Introducing NOW WE SEE DIMLY
Introducing NOW WE SEE DIMLY
What I'll be Writing About. Why I'll be Writing About It.
One year ago, I transferred all of my WordPress blog posts to Substack. I wrote about that transition here.
My intention at the time was to start writing about grief again. However, at the time, I was also:
In a serious relationship headed to engagement
Working 3+ jobs
In the liminal space of moving twice
March of 2023 was crazy, to say the least. Then, things only got crazier. My boyfriend (now husband) moved back to town full-time. I was trying to leave one job but also make ends meet, and running myself into the ground with possibilities.
Ben and I got engaged in June. So I started planning a wedding on top of working three jobs. We had four months until we tied the knot.
In the midst of it all, I didn’t give myself time to process, much less write about, my grief. But after the wedding, as things slowed down (sort of), as we made it through the holidays, and entered 2024, I felt more determined than ever to write about the experience of losing my dad.
More than that, I felt determined to write about memories of my dad and to find ways to connect with him, even now that he’s been gone for four years.
And out of that desire Now We See Dimly was born.
Now We See Dimly is my new blog, a personal newsletter, a space for writing about the ever evolving and surprising ways that grief creeps up on me. It’s about the mark that my father’s death left on me, the lingerings of the trauma that still sometimes throttle me, and the hope and joy I fight for most days. And it’s about the man himself, my father, whom I deeply miss every day.
The title of my new site is inspired by a verse nestled in the Apostle Paul’s famous love passage, 1 Corinthians 13 (emphasis mine):
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
As a human, trapped in the context of chronological time, I know only in part. I have often raged against God for this very reason: Why did you take my dad? Why did you let him die? Why did you do this to me, to my mom, to my brother?
My grief, my expression of it, is what I see as I look in a mirror, dimly. And I share these partial knowings with you here. But I also look for faith, hope, and love in those knowings because I believe God loves me, and that he loves my dad.
The title also speaks to my conviction that I will see face to face someday, and I will know in full. My questions will be answered. My fears and doubts will fade away. My wounds will be healed. He will wipe away every tear.
I hope that sharing my partial knowings may encourage you in one or both of two ways:
If you have ever lost someone, that you will find resonance and solace in my words, and even be inspired to write through your own grief.
If you knew my dad, that you will grieve with me and find new ways of remembering and loving him even still.
These are my primary aims with Now We See Dimly. I wasn’t ready to write one year ago. While this site already has many posts, they are mostly from the first two years of life without my dad.
I’m ready now. I’ve been scribbling on paper in the early morning hours, not just for this blog, but also for a bigger and more involved project that I’m excited to share with you when it’s time. Consider this your teaser; more to come!
Beyond my grief writing, I’ve also become more and more disenchanted with Social Media. I took an entire year off in 2021. I’ve taken shorter breaks frequently since. I read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport last summer, and am currently reading Saving Time by Jenny Odell.1 Both address the problems of companies that claim to connect us when what they’re actually doing is creating an online marketplace in which you are both the consumer and the consumed. I’m reading another newsletter called the SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB that’s reinforcing the fact that FB and Insta are not going to be successful places to get my work out into the world.
And, as a lover of books, these sentences from a fellow TKC alumnus get right to the heart of it and chill me to my core:
It became quickly apparent to me that smartphones and social media were beginning to subject the people around me—smart, disciplined, hard-working people—to a profound change. They were more hunched over, prone to glancing at the device during conversations, and scrolling. Always scrolling.
These devices attack our human nature. Under the old media dispensation, that of books, our minds were rigorously shaped to produce literacy in us—disciplined to patiently endure numerous passages in order to arrive at the conclusion of a work and grasp the whole. Under the reign of electronics, we have been refashioned into pictographic receptors, which elicit instantaneous “likes” and favor immediate payloads of dopamine. Today, we raise up post-literates as a matter of policy, expending extraordinary sums of money and political power to ensure that kids are addicted to screens and useless with the page…
We have received more information than any other humans in history; but our store of memory lies empty.2
Toscano is one hundred percent correct. I know that he, and Cal Newport, and Jenny Odell, and Seth Werkheiser, and more are correct. I know it in my mind, but my heart says “connection!” My vanity and pride say “share photos!” My creative ambition says “growth! followers! an audience!”
And so, to help me make the shift, to give myself some scaffolding after almost 20 years of “sharing” on social media, I will occasionally write about day-to-day life that does not directly involve grief, as well as share some photos and videos. I will do that here on Now We See Dimly, and I hope you’ll indulge me.
Maybe you, like me, have been waiting for a reason to finally cut ties with Zuckerberg and others. Maybe this will encourage you to find other ways besides Facebook and Instagram to connect with the people you love but don’t get to see every day.
People have gone before us, leading the way. I have many friends that I love, respect, and want to “stay in touch with” that no longer have the media sharing accounts. If they can do it, so can I. So can you. Let’s join the escapers.
Thank you so much for reading about the whats and the whys of Now We See Dimly.
The beauty of this is that it is a newsletter. You don’t have to check the socials to see when I’ve written something new. You can simply subscribe.
And if you’re not ready to subscribe, bookmark this site and check in every once in a while. I’ll be here, writing. My first post is scheduled for Friday, and you don’t want to miss it.
Now, go grab a good long book and get to reading in the meantime!
The links I’ve shared here are my affiliate links to these books, because I have an affiliate shop at Bookshop.org. I have started tracking and sharing my “good reads” there (because the real Goodreads is social media for reading and I won’t have it). If you purchase books through my link, I will receive a very small commission. As in pennies. I appreciate you!
“Recovering Our Memory” by Michael Toscano, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/01/recovering-our-memory