hadn’t realized we weren’t alone; but the backpacker, it seemed, had been alone for a while.  Here, in the White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico, was either a version of Heaven or Hell.  And every person here staggered aimlessly, hoping for a way out the moment they walked in, while also looking for a deeper route in.  The long, rolling dunes threatened to wash us over with time– time marked only with an occasional Yucca or cacti or snake-belly pattern in the sand.  A real Paradise of Purgatory.

It’s a small miracle that anything can survive out here, the dunes like nature’s end credits– but with no end.  A wash of information scrolling up and over– a wild hare’s prints as soon brushed off screen as they were seen.  Animals manage, thanks to the adaptation of the plants.  It’s a sturdy system that takes all kinds– and all kinds are mostly reduced to three kinds.  The Hold-On-For-Dear-Lifers, the Live-Fast-and-Die-Young’s, and, my favorite, the Topple-Over-And-Start-Again’s.  Or, the Yucca.

The Hold-On-For-Dear-Lifers are mostly the stocky types– scrub brushes and a couple cacti.  They grow their roots in deep, refusing the change of the ever shifting sand around them.  Even when they’re held to the end of a dune, they hold harder.  For this reason, they grow in spite of their surroundings.  They know this isn’t their ideal condition, but they’re sure going to withstand it.  Desert be damned.  And, they do.  They are a source of water for some animals, and endure to provide a little more food, too– and they themselves can hoard what they store to last them on the hottest days and the coldest nights.  You can find them, bent and reaching, squat and firm, glaring into the whip of sand grains around them.

Then there are the Live-Fast-and-Die-Young’s– the grasses.  These little guys shoot up in clusters, immediately accepting their fate.  They grow up fast and straight, moving easily with the winds, indifferent to the moving dunes. Or, maybe not so much indifferent as open.  Ready.  Unshaken, even as they are being pulled from their roots.  These little buggers fly up wild and free, thriving and strong– and then they’re gone.  You’d never know they were there.  There’s no hole, no loss– just another shoot to replace them quickly pushing up behind.  Their ability to keep moving quickly makes them a easily replenished source of food, too.

They couldn’t be more different.  They couldn’t be more equally important.

“It’s just, I get so close– soooo eeeeeky close– to believing in the Nothing– to believe there’s nothing after this,” I tell my Someone.  We are driving after our show in Crawfordville, FL, where the trees all hang their heads heavy with Spanish moss and kudzu.

“And then what happens?” he asks.

“Then,” I stammer, “then… then I miss the trees.”

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“And then when I get so close to Christian Heaven forever, I can’t do that either,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because then, the trees here aren’t good enough, and I want to love them.”

“Hmmm, tough call.”

“I don’t know how to pick,” I say.

“Maybe you don’t have to.”

The Yucca is easy to spot– its long flower extending up from its jagged, leafy base– like a crow’s nest scouting out the sandy sea, watching the dunes around billow and deflate.  The Yucca has a strange little visitor– the Yucca Moth– who comes and whispers in her ears, pulling the pollen, then pollinating her in exchange for a place to lay eggs and rest.  The young moths, when they’re born, feed on nothing but the Yucca seeds before they go off in search of their own Yucca plant.  It’s a small, but symbiotic world, full of tiny births and rebirths within the plant.  Then, when the sands shift and the dunes decide that the time has come, the Yucca plant begins to shake, as well.  And with one last look at the world, with a warning movement slow to send the moths out– because this journey is only her own– the Yucca resists none of the inevitable pull, and pushes her long neck forward and dives face first to her grave.

It’s not over.

All those little relationships, all this craning of her neck, all this world within a world is for this: the stalk of her head digs into her grave, and the grave turns into a womb, and her death was only sleep, where out grow another stalk.  Another plant.  The same plant.  Again.

It’s so beautiful, I can hardly stand it.

Maybe it doesn’t matter what happens to us when we die.  Maybe I don’t need to decide.  But what I am starting to believe– the urgency– is that what happens when we are gone seems to dictate how we live.  With the Nothing– or Atheism or Live-Fast-and-Die-Young, the urgency brings an immediate call to love, love, love, now, now, now.  But it’s the urgency that twists my tummy.  All this pouring out– all this speed– and then… Nothing.

With Heaven– or Christianity, or Hold-on-for-Dear Life– it creates a hope that this is all for something later; but the later looms, and I am disappointed at the spitting sand instead of enjoying the movement of the dune below me.  I’ve watched too many friends– I’ve watched too much of myself– sneak slyly by the present with a smug smile that one day– on a better day than this– everything will be made right.  By someone else.  And these trees?  This Yucca plant?  All well and good, but the good hasn’t even started.

How sad.

The story I tell myself about the Later, it’s important.  It helps me tell myself how to live now.  And while I know it takes all kinds, I’m not sure I can survive these conditions with the speed or strength these two require.

There’s a fourth.

The trees in White Sands, they are connected.  Often several trees scattered that you would suspect least– they came from the same single tree.  The elevated water table in the park allows for a single tree to become tall and nourished.  And then, creating a standard for living for themselves, their roots follow the water through the ground.  When they realize how far they’ve strayed, they grow up– really up– out of the ground.  New trees are formed.  All of them connected to the same root base.  The Grow-Togethers.

I’m not sure what this does for my eternal perspective, but I am relieved to know there is a deep, warm embrace of many protecting and making strong the dark, watery underworld.

“I can’t believe it took us so long,” I said to my Someone.

“So long to what?” he said.

“To find each other.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, “it was a lot of hassle.  But at least we figured it out before too late.”

“Maybe we can do better next time?” I asked.

“If that’s the case, then we probably found each other in record time this time, compared to the last time,” he said, “So I imagine next time will be much sooner, still.”

“Until we are born closer?”

“Until we are born closer.”

My Someone and I aren’t sure that we believe in reincarnation.  In fact, we likely don’t.  But we might believe in magic.  And we definitely believe in love.  And somehow, it seems right that we regroup between each life and try to make a better plan this time to find each other.  So far, this life, the one we are in, is our best attempt yet.  And I’m doing my best to enjoy it at its every moment.  I roll over, and tuck my head into the the covers like a Yucca flower in a sand dune.

“Okay,” I say.  “Let’s start over tomorrow, too, as if we started at the very beginning.”

My Someone rolls over, tucking his Yucca head under our dune blanket, too.

“Sounds good.”

Today, I am 32 years old.

I am still working on liking Chardonnay because I think that it’s what thirty-something’s drink.  I am sorely missing my best pal this year, but am starting to see the benefits of grief, and how it opens up into sensitivity, which opens up to seeing, which opens up to falling in love again.  One of my favorite things is blending famous people or friend’s names with inanimate objects or activities (David DuCovies for my duvet.  Donald and Danny Glovey are my gloves.  Ellaphants Gerald is my elephant blanket.  When my Someone asks “Are you ready to quit for the day?” and I say, “Yep, it’s Quittin’ Tarantino Time!”).  I make an effort to do this at least once a day.  This morning I think I learned what it means to breathe into a feeling and release the bad feeling out.  It was my first time thinking it worked.  I have a love of putting my feet in water that doesn’t seem to be decreasing with age.  For the first time since I was young, I didn’t watch my birthday come in at midnight– I made it only to 11:45PM and conked out.  I was, however, up in plenty of time to see the sunrise.  My favorite city to visit in Savannah, GA, with a close second of Rapid City, SD.  I listen to more music, now, and am pretty sure it’s because I am able to hear again without worrying if it makes me cool.  I am writing more, and starting to believe that the universe isn’t against my effort, but is rooting for me, instead.  Celery might be becoming my favorite vegetable, but I’m not ready to admit it to myself because it feels boring.  I do yoga almost every day, and take classes without feeling like anyone is watching me, anymore.  This morning, I did it in the middle of a park where people were watching, and I didn’t care.  I consider stopping shaving my legs once a month, but I don’t.  I love hotel rooms.  I am actively working on ways to find myself lost in a project– so lost that I realize that I’ve forgotten to eat, or that it is suddenly nighttime.  I started wearing jeans again this year, but only the sneaky elastic kind that are more like tights but nobody knows it.  They are the same ones my mother-in-law wears.  I am a sucker for jokes, but not the practical kinds.  I want to drink more tea.  I want to drink finer wine is smaller quantities.  I want to go roller skating.  I want to go bowling.  I want to go on more walks in order to think, and think less about whether or not I should be walking.  I’ve made a new friend this year who was right under my nose, but I wasted too much time believing she was someone she wasn’t before I finally set my ego aside and loved her.  My biological clock still isn’t ticking.  I often think of my friends with food allergies when I eat the food they can’t have, and I feel sad that if they were here in that moment, we couldn’t share.  This then throws me into a mental scrolling marquee of each of my friends and their allergies (Alli can’t have beans, Zach can’t have peanuts, Steven can’t have almonds, Dad can’t have gluten, Sherry is vegan…).  My dog is so cute, and I sometimes cry or grit my teeth at the sight of her to keep from exploding.  My Someone is so kind, and I am working at looking directly at him to stop from getting too far in my head and blaming him for things he isn’t doing wrong.  I think I am becoming more patient.  I am exercising my flexibility.  Most times I feel afraid when I am content, because I believe that this emotional indicator is the Universe’s way of letting me know that it is my time to pass on, now.  I am working on not feeling guilty for happiness.

It’s a good start, at least.  Now, I will start preparing for 33.