A Thanksgiving Reflection

I remember those days...

When I couldn’t wait to be a big kid so I could reach the pedals AND the ground from the seat of my bicycle, and fix my own plate at family dinners...

When I couldn’t wait to be a teenager so I could drive myself to get those last-minute sewing or food supplies for home economics without having to ask my mother... or have my own job so I could buy my own $100 jeans with holes in them from Brass Buckle...

When I couldn’t wait to have my own house to not clean, my own career, my own money, my own family, my own life...

When I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to sleep through one whole night, or never again have to manage another poop-up-the-back diaper changes...

When I couldn’t wait until my kiddos could tie their own shoes, and fix their own breakfast...

BUT...

I never really wanted my kids to be old enough to drive, or be any older than they already are.

On this Thanksgiving morning, waking up at the in-laws, I’m watching them sleep. In. Something they do on regular occasion when the opportunity presents itself. Their long legs all accordion-like on the couches, their big monster feet poking out the ends of their blankets.

When they were small, I would hide in the bathroom for refuge. Now I’m the weirdo poking my needy zombie fingers under the door so they’ll come out and play with me.

When they were small, they would bring me books to read to them. And games to play with them. And ask me for cookies. Now I follow them around with my laptop, “Here, read this clever thing I wrote.” I guilt them into playing games with me. I bake them cookies so I have an excuse to go up to their rooms.

On this Thanksgiving I am thankful. Thankful to finally be at a place in life where I am not wishing I could be anywhere else than I already am. Thankful I can savor the moment I’m in. My parents are healthy and well. My children are healthy and well. And so far as I can tell, my husband still likes me. Taxes will get paid this year and Christmas will come. And while I sure wouldn’t mind having a few of those wished-away years back, I wouldn’t wish this one away for anything in the world.

Prayer

Patrick and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary this week at a Contemplative Prayer Retreat. I'll be honest. This was not what I had in mind. I am not that holy. I imagined our anniversary with lots of lounging... on a beach, listening to the waves roll in. Or sitting on the patio of some darling little gourmet restaurant with mountains and sunshine in the landscape and a glass of wine. I imagined rest. Rest from schedules. Rest from technology. Sleeping in. I imagined having Patrick all to myself. No phone calls, or text messages, or E-mails, or MLB play-offs, or NFL to compete with. Just him, me, and lots of fresh air.

I resisted the life out of this up until the very last second. "I am an introvert," I tried to explain to him, "An exhausted one who needs to not be 'on' once in a while." The last thing I wanted to do, was spend our only tenth anniversary on a schedule of 6am and 9:30pm prayers, taking meals in silence (actually, that part was optional), four group sessions a day between prayer sits. Oh, and yoga. Which he loves. Breathe in... Breathe out... take your left leg over your right shoulder and wrap your toes around your throat three times. Yoga only reminds me how weak and inflexible I am becoming. For days after yoga my legs and arms feel like those little pencil erasers from elementary school--the ones shaped like a little man with floppy arms and legs that wiggled all over the place when you used it. Today I'd have better luck climbing stairs with my teeth.  "I'm already contemplative," I tried to explain to him. I spend time alone every morning. I keep a daily prayer journal. I don't need this.

Not until the very end, just a few days before the retreat was to begin, did I relinquish. We were eligible for a little bit of continuing education grant money, so this would be much less expensive than driving out to Breckenridge or taking that cruise. Besides, I'm doing a worship series on prayer in November. This could help me prepare for that. Fine. I would use our anniversary to work. Patrick called. Phileena, who along with her husband, Chris, directs the retreat, inquired whether the retreat center could squeeze us in. Yes. We were off to Schuyler, Nebraska. (I'm still not even sure how to pronounce it). It's in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of cornfields. No cell phone reception, no cable television, no Internet. At least I got that technology fast I was hoping for.

It was definitely not what I was looking for and exactly what I needed. 

The space felt holy, "bathed in prayer" as Phileena said, by the monks who lived there. We prayed with the monks, received our blessings during the Eucharist, and we practiced many forms of prayer throughout the day. The gift of contemplative prayer is that it makes manic, controlling "J" types like me shut up and listen. I did a lot of listening this week. The further into stillness and silence I went, the more aware I became of the weariness of my own body and the creative ways I find to run away from God in the name of God. And as I felt Christ lifting burdens from me, I felt Christ lifting the burdens of others--the ones from church who have lost sisters and brothers, the ones who are caring for life partners whose minds and bodies are failing, for my own family. As that space within me was opened and lifted, I knew that room, even for the next ten years of marriage, was widening.

Chris likened our prayer lives to body building. If we only do one kind of exercise, say for our triceps, over and over and over, we're going to end up with really strong triceps, but the rest of our body remains unattended and, consequently, pretty weak and lopsided (that must mean I'm going to have really strong teeth).  This is my paraphrase, of course, so I hope I've honored his illustration in good faith.  The point was that having different forms of prayer we practice helps provide a well-rounded, well-strengthened spiritual life.

If you're interested in learning more, or attending a retreat hosted by Phileena and Chris Heuertz, their website is gravitycenter.com. The tab "Practice" offers different forms of prayer. If you've been thinking about entering into or deepening a practice of prayer or meditation, this is the place for you. I would highly recommend doing a retreat. Learning these prayers and practicing them in community was the jumpstart I needed to expanding my listening skills, leaving room for God to speak into my life, my marriage, and my work. And instead of returning to my life feeling overwhelmed and behind like most vacations, I'm returning feeling full and ready to give. I met many wonderful people there and am thankful to have had this experience. 

10 Lessons from Hosting my First City-wide Garage Sale

1. The nifty little remote that opens the garage door also activates rain clouds. Who knew?

2. When the husband laughs out loud at your sticker prices, you might want to add an “Everything 1/2 price” poster to the display.

3. Your family will take zero interest in an item for five years until you put it into your garage sale.

4. “It almost fits” means it doesn’t fit.

5. Your bladder will punish you severely if you drink two cups of coffee and a Gatorade and you are the only person manning your garage sale.

6. Devise an escape plan for strange and awkward conversations. In advance.

7. You’re the only person having difficulty getting rid of things your children have outgrown and left behind.

8. Never leave the husband unattended to negotiate prices.

9. Actually, just disallow husband from attending your garage sale.

10. Store favorite charity thrift store moving truck in I-phone “Favorites.”

Low Day

I’ve had several different people ask me what happened to my blog. I stuck with it for about a week or two, and then it dropped off. I know. It takes a lot of emotional energy and time to write. And then I began making the mistake of checking the stats to see how many “hits” my page had. At first I was curious, but then assuming the costume of people-pleasing and hunting for human affirmation that I often wear to my own detriment, I turned it into a game. Each day: How many hits can I get today? Can I reach 500 before the end of the month? But the thing is, is that there are these low-life spamming softwares that scan random blogs dozens of times a day. Mine was one of those. So, as far as I can tell, there’s really no way to tell how many people were actually reading the blog. Which is good. It should never have mattered. That wasn’t the point of writing it. I started it because I needed the discipline of creative writing in my life. A skill I feel I am losing. A skill I want to hone. A skill outside of church life.

I made a deal with myself that I wasn’t going to write about church, not because I don’t love it, but because I think sometimes church leaders get so sucked into our own little church worlds that we lose touch with the reality that most of the rest of the world is living in. Not everybody gets the privilege of praying, and serving, and loving, and nurturing community, and encouraging other people to live into their best selves for a living. Don’t get me wrong, we deal with a ton of stressors, too, but most days I know I have it pretty good. I can get so steeped in it, so immersed, so manic in my church thoughts, that I forget to come up for air. It doesn’t occur to me to look up and see things. Like that my husband’s eyes are still so very blue. Or that my youngest child now towers over me with the rest of them. Or that the grass has gone to seed.  I noticed it yesterday.  That’s when I wrote, “This time of year it just makes sense not to mow the lawn. Why should I pay for seed when I can just grow my own?”

Low days have a way of boiling in overnight, like a morning storm. They kick me right out of bed and onto the floor, and I pretty well stay there for a day or more. Just for the record, this is not clinical depression. Clinical depression is diagnosable if it lasts for weeks or more at a time. Sometimes I (and I suspect most of us) just have sad days. I can only speak for myself, but I will share with you, the kinds of thoughts and things in my church world that happen that put me there:

1. When I come to terms with the fact that most of the friends I have ever had, have nothing to do with church because a.) they think the church is judgmental, detached from reality, and hypocritical, and they think the story of Jesus is irrelevant and shallow, or b.) because they don’t have time and do not feel it is a necessary priority for their lives.

2. When I come to terms with the fact that the future of the church is probably going to look very different by the end of my life than it does right now. I think that the decline in the American church has not yet been arrested and that it will get worse before it gets better. I think that we will be shedding things like real estate, seminary education, denominational allegiance, and paid clergy. As a clergy person, this just sounds grave and dreadful. I grieve the possibilities of these changes because a.) I have a sneaking suspicion that the most faithful among our churches are most adamant about keeping, funding, and maintaing our buildings, probably because they’ve invested their hopes, wishes, dreams, and money into it over their lifetime. They are the builder generation. They are the bravest and most generous generation of the century. They are also slipping away from us rapidly, a huge loss for our world. b.) Without  seminary education and denominational allegiance, I cannot see what will keep us from continuing the dynamic we learned in the Westward expansion of tucking our Bibles up under our armpits and heading out in isolation, where our scriptures begin to tell us what we want to hear and there is no accountability to challenge us otherwise. We seem to be forgetting that community, where the scriptures are interpreted with the guidance of Christ’s Spirit, is fundamental to the Christian faith. The community is not just the group of people we gather with today, but 2,000 years of community from which we must be willing to learn. c.) Most people I know who serve in ministry do so with their whole hearts and their whole lives. We eat, breathe, and sleep church. I know I am not alone in saying that I would serve the church for free if I could figure out how to find an alternative source of income that would not keep me from fully devoting my attention to the church. If someone can figure out how we can make this happen; I’m all ears.
3. When people hit the end of their ropes and they come to me expecting me to solve their problems. Like when a husband is threatening to go back to selling drugs to make ends meet for his family if I don’t buy their son a birthday present today for his birthday. Like when a young wife complains about having no money after finalizing their bankruptcy hearing and posting pictures of their new handguns on Facebook all in the same week. Like when a disabled man and his wife come to me for rent assistance and food, but her story is blatantly inconsistent in the first three minutes of conversation. When members of the church want programming, like Bible studies with curriculum, and childcare and learning opportunities for their children during church events, but they give nothing financially, not even the value of a cigarette or a Coke, back to the church. When the Council members evaluate my “effectiveness” through measures like wanting worship attendance to increase, but they don’t bother to show up regularly for worship. When a young woman tells me she was raped when she was ten, but she refuses counseling. When a mom takes a bottle of pills and calls me and then turns her back on the church because I called 911which consequently saved her life. Every single week a crisis is presented to me, folks relating to me exactly as they relate to God. So often they are angry with God, the church, and especially me, for not fixing their problems. The church is not here to fix each other’s problems. We are here to abide in community with one another, lending support in a way that the answer arises in truth and love from within. I’m not saying that life doesn’t throw us curve balls. I am not saying that we don't need to carry each other sometimes. I'm saying that Jesus meets us in our hearts before he heals our lives. True change happens from the inside out.

So there I went, talking about church. So be it. I hit a really low day yesterday. Patrick asked me three times last night if I was okay. I never really woke up yesterday. It’s a fog I can’t quite explain. I laid out on a blanket on the lawn the whole day with my face in the Bible and an eager pen begging for a sermon. The fog remained into the evening during the car ride to my oldest son's football game, and through the first quarter. It was not until one of my son's friends tripped rather largely over a step in front of me that jolted me out of it. It made me physically jerk and then laugh out loud. I know, I'm evil. But his demise was a gift to me, more than he can know.

I want so, so, so much for our church to rise, and grow, and thrive, and make a difference in the world, but I can’t make that happen. I don’t have that power. Jesus has to heal the heart of our church before we will see results in our church body. The change has to begin from within. We have to pray, show up (enough for it to be significant to our own lives), give (enough for it to matter, enough for it to be a gift from the heart), work, and know for ourselves that what Christ is doing in our own lives matters. Not until what Christ is doing through the church matters to us will it's significance become evident to anyone else around us.  It's hard to sit bedside and watch something you love dying and to let it take your life with it. But I guess that's the story of God in Christ. The hope I hold onto is that someday it will be worth it. Giving my whole life and my whole future to this. Somewhere after the grave, resurrection will come.  I want so much, with my whole heart, to see it and be a part of it in my lifetime.

Fish Buckets

Dichotomy. Whoever invented or defined this word should have invented it as a palindrome (I totally had to look that word up). But you know what I mean--a word that is spelled the same backward and forward... Radar. Madam. Kayak. Dictionary.com defines dichotomy as a “division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups.” It goes on to give the example of the divide between one’s thoughts and one’s actions. When I think of the word I imagine a pendulum. Not the kind that whacks off people’s heads, but the kind that might sit on somebody’s desk. Like an attorney’s, where Newton’s laws of physics go into effect: the action of one end of the pendulum evokes an equal and opposite reaction from the other.

It seems to be the crux of human thought. Our entire justice system is built upon it. The “this or that” phenomenon. Innocent or guilty. Black or white. Right or wrong. Good or evil. Ugly or pretty. Smart or stupid. Love or hate. Liberal or conservative. Traditional or contemporary. Gay or straight. Flesh or spirit.

And yet anybody who is currently living in relationship, like the trapped kind where you can’t get out of it very easily, like owning or renting property together, sharing a bank account, sharing a contract or covenant of marriage, being mutually responsible for parenting a child, has probably figured out to some degree that human beings are not quite that distinguishable. That human beings are more often both/and than either/or. She is pure and evil. He is brilliant and a jarhead. All at the same time. Sometimes more of a paradox than a dichotomy, perhaps.

And yet we spend our lives trying to dehumanize people who are not like us, dumping them into that “other” category without really acknowledging the complex creatures they are. It’s easy to do when we don’t know them. But when we know them, and our heart strings are attached, it’s much more complex than that. Like when you’re married to an addict. Or your grandson is going to jail for murder. Or your brother is being tried for rape. Or your fifteen-year-old daughter becomes pregnant. Or your sister is homeless. Or you nephew is gay. Or your best friend is having an affair. Or your chemistry partner is Muslim. Then it gets complicated, because our judgement becomes rooted in their story. Sticky.

I have seen this at work in the church. Handing the homeless a sack lunch feeds them lunch. But sitting at the table with them week after week, learning their names, hearing their stories, will get you to thinking about the systemic issues of homelessness, and the cycles of poverty, and the addictions that form as an effort to live with the horrors of mental illness. The irony of a friendship like that, is that the person making the sack lunch and choosing to sit at that table is the one whose life is changed, because friendship forces us to see through the eyes of love, the eyes of Christ. But until those relationships are formed, we are the ones who remain blind. Only through relationships will we figure out that we need “them” as much as they need us in order to grow closer to the heart of God--to see the world as God sees it.

I guess maybe I have my own dichotomies to get over, because my assumption is that when we dismiss another person’s humanity, somebody that we do not know, that our judgement is rooted in hate. But when we know them, our judgement gets all tangled up in our heart strings, in the fullness of our knowledge and our attachment and affection for them. In our love. That’s when we realize it’s more complicated than that.

And that’s how I think God sees things. We are fully loved and fully known. And when God sees something God doesn’t like, I don’t think God severs the heart strings that are attached to us. But I do think God grieves most when we sever ours to each other. Or when we’d rather dump each other into the fish buckets of “other” than actually take the time to learn each other’s stories. I suspect we reflect the image of God most fully not as the source of light, but as a mirror reflecting light. We reflect the image of God when we reflect to the “other” that they are fully known and fully loved in all the complexities and dichotomies of the person that they are. That is the best evangelism. Where transformation begins. Not just in the other, but in both of us, drawing us all into seeing from the very heart of God.

Confessions of a Workaholic

So... I’ve been in therapy for a couple of months now. Shocker, I know. And my therapist says I need to have more friends. I failed that part of the assessment she gave me. The other part I failed was self-care. That part about diet and exercise. I should have just lied. I think it’s silly that we can’t just eat whatever we want. And if exercise didn’t hurt and make me feel like I’m suffocating, I would probably do it more often.

So... back to the friends part. I blew off my therapist, “I have friends.”

“Oh? How many? That you actually spend time with? That you could call or they could call you at 2am and it would be okay? Church people don’t count.”

“Well, none then! I’d rather not have anybody calling me at 2:00 in the morning,” I said. Once again, disclaimer on the church people.

Besides, it's not true. There are a couple of people I would want to call me, even at 2am. The only problem is that one of them doesn’t even live on this continent anymore.

The really sad part? She was just in town for a few weeks. Her mom’s cancer came back and took her life quickly, so she came home to say goodbye, bury her mom, and take care of all those things children do when their parents die. Did I make it to her mother’s funeral? No. Did I go visit her while she was in town, or help her clean her mom’s house, or give her boys some love? No. Am I the crappiest, most sorry excuse for a friend on the planet? Yes.

And here’s the worst part of it all. She has been there for me in every drama queen, PMS, I-hate-my-body, mad-at-the-ex-husband-again moment of my life for the last six years. She has been the best friend a person could ever ask for. I have drooled on her couch. She has booted her children to the floor so I could sleep in their bed at the lake. She has fed me a healing abundance of alcohol and made sure I made it home safely. She is the only person who has provoked me to exercise for a number of consecutive months, and trust me, I whined the whole time. And I can’t even pull myself away from work long enough to go to her mother’s funeral.

My therapist says I “busy” myself to the detriment of my relationships. She’s right. Today, I am feeling and grieving that.

So today I think I’ll start a money jar. I need to start saving for a trip off the continent.

Orange Shag Carpet

When I talk about going home, I am usually referring to the ranch-style brick house in the country that my parents built when I was ten. But the “formative” years, according to developmental psychology, did not occur in this setting. They began in a little railroad town in Green Ridge, Missouri that, with the exception of a Casey’s gas station that went in after we moved and the structures that have fallen in, it hasn’t changed all that much in the last hundred years.

The little house where our family began isn’t there anymore. It was just a little four-room uninsulated house. Well... technically it was six rooms if you count the teeny bathroom between the bedrooms and the closed-in porch turned laundry room. It was pea green on the outside. Vibrant burnt orange and brown shag carpet was the base color for decorating. It probably camouflaged stains well, like black tire prints when my dad would ride his Harley right up the concrete steps and into the living room to keep it out of the weather. My mother would flail like a hen when he would do that, which only seemed to amuse him. He has always loved a good challenge, which is probably why he fell for this firey redhead.  It didn't hurt that she was stunningly adorable.

The linoleum floor in the kitchen was two shades of deep burgundy. That’s where the wood stove lived that, with the exception of some floor heaters, would heat our house in the winters. The linoleum was peeling up in the corner where it met the entrance to my brother’s and my bedroom. Our bedroom door was an old fuzzy blanket held up by a nail in each corner and tucked to the side by a brown vinyl kitchen chair. Although I cannot recall the color of my bedroom carpet, I remember the linoleum because I used to play with my Barbie dolls on the floor near that entrance. My mother forbade me to cut their hair, so I always tucked their freshly trimmed blond locks under that curled lip in the linoleum floor.

Sometimes we would walk two or three blocks to Warren’s. That was a small grocery store that surely sold important things, like cans of Campbell’s soup, gallons of milk, and loaves of bread. But the only thing of interest to me was the open cooler that held cold cans of Country Time lemonade, the candy shelf that housed the big three-packs of sour SweetTarts, and the rows of intriguing breakable figurines that lured little fingers like a magic flute. Oh, yes, and the Pepsi glass bottle machine that would always eat my coins because I was never strong enough to pull the bottle out by myself, and the boxes of Cracker Jacks that lured me not by my tastebuds, but by my greed for the surprise hiding at the bottom--every child’s first exposure to gambling. Oh, the dilemma of choices and risks.

I remember walking home from that store one day while pushing my bike and feeling very angry toward my mother who was trying to teach me a life lesson. She had told me to put my tennis shoes on before we left and I hadn’t listened. I think I settled with some slick wooden sandals with a stretched-out wide blue strap that uselessly came over the top of my foot. With all five toes hanging over the ends and touching the ground, they were almost impossible to walk in, let alone ride a bike. She let me figure it out the hard way. But on the way home I remember grumbling, “I cannot wait until I am a grown-up,” to which she replied that being a grown-up is really hard, and that someday I will be wishing I was a kid again.

I can’t imagine how hard life was for them back then, just starting out with a family at twenty and seventeen. When they had to think strategically about keeping their newborns warm in the winters and cool in the summers. When they rationed dinner portions and milk, and my dad would siphon gas out of one car to add to the other to keep one running until the end of the month. But our parents still found ways to lavish us with special things - like a walking trip with mom to Warren’s in the summer for Country Time and SweetTarts. And driving ten miles to “town” (the nearest small city) after church on the first Sunday of the month (after payday) so we could eat at Wendy’s. We didn’t usually go in, probably because my parents appreciated the car’s built-in restraining device called seat belts. So we would order at the window, park the car in the parking lot, and eat our food. My mother didn’t understand that dipping my french fries into my Frosty was the best part, nor did she understand that my miserable seatbelt squeezed me tighter every time I wiggled in my seat, which was a lot. So I would wait until my little brother, who could paint the windows with his french fries and Frosty, to unhook his seatbelt so that our mother would let me out of mine. Otherwise, I would simply dip my french fries when she wasn’t looking. Frosties and french fries. Those were some good ol’ days.

And while I never find myself wishing I could be a kid again, I will admit, I sure do miss those simple treats. Like a fresh pitcher of red or purple kool-aid. And Sunday night movies on ABC with my bowl of instant chocolate pudding. And trips to grandma’s house or the park for family reunions with all the cousins whose names I could never remember. And chasing rainbows in the lawn sprinkler. And birthdays and Christmas that don’t feel like they really come anymore.

Reproduced Organisms

I babysat my one-year-old nephew last night. He was so good, as in happy, and responsive to the things I said to him. You know you have a baby being raised well on your hands when they prefer things like strawberries and tomatoes to Cheerios or cheese. He has gorgeous locks of brown hair and those big brown doe eyes with lashes that could sweep a windshield. He’s one of those few babies who can flip the mommy hormone switch in me. You know, the one that provokes you to crawl around on the floor on your hands and knees, and makes you want to purr, and coo, and reproduce (But later. Actually, never. It’s a dirty trick). It gives you superhuman strength, nerves to calm a terrorist, and that persistent snuggle behavior. That’s how they can destroy in ten minutes the house that took three adults a half day to clean, and you’re still a little sad to see them go.

It’s incredible the damage babies can do. You bring them treasures from the attic--a case of cars, a couple of little men with bendable appendages for them to maul, and some pop-up books to eat, and they still insist on emptying your kitchen cabinets, tearing down your morning glory vines, pissing off the cat so bad that he pees on your shoes in the closet in retaliation, and smearing one cheesy macaroni noodle across every square inch of the four-foot glass coffee table. And I would do it all over again without a second thought if today I did not feel like I had been raked over with a lawnmower. You know, the old-fashioned gas-less kind that turn with the wheels.

Much love to his parents and all parents for raising those beautiful babies!

When Facebook Makes Me Sad

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/01/the_antisocial_network.html

According to this article Facebook is making us sad. It suggests that seeing how happy other people are is causing us to feel worse about our own lives. I want to say this is ridiculous, but I know it is ignorant to argue with statistics based on one’s own opinion or experience as the only data. Just because I live vicariously through the joy of other people's Facebook lives, does not mean this is true for everyone. So I decided to throw this argument a bone and try to think of some other ways Facebook has left me feeling sad.

Like when I am procrastinating doing something I know will be painful and take forever to complete. Or if I am stuck in an awkward social situation, like being at dinner with my husband's ex-wife and her husband while their daughter makes fun of them for wearing matching t-shirts. So I look to Facebook for an escape and all it has to offer me is Somethingville invitations and reposted posters. I appreciate that all of you are able to occasionally share things that you like, but save it for Pinterest. What drew me to Facebook in the first place, was that I could Facebook stalk you and your pictures, catching up on your life without you ever knowing it. 

Another thing that makes me sad is when I spent forty-five minutes of my life that I cannot get back to concoct a witty phrase, and then nobody “likes” it. Either the people who say they are my "friends" are not currently on Facebook, or it got buried in their news feed before they had a chance to read it in all of its glory. Then I am faced with the dilemma of deleting and reposting, or heading to the pantry to scrounge up some comfort food. I don’t think other people understand how amused I was with myself when I birthed that clever phrase, and how much I think they should tell me how brilliant I am. 

A third thing that makes me sad is something I am sorry to say I have been sucked into in the past, but that I do not want to ever do again, and that is to post partisan, politically-charged rhetoric on Facebook. First, there are the posts that are not based on fact, but are built on our ignorance. You know. The stuff with no truth or integrity designed to suck us out of real issues and into our brain stems. Surely we would all agree that the truth is more important than our partisan allegiance. And then there are those friends with whom I disagree who are really wonderful, intelligent, ethical people. (This is why I can’t understand why they don’t think like me). Maybe if those of us still dwelling in the dinosaur-age of Facebook would abstain from these things, we'd all be a little bit happier.

So This is What’s Wrong With Me

It was after 8pm and my spouse, youngest son, and I were just sitting down to dinner in a restaurant. I had started the work day around 6:30am with answering E-mails, and with the exception of the time it took to uselessly pit my toothbrush against another stubborn morning of coffee breath, get dressed, and throw on some war paint, I had been at it all day. “At it” usually means I have a to-do list that is 1/2 to one page long, from which I get to check off between two and four things, the rest of the day being spent responding to the spontaneity of other people’s urgent inquiries. (It’s the nature of the job when keeping office hours and is equally as important as my to-do list, so please do not read this as a complaint). So halfway through our meal, when my husband raised up his left hand which resembles the shape of a smartphone, and announced while wiggling his thumb into his palm, “Hey, let’s go to a 10:30 movie tonight,” I thought I might implode from the internal freak-out that blew up inside of me. Like a puffer fish trapped in a small cage, protruding from all the crevices it’s poor little rubbery flesh and eyeballs can find. This is about the time he and my son look at me like I’m a space alien.

And all this did was kick-start the self-loathing of the person that I am. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I be fun, and energetic, and full of life, like all the people I admire? Like the person I wish I were? Why does the idea of robbing the evening of a few extra hours out on the town with the family I miss all day long feel like a trap? Why does this sound like the worst idea ever while two out of three of us are boiling with adventure? Why do I just want to go home, where I will be content to be near them, even though my face will be planted face-down in a saliva-moistened couch cushion by 10:30pm, while they are watching a DVD and posting pictures of me on their favorite social media feed. I know I always fall asleep. It’s because I am content when I am at home and they are near. They always take it as an insult, but in my martian I-am-not-you language, it’s actually a compliment. Like belching at the dinner table.

And then I read this article posted by Barry Freese on Facebook:

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/302696/

(You really have to at least skim it before the rest of this will make sense to you).

So maybe I’m not the degradation of the slime in the pit of selfish human sloth that I thought I was. The most resonating parts:

“Hell is other people at breakfast.”

“It is very difficult for an introvert to understand an extrovert.”  This explains why when I respond, “But I’ve been at work all day,” my husband takes it that I imply that he doesn’t really work.

And the part about nipping and yapping, or something like that.

And the part about being mistaken as aloof, arrogant, horrible, and arrogant. That would be my paraphrase.

I will admit, I am eternally annoyed by extroverts who claim to be introverts. They have no clue how misunderstood we feel when they do that.

But all this is to say, I feel let off the hook today for being the person that I am. Even though my extroverted friends and family probably politely de-friend me in real life because I randomly make them feel like they are bothering me and they don’t appreciate or have time to deal with my delicateness. I get that. I don’t like me sometimes either. I wish I had more friends; I just don’t have the physical, emotional, and cognitive energy that it takes to invest in keeping a lot of close relationships, especially given the nature of the work that I do. But it does help me to know that my brain only has the capacity to take in so much in a day before it overloads, and that the way that I am wired has no bearing on my capacity to carry love and adoration for the people who matter most to me, and that I am not defective; I’m just different. It just means that I express my love in socially awkward ways, like face-planting in drool on the couch when they are near.

The Sandwiched Gen-X-er

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be positive, brilliant, inspiring, organized, grounded, creative, and disciplined. Somewhere in there I would add beautiful, but I don’t want to give that too much merit. It’s the part of me that I wish I valued less. Someday I will have to learn to live without it. It’s already a battle I tire of fighting and is probably one of the biggest de-motivators to starting the day. The other part is the exercise I know I should be doing. I wish I spent less time on trying to make myself look good and more time on trying to help my body feel good. I have an auto-immune disorder that can give me some pretty crummy days, so a regimen of healthy eating and exercise would probably “do my body good.” But instead, I just try to paint over it. My face is my pallet.

I suppose this is where I could confess that when I see these little stick figure yogis walking into Gordman’s or Macy’s or HyVee with their fluff of gorgeous hair all tied up on the top of their head, and no makeup, and sweat pants, and a cute little tank, and maybe flip flops, I want to crawl under someone’s car and wait for them to back out and put me out of my misery. Or, honestly, I’d rather just throw her under there. The Snow White Stepmother syndrome really is a curse. I want to unlearn these things.

I crave time to be alone, to sink into my mind, wide open space to write, and play the piano, and paint. I don’t think I would mind being in a nursing home someday just so long as I lose my hearing (at least the odds are in my favor on that one), and maybe my sense of smell, and have my own room, and my own lovely view out my window with lots of sunshine, and I have a computer on which to write, and a pallet on which to paint. I suppose my music days would be over unless I reverted to a keyboard with headphones, but it’s totally not the same as a piano.  As though I do any of these things now, but I think someday I will.

I took good care of my boys when they were small. I hope they will remember this. I hope they will take care of me. I wish we could do more to help Patrick’s parents. His dad’s memory seems to be really slipping. I am in denial about this. I think Patrick is, too. He didn’t send anything for our birthdays this year. This never happens. This makes me sad. Not because we didn’t get presents, but because we know it means he forgot. We probably need to try to move closer, but with children living with their other parents, it’s hard to think about moving so far away from them. If we could have had just five more years before this started to happen, it would make this a little easier.

Toro! Toro!

Home. That’s where the boys and I went for my birthday this year. Back to the house that was just a hole in the ground when I was ten. I remember feeling rather insignificant and sorry for myself during my tenth year of life. It all started on my tenth birthday. Eron, my childhood crush, was there with us that summer day. I remember nothing of a birthday party that must have happened, or what possessed us to visit the field whose ground had been broken for the house my parents were building, but I remember that day simply because I had insulted Eron while observing frogs by the lagoon (what else do ten-year-old girls do to show their affection for a boy who will not give her the time of day?), and my mother came to his aid (whose side was she on, anyway?) and had consequently scolded me, embarrassing me in front of him and all the other friends who were apparently there. That seemed to me to be the breaking of birthday code--being in trouble, let alone being publicly embarrassed, on one’s own birthday. I thought birthdays provided exemption from all retribution for bad behavior. Boy, was I wrong. That was just the start to a year of lost battles with my parents.

Home. Back to the place I was heading on foot that Fall, some nine miles from town, when I decided to run away from school. That was going to be a long walk. Thank goodness one of my mother's friends drove by and saw me blubbering and stumbling alongside of the road three miles from city limits. After having been chased by two angry dogs and outrun a suspicious old man on a lawnmower, I was relieved to see a familiar face. She picked me up and drove me the last six miles home. Just as soon as we pulled into the driveway, my father loaded me right back up into his car and took me straight back to town. I begged him not to make me go. I did not want to face my teachers, the principal, my classmates. I begged him to send me to Sacred Heart, the private Catholic school in the next town over where I could change my name, start a new life, and never look back. He said, "Stephanie, you can't leave the cat to clean up the spilt milk." I lost that battle, too.

Home. Back to sleep next to the window I used to climb through late at night while my brother, whom I had bribed, slept in my bed to provide the familiar lump in the shadows in case my parents peeked in. The window that taught me about the tough choices that come with independence, and that “no” was a respectable answer, and that the children you spend your whole life with can be just as degrading toward you at sixteen as you were toward them at ten, only nobody’s mother is there to come to your aid.

While I was home for my birthday we were all sitting out on the back porch, enjoying cupcakes and ice cream on another eighty degree July day, when a defensive yellow jacket slipped out from under the pool deck and zapped my dad right on the finger. That was a sucky battle to lose!

Funny, a friend had just written to me that morning about a time Cole had been stung by a wasp.  He would have been about five or six years old. Her daughter, Katie, had been babysitting when it happened. It had stung Cole right in the face and his eye had swollen shut, so I decided to take Cole to the emergency room.

When the doctor asked Cole what happened, Cole said, “I was playing Toro! Toro! with a wasp.”

The doctor said, “What’s Toro! Toro!?”

Cole replied, “You know. It’s when you hold the towel in front of you, wave it around for the bull to run through, and you say, Toro! Toro! and jump out of the way.”

The doctor chuckled and said, “Well, how did that work out for you, Cole?”

Cole retorted, “The wasp won.”

The doctor laughed. Cole shrugged his shoulders and said, “Eehh. You win some. You lose some.”

It’s a little comforting and a little strange to go home with your sons who are fourteen and (as of today) seventeen, towering over you, carrying around all the same kinds of adolescent drama and secrets you did when you were their age. I guess it's good for all of us to lose a battle every now and then. Battles that teach us that you win some and lose some. Battles that teach us the value of humility. Battles that teach us that it's never okay to insult someone to make yourself feel a little less rejected. Battles that teach us that we have to live with our mistakes, so setting boundaries is probably really important, even when it means people think less of you in the moment. I guess we all win some and lose some. I just hope we lose the right ones.

Maybe This Year

I could be wrong, but it just seems like by this time last year, and the year before that, and every year of my life actually, I have questioned the sanity of my ancestors who made their homes in this miserable Missouri weather. It’s the kind of heat where poking your head through the back sliding glass door is synonymous to hovering your face over the 450 degree oven when you open it. Same mascara-melting, botox effect. This is the month where you humanely pull the plug on all the poor little flowers you’ve been trying to milk back to health for the last two months. This is the month where the birds stop chirping. Where they just sit in the branches and miserably breathe--but not too deeply, lest they burst into chicken strips.  

But not this year. This is the year I learned my lesson and chose not to skewer $200 on my lawn. This is the year I surrendered my pattern of failed love affairs with things meant to grow green with rich bursts of leathery purple and felt magenta blooms. And of course, this would be the first year of my life where it rains three times a week in July and August, when the nights require sweaters and the daytime highs are in the eighties. The birds are still chirping their love songs, turkeys are strutting, and the weeds posing as my lawn need mowed every five days. If only I had tried for one more year.

This reminds me of a story of a gardener who pleas for a little more time of tending to the life of a fruitless fruit tree. He continues to bide time and hold out hope. Maybe this will be the year when a little extra-special gift from the atmosphere woos something contrary and bland and ordinary into feeling rather special. When a little whisper from the Wind lures the blooms to peek from creases in the branches, blinking in surprise of itself in the gentle sunshine. Maybe this will be the year when the living water flows through the veins of new fruit and the wings of the birds dance wildly in sugary delight.

Maybe this will be the year that death takes respite. That the baby will come. That the church will grow. That the thread of new light will glimmer in marriage. That the depression will break open and a sprout of life will poke through. That the letter will come. That the writhing head of addiction will rest. That the light of new love will dawn. That the earth will stop crumbling beneath our feet, that the cracking and indebting will be filled and sealed and healed with the soothing leak in the cloud of financial woes. Maybe this is the year to hang on. Maybe the universe has something in store for us yet.

A New Thing

Yesterday was my baby's fourteenth birthday. Tomorrow I will be thirty-eight. On Monday my oldest will be seventeen. I don't know how this happened. How I got to this place where my kids are like driftwood being carried out to sea with anticipation, riding the tide to freedom and adventure, where they are tolerant of my neediness, putting in their time with me while looking for their nearest escape to be with normal people, like their friends, or the isolation of their bedrooms. My oldest said yesterday that he is looking forward to going back to school. What? How does this happen? And the most isolating part of it, is that everybody older than me is like, "You're still young. Try being me," and everybody younger is like, "You're not that old. Get over yourself," even though they do think you're kind of old.

Who doesn't want to do something amazing with their life? I think of my uncle who died of cancer at thirty-six when his children were still so small. His life was just getting started. It hardly seems fair. Or a college student I mentored, who died before she could even start a family or her dream of becoming a teacher. Or the mom I know who buried her only daughter after a freak 4th of July accident two summers ago.  Or the star athlete from my son's high school who drowned in a ski jet accident this summer in a family pond.  I think of a widow from church who lost her only son in a car accident years ago. She spent the first half of her life pouring everything she had into him only to put him in the ground. What do you do with the rest of your life after a blow like that? How do you pick up the pieces and start a second life? Two years ago, when I shared that I was grieving the sense of loss for my own children when they moved away to spend the rest of their school years with their dad, that widow said to me, "Honey, you have to let them go." In my mind I won't let her heal. In my mind, life still feels meaningless. In my mind, if her life didn't turn out the way she dreamt it, then why should mine? But she has healed. Somehow. Beyond my comprehension. And she has spent the last half of her life quietly praying, and serving, and giving, and belonging to other people's lives. I think she is amazing.

Who doesn't want to do something amazing with their life? I admire my friend. She knows what she loves. The beach. She got rid of everything she owned, quit her job, and moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Yes, she lives modestly--rationing water, and food, and even living space. But she has the daily freedom to meet God in her wide open sanctuary, where she digs her toes into the sand and lets the sunshine lick up all traces of what-if. I think she is amazing.

There is this guy I know. He is an attorney. Just because, somewhere between his education and career, he taught school in Hong Kong or someplace like that. Why not? Well-read. From a well-educated family. You know--the kind who knows something about everything. We really have no idea the advantage our beginnings give us over other people. He intimidates the crap out of me. I wish my brain would work like that. "I'm bored. I think I'll learn Chinese today." I think he is amazing.

Meanwhile, I find myself turning increasingly inward with time, needing less and less of other people. Maybe it's because I have the luxury of people I love coming and going in my life. Maybe it would be different if they were no longer there. I find myself less bored with my own imagination than with the buzz of the television or even reading. I find myself so concerned with wasting time on frivolity, that I do nothing at all. 

Sometimes I paint. It looks like cartoons. Someday they will get ruined in a flooded basement and my children will be relieved of the burden of keeping them. I wouldn't hang them in my house. Why would they? Sometimes I write. My journal will crash with this computer. The unspeakable pages--prayers and dreams and mean thoughts and secrets and regrets, will melt with the plastic. Thank goodness. 

But the plea of my heart today, as I prepare for another year, is that God will do something new in me. I want to be driftwood, soggy with no-regrets. I want my life to be a nugget of inspiration for somebody else. Or at least I want to be one drop of water, okay maybe that drop of water, that sets some other driftwood free from all other debris, and into the sea of becoming.