Sick days for the mommy . . .

My husband is too good to me.  Have I said that here yet?  He just really is.  I am beyond blessed with this man o’ mine.  For just being a couple of kids when we got together, we’ve done alright.  And he’s done stupendously.

I’ve been sick for the last two weeks.  Whatever horrid germ it is has worked its way through all five of us at some point.  Today I’m on day two of antibiotics and am starting to feel better, but I think the things are making me nauseous.  I feel pregnant:  the constant sensation of almost-barfing.  It’s helping console me on the whole empty-arms whine I wrote last time.  Blech.

So, this hubby of mine . . . since I was smart enough to not get sick on a Sunday, I’ve had some real down time to get better.  And I’m grateful.  And I know not everyone has this, and I write this to remind myself in darker days (read:  days when I am re-thinking this whole marriage thing) that my husband really does go above and beyond to be kind to me and to take care of all of us.

I thought I’d try a funny post today, but it’s not happening.  Where has all my funny gone?  Maybe tomorrow.  Tomorrow when my brain is not fuzzy, when I don’t feel like heaving my chicken noodle soup.  Tomorrow I’ll tell the tale of Screaming Ruthie.  I’ll contemplate the great mysteries of the toddler who has a 100% potty success rate when she’s naked and a 100% failure rate when thick gotchies are applied.  Go figure.  Tomorrow I’ll reflect on the fact that I think school is driving my children insane.  Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.  Tomorrow I’ll tell all the silly tales of motherhood.  Today I’m going to curl up and feel nauseous and revel in my chance to rest.

It’s time for a baby . . .

but there isn’t one.  I’ll stick that right up front, lest anyone get excited.

But it’s time.  Ruth will be precisely 2 1/2 tomorrow.  Isaac was one week shy of 2 1/2 when Hannah was born.  Hannah was one month and one week shy of 2 1/2 when Ruth was born.  (Makes it look like we are such good planners.  We’re not.)  So.  Now Ruth is 2 1/2.  And I’m supposed to have a newborn.  I can feel it.  I can feel this empty space where a newborn would go.

It’s hard.  It’s hard to explain and it’s hard to come to terms with.  We made a very conscious, a very well-thought-out decision to stop at three children.  And on some level I know it was the right decision, but I’ve been sad about it.  And right now, when my pattern indicates it’s time to be adding someone new to the family, it’s particularly sad.

I think it’s a mixture of being robbed and of being a failure that haunts me.  This decision we made, this likely very wise decision we made, was built upon some circumstances that seem to be either totally beyond our control, or entirely in my control, depending on the day, depending on my mood.  Whichever it was, this decision was not made because I looked at my family with three children and said, “Yes.  That’s the right number.”  And I think I feel that.

Pregnancy was really not good for me.  And, therefore, really not good for my family.  Completely debilitated by morning sickness and depression, pregnancy means, for me, essentially a year of sitting on the couch (the “year” because it also includes the first three months with a newborn who eats near continuously).  For my children it means 9 months with a near useless, totally miserable mommy.  One who is able and willing to do little else but sit and snuggle.  For my husband it means having to be not only the sole monetary provider, but also the sole caretaker of his young family for the better part of a year.

When I was in late pregnancy with Ruth, we decided we couldn’t all do this again.  None of us.  Ry didn’t want to see me that miserable ever again.  I didn’t want to rob of their mother the three children in my arms for the sake of another in my womb.  And I didn’t ever again want to watch my beloved, generous, loving husband weighed down by the burdens of a congregation and the full responsibilities for our family.  I was still pregnant when we made the decision, and part of me thought maybe we should wait until we weren’t in the throes of pregnancy before we made our decision permanent, but I vividly recall the rest of me believing wholeheartedly that it was best that we make the decision while we were in the throes of pregnancy misery lest we forget just how bad it was.

And now.  Now I think I have forgotten just how bad it was.  But I don’t forget how amazing it is to have a whole new little person in my arms and at my breast and in our family.  And I also feel so better armed for the pregnancy journey now that I know going in that pregnancy creates depression in me.  Maybe I could take an antidepressant while I’m pregnant and actually have an enjoyable pregnancy experience.  And I now have all these crunchy resources for dealing with morning sickness, maybe I could even do pregnancy without feeling like vomiting all day every day from weeks 7 through 22.  All of these what if’s . . . But the decision’s been made and ratified, and I’m not sure any of us would really be willing to take the chance on the what if’s.

Yet still.  It makes me sad.  I watch births on TV, I read birth stories online, and I cry.  I cry that I will never do it again.  I mourn the baby that never will be.  I give myself a sound beating for not having been better at it.  For not having been better at accomplishing the biological task my body was designed to do.  And I beg God for a miracle.  There.  I admit it.  I beg God for a miracle baby.  We have, after all, one more empty chair at our table.  Of course, then I give myself a sound beating for being so greedy.  For not being simply grateful for and satisfied with the three wonderfully healthy babies we have, and the fact that I have held each and every one of my babies, when I know so many women who haven’t had that much, ones who never got to hold their breathing babies, ones who held them for far too short a time.  Then I try to remind myself of these thoughts.

Sigh.  Pity party.  And you know what?  That may be all I have here.  I’m still not ready to see the hope in it, to see the Good News of it.  I’m just not.  I’m having my pity party  today.  I wanted a fourth baby, and, because I can’t be pregnant without inflicting profound misery on my whole family, I can’t have one.  Or, maybe I didn’t want a fourth baby, maybe I just wanted the opportunity to think about having a fourth baby in terms of normal questions like, “Do we have enough room in our house?”  “Do we want to start all over again?”  “Is somebody still missing here?”   But because of my pregnancies, that really wasn’t an option.  And I’m mad.  And sad.  And not very glad at all.  I guess crummy pregnancy symptoms are part of the Fall.  And as such, they should piss me off.   And they do.

Maybe as Ruth rounds the corner away from 2 1/2, away from the age at which kids become big brothers and sisters around here, maybe it will become less painful.  Maybe as she gets older and easier and we start spending all night every night with just the two of us in our own bed and everyone is using the toilet independently and everyone can put on their own shoes and socks and so on, and so forth . . . maybe it will grow less painful and I will grow more content with our family of five.  I hope (and pray) that I don’t endlessly continue to look at that sixth chair at the dining room table longing to fill it with another offspring.  I hope and pray I can sincerely look at it and desire to fill it with a stranger in need of a place to sit and eat.

So maybe I do have some hope here after all.  A little bit.

Two very different girls . . .

I think about this a lot.  This parenting thing.  It’s been my primary vocation for 8 years now.  (I start counting with Isaac’s conception, as that was the point at which I began obsessing about the whole parenting enterprise.)

It seems everybody’s got their ideas, their philosophy.  Rules to follow, guidelines to lead you in leading your children toward adulthood.  I tried to qualify that adulthood:  healthy, well-balanced?  productive?  But every little nook and cranny of parenting-lore has its own goal in mind.  Christian circles where the name of the game is obedience:  raise your kid to be obedient to you so that when they are adults they will be obedient to God.  Non-Christian circles whose goal seems to be adults who are capable of finding their own way, their own path.  And everything in between and a zillion hybrids.

There are some things I’ve learned in these eight years of parenting.  Well, 7 1/2 years with a kid I can actually see and touch.  These rules.  These guidelines.  These “Do XYZ for ABC results” applied to kids?  Bunk.  A whole lotta bunk.  Who are we kidding?  Kids did not come down out of a shoot from a factory.  There is not one model.  There is no model.  They are individual people–hear that.  People.  From birth.–with their own particularities and peculiarities.  Just as different one from another as adults are different, one from another.  Why is it that we expect our kids to fit some sort of mold, follow some sort of equation (if X, then A), when we know enough to never expect the grown ups around us to work that way?  When we encounter adults knowing to expect the unexpected, always prepared to respond to what comes next, knowing that what comes next is not always predictable?  Why do we view adults this way, but not kids?

I can’t talk to my mother the same way I talk to my sister.  They have two different languages.  Two different senses of humor.  Yes, they are similar in many ways, but in others they couldn’t be any more different.  And this is one woman raised by another woman, taught about the world by her from her earliest days.

Yet.  Yet we get these first kids and we open up these books to find out what to do to them, with them, for them, to turn them into the people we want them to be.  Then we have these second kids and we apply all those same rules to them and expect the same result.  “If I do R, this child will do Y.”  But the thing is, the child (C) in the equation (R + C = Y) is not a constant.  The child is one, unique individual and, therefore, a variable.  A variable of enormous magnitude.  So, how can we expect to consistently get Y, the results we desire in and for our children, when we add the same X to a completely different C?  Are you following me?  I have at least one numbers-oriented friend who might be.

We have to change the game.  Change the equation.  Start with the variable.  Start with the C.  End with the Y, sure.  It’s OK to have a goal in mind for your kid.  I want my kids to grow up knowing the Lord, loving him with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and loving their neighbors as themselves.  That’s my goal.  That’s my Y.  So I have a kid, C, who I want to get to equal Y.  Actually, I have three kids, I want to get to equal Y.  Three different equations, one for each variable.  Because each C has a completely different value and measurement and character and you-name-it.  So, I’m left with a general  ( __ + C = Y), but with each child, I have to figure out what goes into that blank.  I have to figure out the Rules, the tools, the means, that need to be added to each different child to get–to the best of my limited abilities–to the results I’m hoping for.

What does this child, Hannah, need?  What does this child, Ruth, need?  What does this child, Isaac, need?  Those are the questions I need to be asking.  If I go to any “rule” books, I need to do so with these questions in mind.  Seeking not rules, but ideas, possibilities.  Things I can try that might work for Ruth, but not for Hannah, things that hit Isaac just right, but send Hannah off the deep end.  Too many of these people selling these books fail to tell you that.  I think these books tell us more about the kids the authors’ had than it tells us about what we can do for our own kids.  And in some cases, my heart breaks for the kids who came after the author’s firstborn but who likely had the nerve to operate completely differently.

So not where I intended to go.  Shock of shocks.  My real point in writing this, as may be evident from the title, was to share an experience I had last night that demonstrated just how different my two girls are.  My three kids are so very different, one from another.  And maybe that’s why I’m so sensitive to all this.  Maybe not everyone’s kids are as varied as mine.  Mine barely seem that they came from the same planet, I don’t see how they all could have come from the same womb.  I simply cannot treat each one of them with the same set of rules.  I would have broken them long before they came off the assembly line.

So, in keeping with the title, an illustration of just how different are my girls. . . .

Everybody was sick yesterday.  Well, not me, but everyone else.  Fevers and coughing and general flu-like stuff going on.  I’m pretty sure no one’s going to die, but there are buckets of misery being passed around.  Hannah and Ruth each had a fever at dinner last night (in the 104 range), so I gave them each a dose of ibuprophen at 6:30 and sent everyone off to bed (read, 2 1/2 hours later, everyone was asleep).

Around 2AM I hear a distinctly croupy cough and a whimpering “Mommy” coming down the hall.  Hannah and Ruth sound pretty much the same, so I can’t tell who it is until I am greeted by the messy halo of blond and footed-jammies silhouette with the yellow blankie tucked under my toddler’s chin.  Ruthie.  “I want Mommy.”  OK, honey.  I climb out of bed to meet her in the hall, but realize, Boy I really need a trip to the bathroom before I get involved in this.  “Ry, can you keep Ruth while I run to the bathroom?”  “Sure,” says my most beloved, always-willing-to-help-a-kid-or-wife-in-the-middle-of-the-night husband.

I return from the bathroom to find my Ruthie snuggled in bed with her daddy and chitty-chatting away in a chipper voice:  “Dem was WRobots.  Da wittle one was WRushy.  What dem peas doing?  What was Pa Gape doing?  Dem was singin’ “  And so on.  And on.  And on.  Ruthie had watched a lot of TV on her sick day, and is retelling much of what she saw.  Chipper and happy and ready to go.   Ry and I are laughing, despite the fact that it’s 2 in the morning and we are both desperately tired.  Ruthie’s just so funny.  I feel her forehead, to check on how her fever is doing and she is burning up.  I run downstairs for the thermometer and ibuprophen.  102.3.  Hot enough.  She’s chipper, so perhaps I shouldn’t worry about bringing the temp down, but I want her to be comfortable enough to sleep well, so I drug her up.  I send Ry off to Ruth’s bed while I hunker down with her in ours.  When she lay down, she has some big, wet coughs and she throws up.  After cleaning up, we both start to drift off to sleep.

Next thing I know–and very little time has passed–I hear yet another croupy cough and whimpering.  Hannah.  She whimpers and whines her way up over Ruth, straddles my legs and just whimpers and whines.  I try to tell her I need her to get off my legs so I can go get her daddy to help her–so Ruth can stay asleep–but she won’t move, won’t speak, can only whimper.  I’m trying desperately to quickly get her up and out of my room before she awakens Ruth, but she’s beside herself.  I also know that she’s going to throw up, because she always does when she’s sick like this with excess mucous–she’s always choked and gagged easily–so I’m also trying to get her to get off my bed before she does.  But she can’t do anything but whimper and whine.  She’s just pitiful.  As predicted, she barfs, mostly getting it off the side of the bed to the floor as instructed–though the bed does not go unscathed–and continues to whimper and whine and tremble.  My poor, poor baby.

I carry her off to Ruth’s bed (in the room next door to ours, so as not to disturb Isaac who shares Hannah’s room) while my beloved cleans up the mess and changes our sheets–have I mentioned how wonderful he is?–and Ruth, long since awakened by the hullaballoo, wanders around between both rooms chattering away, chipper and happy, despite her rosy cheeks and glassy eyes.   Hannah huddles into a shivering ball under Ruth’s blankets.  I get the thermometer and ibuprophen.  102.8.  And miserable.  Drug her up good.

I send Ry off to bed with Hannah, so she has someone to snuggle and keep her warm, and again I hunker down with Ruthie who is really ready to go now, chitty chitty chat chat.  And I marvel at the difference between my two girls.  Both with the same symptoms, the same grade fever.  One happy-go-lucky, bubbly, chipper, ball of energy, one shivering, trembling, whimpering, most pitiful creature.  So different.  Neither good nor bad, just different.  And if they can’t even have the same response to the same virus with the same symptoms, how can I expect them to have the same response to anything else?

Wow.  I’ve rambled.  Blame the fact that I haven’t been blogging much lately.  Blame the utter lack of sleep.  Blame the encroaching virus.  But who am I kidding?  It’s my way.  It’s who I am.  It’s one of the ways God made me special.  It’s my own little way of being different.

I lift my eyes up . . .

¹I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
²My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
³He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.
⁵The LORD is your keeper;
The LORD is your shade on your right hand.
⁶The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
⁷The LORD will protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
⁸The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.

I’ve had a lot going on lately.  Specifically, had a crazy couple of weeks back in the middle of September. On September 14^th, I received a call from my mother. She and my father had just returned from an appointment with my father’s neurologist.

Back in the early spring, my 63 year old father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. This was a hefty blow to the former Marine Master Sgt., and a Teamster who made his living carrying refrigerators around. It was also a mighty blow to the three women of his life: his wife of 41 years and his two grown daughters. Visions of watching this strong, proud man who had worked so hard, so well, his whole life—beginning at the age of 12—physically weaken and deteriorate before our eyes began creeping in from the deep, dark corners of our minds.

This was not how it was supposed to be. We had all grown convinced of an entirely different scenario for his death. His own father, along with his father’s brother, had died of sudden heart attacks at the tender age of 42. Their sister also had her first heart attack at 42, however it wasn’t until suffering her second at 54 that she joined her brothers in early death. Losing his father when he was twelve and a most beloved uncle when he was 16 left my father with an immense appreciation for life. He never took a moment for granted, and began counting every year past age 42 as an especially precious gift.

The other side of that coin was that, as a family, we all assumed that my father, like his father before him, would be cut down swiftly and in the prime of his life. That image, that fear, truly was a driving force in our life.

But. But then came the diagnosis in the spring: Parkinson’s. And our vision of my father being struck down suddenly, in all of his strength, were replaced with shadows of deterioration and longterm care. Devastating. And certainly bad enough.

Now. Back to September 14^th. . . . During this, my father’s second visit with the neurologist, issues beyond my father’s tremors were raised. Behavioral changes, cognitive changes—changes we had attributed to something else—changes observable to the neurologist, put something new on his radar screen: dementia. Specifically, Lewy Body dementia.

Suddenly our vision for my father’s last years shifted yet again. Instead of a strong body failing and deteriorating, we now imagine my father’s mind failing, growing incapable of speech, of even recognizing me or my sister or the woman he’s loved since he was 17 or even his 5 grandchildren.

The thing is, I don’t have to work very hard to imagine the realities of dementia. My 64 year old father-in-law is in the later stages of his own bout with dementia. Diagnosed nearly seven years ago with a form of dementia called Frontotemporal Dementia (or FTD)–go ahead, do the math . . . that’s right, he was 57 when he was diagnosed—the dementia’s effects on him are profound. And heartbreaking.

When I heard of my father’s possible diagnosis of dementia, Ry and I were actually waiting to hear details on his step-mother’s trip to visit her brother on the other side of the country. Feeling a deep need to visit her ailing brother, my step-mother-in-law reluctantly asked if we could go and care for my father-in-law while she left town for 5 days. We were happy to oblige. Our plans were confirmed midweek: we would leave Sunday to spend the week with my father-in-law.

Ry and I slogged through that week: spending extra time with my mother and sister—all of us reeling from my father’s new diagnosis—making arrangements with the school to get work for my 2^nd grader to do while we were out of town for a week, both of us preparing sermons for Sunday morning in two different pulpits. Too late to arrange for pulpit supply for Ry, and with me as the pulpit supply at another church, we decided to head south after we all returned home from church on Sunday and packed up the minivan with all our stuff and three kids. We began the 530 mile trip at 3:30 in the afternoon and arrived at my in-law’s at 2:30 in the morning. Ry’s step-mother left home at 10 the next morning, and on two to three hours of sleep for each of us, Ry and I hit the ground running.

Our week consisted of a whole lot of care-taking, lots and lots of dishes, and what seemed to be a continual parade of meals and snacks and drinks. And our week was filled with amazing blessing as we were able to express our love for my father-in-law in real and tangible ways, and watch our children learn by example our family’s expectation for loving one another.

However. I’ll be honest. Our week was exhausting. And our week was overwhelming. And because the days following my own father’s diagnosis were spent in that flurry of activity, I hadn’t time to stop and really think things through, to really process it. Still the news was weighing on me, and somewhere around mid-week, on a morning after both my father-in-law and our youngest had a bad night’s sleep, I hit a wall.

On Wednesday morning, I had a few quiet moments to myself in the only place a mom can have in her own home, provided the room has a room that locks: the shower. In the quiet, I reflected on my week. I had spent the week caring for my father-in-law, loving on him, his face with only glimmers of expression, his brown eyes only occasionally finding my own in any meaningful way, sometimes confused, often simply staring to space. These images of him raced through my mind, but then before I knew what was happening, the images changed. My father-in-law’s brown eyes were replaced by the clear blue eyes of my father, the expressionless face grew broader, fairer. My mind continued down the path of foreseeing. Thoughts of how I would explain to my children how the brain of their other grandfather now has something wrong with it. I wondered if they would begin to consider this brain deterioration as simply the way the world works and then would begin to worry about their own father’s brain or even their own. I began to wonder how my mother with her own health concerns would be able to care for my father and I realized she would need a great deal of help from my sister and me. I started to think about how after seven years it seemed I was finally putting that Master’s of Divinity to work, serving churches, but how would I balance that now? Throughout my thoughts of all the ways my life would be affected by my father’s future, my father’s face, superimposed over my father-in-law’s condition, continued to come in and out of focus before my mind.

My mind was whirling, buzzing, with all of what would be required of my family in the coming years, while at the same time feeling intensely the heart-wrenching burden of my father-in-law’s condition. Aching for him, and for his wife and for my husband. Knowing that the end is in sight, realizing the huge hole that will open up in our lives without him in it. And my heart ached for my father, for the things he’d have to go through before he lost awareness. Truly, this was not all about me.

Whirring, buzzing, spinning, turning, every which way a big, scary mess. Until finally I found myself completely overwhelmed by all that lay ahead.

And it’s at this point that I did the only thing I think anyone in those circumstances would do, can do. I cried out to God. “Lord, how am I going to get through this? How are we all going to get through this?” An image had formed in my head. A mountain. I was staring at this enormous mountain in front of me and somehow, some way, I needed to climb up and over it and pass through to the other side. “How, Lord? How am I going to get over that mountain?!”

It doesn’t happen often. I think because I don’t listen often enough, but I believe the Lord answered me. And he answered me with his very own Word.

“I lift my eyes up to the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

To be honest, I heard the verse in the form of the song I know. “I lift my eyes up. Up to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from you, maker of heaven. Creator of the earth.”

How many times had I sung that song? Countless. Countless many. Many many. With my hands raised and my eyes closed (even though I’m Presbyterian), I had envisioned a vast open space with big mountains, like the rockies—enormous, jagged, imposing mountains. Mountains that demonstrate the power of the One who made them. I envisioned God above those mountains. You know, kind of a Mt. Sinai vision: God, himself, dwelling on a high, rocky mountain. God of power. Beautiful vision, truly. I had sung the song marveling at God’s awesome power to have created such magnificent mountains and to be so beyond the scope of those magnificent mountains, that he dwells above them and beyond them. So to this point this song, this Psalm, was a song that reminded me of God’s strength and power, but in a far off sort of way. God, Big God, way above the mountains, providing help to me. A beautiful image. Truly.

But not the one that came to mind on that day I cried out to him and he answered with this Psalm. Suddenly, I saw things much differently. Suddenly the mountain was not evidence of God’s majesty, of his amazing power of creativity. Suddenly, the mountain was this overwhelming task that was set before me. In my mind I was now at the foot of one of those enormous, imposing Rockies, and my task was to scale it. And I’m no outdoors-woman. But God was assuring me I would make it over to the other side.

When I had a chance to sit down with a Bible and look at the rest of the Psalm, it came into still fuller clarity for me. It does not describe a far-off God providing help from on high. It describes a God who is my climbing partner and then some. “He will not let your foot be moved.” I trip a lot. The image of God holding onto my foot so it doesn’t slip on the graveled terrain? Wow. Suddenly I had a clear image of the ultimate hiking partner. One who would stay right by my side and compensate for any uneven terrain, keeping me on track.

“He who keeps you will not slumber.” You know this is talking about a place where critters come and eat you in the night while you sleep. But God never sleeps, so when you need rest, he keeps things going, he keeps you safe. I was assured that even in the midst of the worst moments to come, there would be time and space for my rest. I cannot keep watch at all times, but when I can’t, the Lord, who never sleeps, will keep it all in his sight and care.

“The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.” Day and night, the Lord will be there, protecting me from the elements, protecting me from the harsh realities of the journey.

“The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.” I will survive this. I will. I will not plummet to my death. I will not be buried in an avalanche or a mudslide. The Lord will keep me.

“The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.” The Lord will be here with me through it all. Wherever I go, whatever I do. In this life as well as the one to come.

Praise and thanks be to God for his Word.

Once upon a time . . .

there was a woman.  And she started a blog.  And that woman liked her blog.  And that woman hated her blog.  But she blogged.  Not every day, but at least a couple of times a week.  And then every day for a little stretch.  And she even had pictures sometimes.

But then one day her hate for the blog overtook her love for it and she stopped writing so much.  And then she wrote less.  And still less.  Until finally she was left wondering what she ever used to write about.  Because suddenly it seemed as though she had run out of ideas.

She was sad.  Because she loved her blog.  When she wasn’t hating it.  She loved to write write write her thoughts and ideas.  To sit down at her laptop and type and type and type her streams of consciousness flowing straight from her brain and out her fingertips, never exactly sure that her stream would reach the destination she envisioned or take her somewhere else altogether.  But she hated sticking her ideas out into the vast nothingness of Blogland.  The nothingness of Blogland breathed life into her anxieties and self-doubt and pathologies of all kinds.  And the nothingness stomped out the love.  Mostly.

Still.  The love is there, lurking.  Can love lurk?  Lurk sounds too sinister for love.  The love is there, hovering, contemplating, thinking.  Yet staring out into the great nothingness and wondering if she should really take a chance.  And mostly she concludes, No.

Sigh.  Sad, sad blogger.

She would like to pull up her bootstraps, slouch on her plated armor, and get to work.  Blogging those ideas.  Thinking those thoughts.  Thinking that life.  Because it’s fun.  And she knows there are at least two people who enjoy reading it.  And writing it is fun.  And productive.

So she’s off to think some more about life and maybe even to write some thinks down.  But first she needs to sleep a bit.

A Love Story

I know.  I know I wrote about our first date last year.  But that was last year.  I’m all sorts of nostalgic this year.

It’s funny, though, because when I wrote my post on this date last year, my blog audience consisted mostly of my imaginary friends from my favorite message board.  They don’t know my husband at all, and most of them have never laid eyes on me.  So, I was throwing this story out there to people who don’t know me in my personal, real, day-to-day life and never had.

In the year since then, I took the big leap and started linking my blog to facebook–or vice versa, I’m not sure–and with that, my audience has grown.  Now, it may still be some of my message board friends who are also FB friends who didn’t know about my blog before, but it also includes some friends I interact with on at least a weekly basis, and other friends I haven’t seen much, if at all, over the last 20 years, but who knew me when.  And knew Ry when.  And were our friends when this first date of ours took place.

So, the change in audience makes reflecting on the beginnings of this relationship a little . . . odd.  More intimate?  More exposed?  I’m not sure.  But that won’t stop me.

Because it’s September 14th.  A holiday in this house.  I was greeted first thing this morning with a “Happy September 14th” from a very nice man.  So every year, we pull out the stories.  Much like the pilgrim stories of Thanksgiving.  I’m sure some details have been lost along the way, but I don’t think quite as much has been rewritten as with the pilgrim stories.  We’ve told and re-told our story to one another every 14th of September since 1991–the first anniversary–as well as at various times throughout the year.  And I think it’s important.  I think it’s important for everyone to rehearse, rehash, repeat their own stories.  It helps us remember who we are, who we were.

Yesterday we spent the day with a lovely couple whose only child is in his second year of college.  They were telling us what a shock to their system it was when their son first went away to school.  The two of them sat there and stared at one another:  Well.  What do we do now?  It took them a couple of weeks to realize that, well, now they could go out to dinner with one another any time they wanted, that they could spend all the one-on-one time together they wanted.  They reveled in it.

In the midst of my day-to-day, up-to-my-elbows-in-small-kids life, it’s been important to me, to us, to remember our story.  To remember how it is we got together in the first place and then remember that it is still at the heart of what’s keeping us together.  I’ve spent intentional time and energy on keeping us connected to who we were way-back-when as a way of helping us to stay connected to who we are now–and by we, I mean Ry and Lee, not the whole family–so that we can maintain that we into those days that are out there–somewhere–when it will, once again, be just Ry and Lee rattling around in these halls.  Celebrating the days of yore, the days of just fun and friendship and laugh, laugh, laughing, helps keep us grounded through these days when we are so focused on these little people that it’s sometimes hard to see the face of the grown-up on the other side of the little heads.

So, today we remember.  We remember how we were such good friends.  Just friends.  How our friendship grew slowly, over the course of years.  How we were both surprised when we looked at the other and realized . . . hunh.  You might be a little more than a friend to me.  How the end of our first date, in a very sweet and innocent way, with a hand-hold and a hug, brought us home.  Home to a place we knew we belonged and where we hoped to stay.  It was comfortable and natural and easy.  Just easy.  Like breathing.  Yes.  This is it.  It hasn’t all been easy, but the getting together, the transition from friend to . . . different category of friend . . . was easy.  And that’s where we remain.  Friends of a different kind.  And I give thanks to God for bringing us together in precisely the way he brought us together.  And I pray for 19 more years like the last 19:  years that get better and better.  And then I pray for another 19.  And heck, I might just shoot for another 19 after that.  I like this guy.  I really do.

Remembering . . .

I’m remembering a lot these days.  This week is a big week for remembering around here.  I wrote about it last year.  The anniversary of our first date, my birthday.  I might have more to say about that another day, but today I’m going to remember September 11th, 2001 and the days following.

First, my heart and thoughts go out to those who lost loved ones on this day eight years ago.  My heart aches for the pain that will never go away.  My heart aches for those who were present and a part of the events of that day.  For their pain, for their scars–physical and emotional–that will never fully heal, that continue to be poked and prodded on a national scale once every year.

Today, I’m remembering how we experienced 9/11 and how the events of that day were made extra surreal for us, I think, because of the circumstances under which we witnessed the event and the immediate aftermath.  I think, too, that this experience of it has had lasting repercussions.

On the morning of 9/11, Ry and I were far, far out of town, visiting good friends of ours from Ry’s college days. I can still remember hearing, over the sound of my hair-dryer, Ry and Matt coming in from a run.  I could hear just enough to hear some sort of urgency to their voices and as I turned off the dryer I heard them saying a neighbor had come up to them while they were doing pull-ups in the garage and told them that a plane had just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.  I reached the living room as they were turning on the TV.  There was still speculation that it was a Cessna, or some kind of small plane.  Speculation about what had happened to make the pilot screw up like that.  I went back to finish up my hair–must be pretty, don’t you know–and when I came back it seemed clear that it was a large plane.  I arrived back to the TV in time to watch the second plane hit.  Then we knew.  The four of us.  We knew something terrible was happening.  And we all sat down and began to watch.

I can picture the dirty breakfast dishes, with various bits of leftover waffles and strawberries on them, lining the counter.  At some point, I think, Ellen gave up on cooking up the rest of the batter.  Matt was off from work that day because we were there to visit.  So we had nowhere to go and nothing to do but sit.  And watch it all unfold before our eyes. The first tower crumbling.  Anticipating the second.  What’s that?  Something about the Pentagon, too?  What’s going to happen next?  What’s going on?

I can so vividly picture Ellen sitting and rocking her 3 month old baby.  I remember looking at her and wondering what she was thinking.  Wondering how afraid she was that the whole world was changing before our eyes and she had just brought a new person into it.  Wondering if she was fearing for her new baby.  Wondering if Ry and I should continue in our attempts to bring into this new crazy world a new baby of our own.  We spent the day glued to the TV.  We cleaned up the waffles eventually, but I honestly have no recollection of lunch or dinner that day.  I simply remember their couch.  And the TV set.

At the time, I was about to begin my senior year in seminary, Ry was in his second year of ministry in a nearby church.   Our home at the time was in Princeton, NJ.  A 60 minute train-ride from Manhattan, and a hop, skip, and a jump to DC.  Being fans of Central PA made Shanksville feel all the closer.  And there our home sat, in the middle of all that mess.  While we sat far, far away from home.  In Kentucky.  I was at the same time lonely for home and grateful not to be there.

Meanwhile, we had friends there.  We had one dear friend who we knew took the train right into the WTC every morning for work.  We had great hope that she was in and out of there and in her own building by the time the first plane hit, but we also knew sometimes things happen, trains get delayed, people have appointments.  And even beyond worrying about her physical well-being, we were worried about this sensitive woman, who was in a vulnerable emotional state at the time, witnessing up close and personal all that we were witnessing from what felt so very far away.  We prayed for her.  My, how we prayed for her.

We also have a surgeon friend who was serving at a hospital in Brooklyn.  We knew he was close.  We knew he’d be on alert.  We weren’t sure what he would have to face.  But we thought of him.  And we prayed for him.

And then we had yet another friend.  This one lived outside of DC and we knew his job took him straight to the Pentagon often.  There was no telling whether or not this day would be one of those occasions.  We thought of him.  And we worried for him.  And we prayed for him.

It was all so strange.  After having lived on the highway from Philly to NYC for nearly five years by then, the entire area felt like our home.  Our local news was NYC’s local news.  Our church community was full of people who worked in the city.  This was our home.

Yet we were so far away.  So far removed.  It was somehow harder to wrap our heads around.  And we had a feeling of hopelessness as we knew we had members of our congregation in need, members whose personal lives would be rocked by this, knowing that with all the members of our church working in Manhattan or with neighbors who did, there were bound to be some who were personally affected, not just affected in the way that all Americans were.  But we couldn’t be there.  We were on vacation.  Supposed to be enjoying ourselves.

The next day, September 12th, we packed up our bags and continued on our journey.  We listened to NPR continually.  Through hours of travel.  We toured Mammoth Cave as planned.  Hidden deep in the dark cave, below the ground, we still wondered what was going on up there.  Far above us.  Above the ground.  In the skies.  Would we emerge from the dark and dank, perpetually comfortably cool cave to find that something else had gone horribly wrong?  A few minutes of NPR as we drove to our campsite reassured us that nothing had changed, save everything that was already changed.

We spent that night in a tent.  No TV to replay the images, just our words, just our joint processing of all we had witnessed.

The following day brought more hours in the car as we drove to Asheville.  More NPR.  We wondered who this Bin Laden character was.  What was this Al Qaeda thing?  Afghanistan?  War?  Did I mention that after 6 years of working toward it, Ry had finally been commissioned as an Army Chaplain and attached to a Reserve unit just weeks before?  War.

Another surreal day in Asheville as we toured one of America’s Castles.  The Biltmore Estate was the inspiration for this whole trip, after a Saturday morning watching A&E.  So, once again, cut off from all outside communication, we traveled back in time to days of wealth and obscene spending.  What planet were we on?  Having fun, yet always in the backs of our minds:  How’s Leslie doing?  What about John?  We had no number for him in DC, we mainly talked via email.  What did Shawn have to deal with at the hospital?  My this house is really big!

A few minutes of NPR told us more of the same.  Another night in a tent.  Cut off from civilization.  Hidden away in a dark tent, under moist trees.  More quiet chatter in the night.  More processing.  Is this the kind of world we should bring a baby into?

Onward and Eastward we traveled.  Depending only on our ears to tell us what the rest of the world looked like.  Hearing stories of the devastation, hearing pleas of people looking for loved ones, hearing speeches by Mr. Powell, Mr. Bush.  Where was Mr. Chaney?  Our ears were overwhelmed, but our minds struggled to put together pictures beyond the real-time ones we saw.  The ones we saw when no one knew what was going on right before our eyes.

Yet another two nights without a TV in my in-law’s in NC.  They had no TV at the time.  We all talked about what it all could mean.

By the time we returned to our home, back to civilization, back to our TV’s, life had begun moving forward.  Nearly a week had passed.  Hope for finding living lost had dwindled.  The attention of the TV was turned toward War.  Toward retribution.  Toward reacting, responding, rebuilding.

Our eyes never saw what other eyes saw.  Our brains were not overwhelmed by images.  Somehow I think this makes a difference for how we’ve processed it all.  It’s not that we didn’t experience it.  We did.  We saw it as it happened.  But I think we came out of it less scarred than those around us who spent the week looking at the images over and over and over and over.  I’m grateful for that time.  But it also leaves me feeling disconnected from the fullness of it.  We were aliens returning from outer space.  We could only hear about the special service that took place at church on my birthday, the 16th.  We returned after the worst and most intense of the aftermath.  I don’t know what that means for us.  It just makes it different.  It makes it once-removed or something.  We don’t share the collective experience of the days that followed.  We have only the images of the events as they happened, and the images our own minds were left to make up in response to the things we were hearing.  It was simply different.

After thinking about this some more today, I had some further thoughts about our once-removed experience of 9/11.  We’ve noticed that we didn’t experience things quite as intensely as those around us.  I think I’ve always attributed it to our trip.  But I’m also now wondering if it is because we were quite literally once-removed from the whole thing.  We shared the local news with NYC, but we lived far enough from the city to not be that part of Jersey that is suburban New York.  In our ten years of living in that general vicinity I had only two trips to the city, Ry had none, and one of my trips happened during the 18 months we took a break from living there.  But my best friend grew up closer to the city, she’d been there a bunch, her nephew worked there.  Members of our church worked there.  It was part of our everyday, but once-removed.  And then this tragedy hits, and we had a pile of people we knew who knew someone who’d died.  Once-removed.  The granddaughter of Ry’s great aunt lost her husband.  Once-removed.  But just once-removed.  Close enough to feel the relief of those who’d had close calls, to see the anguish of those who’d lost someone.  Close enough to touch and see and feel the agony. But it was not our own.  We were once-removed.

Our position that close, but once-removed, was, I think, different from the experience of those further away.  I think those further away could experience the national impact of the ordeal.  Being another step further away took the whole thing away from the intensely personal, and put it into the national-identity personal.  I think our being surrounded by people who had lost so much, seeing in our local paper the lists of names of lost people, made it difficult to claim the loss as our own, to feel that sense of nationhood, of national tragedy.  The personal tragedy was too close to us, yet was not our own.  We were in the no-man’s land of a second circle.  There is the inner circle of those directly, personally affected by the event:  they were there, or they lost a loved one, or their loved one was there.  And there is the outer circle, a grieving nation.  A nation who looked at this devastating blow to their country and were rightly outraged.  And then there we were, in no-man’s land.  Once-removed.  But only once.  We were part of the tragedy, but we weren’t.

I’m not sure that makes as much sense in words on the screen as it does in my head.  Anyway . . .

Along the way of our travels, we had learned that our friend Leslie was unharmed in the attack, that she was part of the mass exodus-by-foot out of the city that day.  She emerged from the rubble miraculously stronger, healthier.  When we came home we learned that John, thankfully, was not at the Pentagon that day, but I often wonder about the lasting impact of that close call.  And Shawn and his hospital colleagues were left with empty gurneys.  The anticipated rush of  injured survivors never came.  Because there was no rush.  There were so few.  And all of those people so ready to save lives had to recover from the reality of having no lives to save.

Horrific.  The whole thing was horrific.  It haunts me still.  And certainly our lives have changed in its wake.  Ry spent 18 months mobilized and serving soldiers on their way to and from Iraq and Afghanistan.  And he may be about to go back to serving soldiers again, as a National Guard chaplain.

And in the midst of all that. . . . in the midst of the world as we knew it crumbling down around us . . . we decided Yes.  A world such as that was a world worth bringing a baby into.  First, because we know the One who holds the future in his hands and rest in his sovereignty.  And second, because we figured there was no better time to bring into the world yet another servant of the one and only true King as a witness to his mercy, his love, his sovereignty, and his grace.  We continued on our journey toward parenthood undeterred.  Isaac was born June 2002.  You do the math. 

And we continue to rest in the arms of that same King.  Resting assured, without fear.  Eagerly anticipating the day when there will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more weeping.  When all is as it should be.  Come, Lord Jesus!

Some questions and reflections, part I

My ordination exams are half over now.  I took my Theological Competence and Biblical Exegesis sections.  By request, I’ll share two of my questions and responses to them.  Mostly so you can see what I’m doing.  Be kind.  Because I don’t want to find out prematurely that I failed miserably. 

First, the passage I’m reading and working with is 2 Peter 3:8-15a.  Here it is:

⁸But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. ⁹The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance^{.  10}But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.¹¹Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, ¹²looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! ¹³But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. ¹⁴Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, ¹⁵and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.

And the first question I’ll share:

Discuss the tension in this passage between divine wrath and judgment implicit in the fiery destruction of this world, on the one hand, and divine grace and redemption expressed in God’s patience in providing opportunity for salvation, on the other.  How does this passage contribute to your understanding of the relationship between God’s justice and mercy?

And my answer:

Sometimes in the face of passages such as 2 Peter 3:8-15, in which we find impending doom and destruction, it’s easy for us to so focus on the visions of destruction that we lose sight of God’s grace that continues to abound even here. It is important to remember the larger context of this passage. It is not presented as a warning to the unrighteous, it is presented as a word of hope to the believing community. Here in 3:10-15 we find a tension between the wrath of God and the mercy of God.

On the one hand, the believing community is told that God will destroy the godless, that the earth and the heavens will be destroyed, that the false teachers will be revealed for who they are, while the godly will remain to see the day of the new heaven and new earth where their righteousness is at home. On the other hand, we hear tell of a God of patience, one who wants no one to perish but all to come to repentance.

Perhaps in the tension we find the depth of both God’s justice and mercy. It is within God’s power and within his right to destroy the godless, to rid the world and creation of all unrighteousness. As the believing community stands in the midst of the godless, under the pull and sway of those who would have them turn from what is right and true and godly, it is an encouraging word to know that those other forces, those ungodly, false teachers deserve God’s wrath and that God will exact his justice. However, it is not God’s desire to destroy anyone. Yes, they deserve it. But God does not want it. God wants all to come to repentance, and it is out of that desire that he waits for his day to come. He waits patiently to give everyone a chance to repent. Great is the God who holds the power and the right to exercise great wrath and judgment, yet withholds it in patience for all to repent and turn toward him.

I think our Reformed sensibilities—our reverence of God’s sovereignty above all else, and our humility in maintaining the mystery contained within our God—prevent us from delving further into God’s rationale, his plans. This passage of 2 Peter leaves us with an irresolvable tension. On the one hand, God is indeed a God of justice, a God who demands obedience and worship and single-minded allegiance; and God will indeed exact his justice. On the other hand, God is a God of infinite mercy and grace, a God who emptied himself, humbled himself to the point of death on a cross, in order to fulfill his own justice on our behalf. 2 Peter declares that God does not want any to perish but wants all to come to repentance. Ours is not to resolve the tension, but to live in it: to embrace the hope that we who remain steadfast in Christ’s righteousness will find our home in the new heavens and the new earth, and never to cease in our proclamation of God’s glorious gospel of mercy that the day will come when all will come to repentance.

More tomorrow . . .

Writing for the sake of writing . . .

I haven’t written in a bit.  I’m feeling too tired or lazy to check how long since my last post, but I know it’s been a week or more.  I’ve started other posts.  I’ve come here and almost started other posts.  I have this itch to write but no idea to actually write.  Finally I decided to just write anyway.  So here it is.  Writing for the sake of writing.

My last two weeks have been spent preparing for my ordination exams.  Well, more accurately, they’ve been spent under the cloud called Supposed-to-Be, presently labeled “preparing for my ordination exams.”  Whatsa ordination exam? you ask.  Well.  I’ll tell you.  Because I’m just writing for the sake of writing.

I’ve said that I graduated from seminary and I’m a sometimes preacher.  In my denomination (PCUSA) that does not make me a pastor, that does not mean I’m ordained.  Seminary is but one step in a longer path toward ordination.  I can best describe the process–for the truly curious–by using my husband’s experience.  He finished his bachelor’s degree (in Mechanical Engineering, wouldn’tchaknow) and then headed to seminary three months later.  Seminary is a three-year program culminating in a Master’s of Divinity.  It’s kinda like law school.  It’s a professional degree.  While he was in seminary he did two field education placements, one full-time over a summer, one part-time over a school year.  In February of his senior year he completed four ordination exams.  For the first 12 weeks after he graduated he completed a program called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) where he served and trained as a hospital chaplain (in his case, assigned to an oncology unit). All during this time, he was “under care” of his presbytery which entailed periodic meetings with a committee, they were tracking his progress, while he was getting to know them, presenting them with a statement of faith that was then put up for evaluation.  His next to final step toward ordination was being extended a call (getting a job offer) to a position in a church that required ordination (in this case, Associate Pastor for youth and family ministries).  The final steps were being examined (evaluated and questioned in beliefs) by the presbytery under whose care he had been and by the presbytery in which the church that called him was located.  He started the job, he was ordained.

That’s the quick, efficient way of going about being ordained in my denomination.  Yes.  That is the straight-shot ordination process.  My experience has been a little different:  more complicated, more convoluted.  First:  I was out of undergrad (B.A. in a nice, sensible program:  English/Secondary Ed.) for four years before I sensed a call to seminary.  Initially I was pursuing an MA in theological studies.  Shortly after beginning (6 credits of Greek in a 6-week summer session), however, my classmates sensed in me a call to pastoral ministry I had not yet discerned and they encouraged me to switch to the Masters of Divinity program and to go under care.  Two weeks into my fall semester of classes, I decided I needed to get da heck outa that seminary and transfer to the seminary from which my husband had graduated.  So we moved back around the corner from our first apartment and I joined the church where my husband had done an internship so that I could come under care of the presbytery a year from then–you had to be a member of the presbytery a year before you could come under care.  (Meanwhile, as an aside, my husband was called to serve as that church’s associate pastor for youth and families.)  I did indeed go under care a year later.  In the course of my time in seminary I did my part-time, school year internship and two full-time summer internships.

In the end, I was 37 weeks pregnant with Isaac when I graduated.  I essentially put on hold the entire care process.  I did not take my ordination exams during my senior year like everyone else did (I was horrifically nauseous with morning sickness and likely pretty darn depressed and, possibly, just plain under-motivated and lazy) and I did not do CPE.  I worked that first year out of seminary (well, beginning in October, when Isaac was 4 months old) part-time as a director of Christian education.  After that and since that time I have been a SAHM.  Full-time.

Now, my baby is two and I can feel the promptings to move forward in this whole ordination process thing.  I went under care of our new presbytery (we moved 4 years ago) and now, this very weekend, I’m taking two out of four ordination exams:  theological competence and biblical exegesis.  Their purpose is to make sure you can take all your academic knowledge from seminary and translate it into normal-person-speak so you can actually talk to real, bona fide human beings, not just those pale creatures that roam the hallowed halls of the ivory tower.  My hope is that’s all I’ve been doing for the last seven years.  Talking to real people.  Answering the real theological questions of real people.  We’ll see if that’s really all one needs to be able to pass these bad boys.

After I finish these exams, and assuming I pass them, I’ll have to take two more in February.  They will take much more in the way of preparation.  I need to do far more than just sit under the Supposed-to-Be cloud.  I have to learn a Book of Order top and bottom and inside out and know how to apply all the denominational rules.  Fun times.

After ords, in addition to continuing my care process where people meet with me and ask me questions and evaluate my suitability for the ministry, I’ll still need to do CPE somehow.  And then . . . and here is the million dollar question . . . what will I do when I’ve checked all my boxes and I’m eligible for ordination?  I wait for the call to find me.  Because I’m still not sure how I’m going to work with three still-pretty-small children and how I’m supposed to teach my children how to worship when I’m standing up in front of the sanctuary jabbering during worship.  I’ll see.  I know God’s prompting me forward, I’m just still waiting for a head’s up on the destination.  And honestly, I’m perfectly fine not knowing it yet.  That’s the gift of faith.  Just waiting on God to show you what’s next.  And it’s fine.  Because he knows what he’s doing, he’s got plans better than any I can come up with.  Or maybe I’m just lazy or too tired to make my own plans.  Maybe I’m just waiting for the sake of waiting.

Nah.  I’m just waiting.  And it’s good.

You think you’ve got it bad . . .

. . .  you should meet Mr. So-and-so.  His life’s really bad.  You’ve got it good.  You should just thank your lucky stars you’ve got it so good and quit your complaining.

I hate that.  I hate hate hate when people say that to me.  And I hate it more when people say it to other people.  And you know what?  I probably hate it most when I hear people say it to themselves.

It’s just poison to me.

Why does there have to be a Who’s-Got-It-Worst contest?  Why can’t I be upset I stubbed my toe while I’m standing next to an amputee?  Why?  My toe hurts.  It really hurts.  It hurts worse than you expect a teeny tiny appendage to hurt and no matter what I do I can’t stop the pain and it’s throbbing up through my shin I slammed it so hard!  Yes the poor guy next to me longs to have a toe he can stub, but does it make my toe hurt any less?  Would he not cry out in agony if he magically regained a leg and a toe and subsequently slammed it into a curb?  I’m pretty sure he would.  And, the right response, I suppose, would be:  “Well, at least you have a toe.”

How is that helpful?  How is that kind and compassionate?  How how how?

Why can’t my toe just hurt because it hurts and why can’t you just say, “I’m sorry your toe hurts.  Gee that sucks!”?  Then when my toe stops hurting I can carry on in my quest to solve all the world’s ills.

So, somebody does this to me.  I’m overwhelmed by life and this person’s response is, essentially, “Suck it up and deal, you should see what real anguish is like.”  That is so not helpful.  My anguish is my anguish, no matter how trivial.  Let me have it.  The thing is, if it’s my anguish, I’m going to feel it whether or not you give me permission to feel it.  And if you strip me of my permission, you’re not leaving me without anguish, you’re leaving me still firmly in anguish but now I’m drowning in guilt to boot.  Again I say, how is this helpful?  I hate it.  Just let me feel crappy and tell me you’re sorry I feel crappy, wish me well, and send me on my way.

Should I address here the fact that said person doesn’t even know what I’m overwhelmed by and he’s only assuming it’s trivial?  No, I’ll worry about that later. . . .

So, I hate when people do it to me, but I hate it more when people do it to someone else.  Why?  Because I know it’s an awful, totally unhelpful, minimizing, dehumanizing thing to say and I worry that the recipient doesn’t know that and that he will now go off into the depths of guilt, wounded and weakened by pain, all the more likely to drown in it.  And my heart aches for him.  I just want to say, “Ugh, your wound, your pain, it sucks.  And I’m so sorry.  I can’t imagine how that hurts.”  (Because I’ve never felt his pain, and I’m not him, so I can’t even imagine it.)  Oh yeah.  And I want to slap the other guy in the head.

Then there are the times when a person does it to herself.  She’s struggling, overwhelmed, in some sort of anguish, and she tells herself, “Oh, this is no big deal, Mr. So-and-so, he has real problems.”  And she chokes down her tears and packs up her sorrows and tries to carry on.  But she still has that heavy trunk of sorrows to carry around.  She won’t share it because she thinks it should be light enough to carry on her own.  But it clearly weighs her down, so it’s clearly not light enough for her to carry on her own.  And that’s OK.

You know what?  I think I’m only good for carrying like 40 pounds around anywhere for any length of time.  And that’s 40 living pounds, as in the weight of a small child (well, young child in my house, anyway).  A dead weight?  I probably can’t do 40.  My husband?  He works out in a gym.  Has done so for . . . well I’d say as long as I know him, but I’m not sure he started when he was eleven . . . lets say an even 20 years.  He can carry so much weight around that when I ask him “How much weight can you carry?”  he has to give me a zillion different possible scenarios to determine a specific answer.  “How am I carrying it?  Like in my arms?  Like a bar across my shoulders and squat it?  A person?  Am I going up hill or down hill?”  etc. etc. etc.  I can pick up 40 pounds, tops, under any circumstances.  Now I have to get specific for my husband to come up with a range:  about 200 pounds, we’ve concluded.  (We’ve also concluded he could probably “move” up to 400 lbs.  Like on an incline bench pushing up with his legs.  Once.  It’s been a fun conversation.)

Point is:  I can pick up 40 pounds.  My husband can pick up 200.  Say we come home from the grocery store and in an attempt to get the groceries inside as quickly as possible we both load up both our arms with grocery bags:  I with 50 pounds, he with 100.   When I stagger my way into the house, my husband is not going to say, “Heh.  You think that’s heavy?  That’s not heavy.  I have twice as much as that in my hands!  Stop staggering and get in this house.”  No.  He’s going to help me get some bags out of my arms because he knows I’m maxing out my strength and my herniated disks in my neck.  What matters is not how much he or someone else can carry or is carrying.  What matters is the load I’m bearing is hurting my arms and my neck and making me stumble.

If we can see the logic of that (and I hope you can) when we’re talking about physical loads, why can’t we see it when we’re talking about emotional ones?  Why do we allow ourselves and others to feel crummy only when we’ve determined the load is heavy enough, not when the person does indeed feel crummy?   Why is it a contest?  Why do we feel compelled to justify our exhaustion?  Why do we feel compelled to minimize someone else’s?   Can’t we just feel the weight of what we’re carrying, whatever the mass?

Talking to my frustrated engineer husband just now (while he’s supposed to be finishing up his sermon.  It is, after all, Saturday night), took me on a little tangent.  But really, it might not be such a tangent after all.  It might just be a deepening of my analogy.  A deepening best appreciated by the science-minded, but that’s OK.  We love them too.

If you (are able,) remember back to your Physics 101, one of the crucial formulae you learned was  F=MA.  Force equals Mass times Acceleration.  The downward force of an object, its weight, is dependent upon not only its mass, but also the acceleration due to gravity in its particular environment.  Remember that a particular object has a particular mass, but it will weigh more on earth than it does on the moon due to the moon’s lower acceleration due to gravity.  So, my two volumes of Calvin’s Institutes always have the same mass, no matter where they are, but if I put them in my backpack on earth, I will feel them pulling against my shoulders a little.  But they’ll simply float away on the moon.  Same books, different circumstances; different environment, different impact.

So, I posit (since I’m getting all scientific-y here), it is with life’s travails.  What totally bogs one person down is barely a blip on the screen of another.  The specifics of the challenge (the mass) is the same, but the conditions and the circumstances (the acceleration due to gravity) are different.  Not better or worse, not weaker or stronger, just different.  Like all people are different.  Consequently, the impact on each person will be different.  Again, not better, not worse, just different.  What matters most is how the individual person is experiencing the weight (the force) of the challenge.

And our job, as fellow brothers and sisters in faith or simply as fellow humans on this planet, is to meet people where they are, to consider only the weight of their pain or struggle or challenge as it manifests itself in their own planet personal experience, and help them carry it.  Our job with ourselves is to stop worrying about how much our problem weighs in someone else’s sphere, and give ourselves permission to feel its weight in our own lives and to ask for help carrying it if we need it.

Sometimes life sucks.  And that’s OK.  Sometimes it hurts, sometimes the little things take us down, sometimes the big things leave us stronger.  Or the big things pummel us to smitherines and the little things are teeny tiny pings.  And it’s all OK.  As in, it’s all crappy and as crappy as we feel it to be.  And if you don’t think so, then kindly leave me alone.  And leave him alone.  And leave yourself alone.  Life is challenging enough without making it a contest.