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.

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.

Christian Death Revisited

I pretty much said it all in the four posts on death I wrote back during Lent, but on Saturday I was on the receiving end of the blessing that comes in understanding death through Christian, hope-filled eyes.

I attended the memorial service of my friend Jack. Remember that he was a seminary classmate of mine, so unlike with the previous two funerals I attended, this one was in my own tradition, my own flavor. Presbyterian. Decent and in order. It was wonderful. And awful. And wonderful.

First. No remnants of a lifeless earthly body in sight. It is so much easier to envision a glorified body when you’re not staring at a corpse, a box holding a corpse, or a pretty jar of dusty remains.

Second. It was a service of worship. It had all the elements of a Sunday morning worship service, in the usual order. So, for me, that was comforting. In fact it was more than comforting. After few to no worship services without children in tow over the last 7 years, it was glorious simply to be in a worship service by myself!

The thing with this funeral is I needed it. I walked into that room with so many hang-ups, so much grief. I walked in angry that such a man, such a pastor, would go through all it took to complete seminary and be ordained, beginning at the age of 53, and have such a short pastorate. Yes. I said angry. I admit it. I was angry over this thing. This mess. Maybe that’s another post in and of itself: Being Angry with God. Suffice it to say, Saturday morning? I was angry.

I was also guilty. Oodles and oodles and piles and piles of guilt, weighing heavily on my shoulders. I did not reach out to Jack when he was sick. When he needed me. And I think I just unwittingly got to the heart of my problem. I didn’t think he needed me. I looked at myself and didn’t see a whole lot need-worthy: I figured he had all those other people in the presbytery who would reach out to him and care for him. He didn’t need me. I didn’t mean as much to him in seminary as he had meant to me . . . Again. Maybe another post for another day: the things I learned about myself in the wake of my friend’s death. Suffice it to say, Saturday morning? I was guilty. I was guilty for having fallen far, far short of the kind of friend Jack deserved, of the kind of conduct becoming of a future pastor. Conduct becoming of any Christian really.

And I was sad. Just plain sad. I was sad that I wouldn’t see my friend again. I was sad that I had missed out on seeing him recently, so caught up in the day-to-day mommyhood am I. And I was sad for his wife, who is truly so sweet, who now has to figure out a whole new life without her partner and companion of 25 years. I was sad for all of his family and I was sad for the churches he had served. Sad sad sad. We were all going to miss him so much.

So, I walked into that sanctuary a bona fide mess. And what did I encounter there, in that space and time? Good news. Good, good news. In the face of such a tragic story, in the face of raging anger, burdensome guilt, and palpable sadness, I heard Good news. Death is not the end, Jesus Christ is the victor over death and through his faith we have assurance of everlasting life. We have assurance that Jack, while no longer with us, is very much alive. Alive in the Savior who died for him, who rose for him. And we have assurance that this same Savior died for us, rose for us, and prays for us. That as one who is in Christ, I am a new creation right here, right now. My old life, of anger and guilt and sadness, is gone and a new life has begun. Right here. Right now.

In that hour, I was invited to die with Christ once again, to be raised with him once again. Raised to new life. While I shook and sobbed and grieved and owned my every sorrow–not sugar coating it, not glossing over it, not shaming myself for not relying more fully on God’s grace–at the same time my very spirit was renewed. Internally I lay prostrate at the foot of the cross, and then I was raised up. I felt it. I lived it.

I left that funeral still sad over our loss, but sad tempered with joy that my loss was Jack’s gain. Having sobbed my sadness, I was released from the pit, left with some residual dust to wear and own until I’m ready to brush it off completely.

I left that funeral still feeling somewhat guilty, but guilty with a purpose: guilt used not to beat myself over the head repeatedly, but to motivate me to change, to not make this same mistake again. To just suck it up already–the social phobia, the self-loathing–and do the work that God has called me to do: mourn with those who mourn, weep with those who weep. Reach out to those who suffer, never again just turn my back and assume someone else is doing it. I was reminded that the same spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in me, gives life to my mortal body, can and will empower me, change me, move me to do his will.

And I left that funeral with my anger dissipated. Sitting in that place I was reminded of God’s sovereignty and love. Sovereignty and love. Because those two must always go hand in hand. To understand God’s sovereignty apart from his love is so frightening as we envision an arbitrary despot. But to understand his love apart from his sovereignty is so disheartening, so discouraging as it robs us of strength and power. No, there in that place, at Jack’s memorial service, I was reminded both of God’s sovereignty and of his love. And for that reason, I was able to release some of my anger, and regain some of my trust in the fact that God knows what he’s doing. Notice I said some. I am still a work in progress.

I left that funeral a totally different person than when I went in. I was transformed. I give all glory to the One who met me there that day: the Living Lord who conquered death that I might have life: abundant and eternal. A more fitting closing hymn there could not have been:

There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place, And I know that it’s the Spirit of the Lord.

There are sweet expressions on each face, And I know they feel the presence of the Lord.

Sweet Holy Spirit, sweet heavenly Dove, stay right here with us, filling us with your love.

And for these blessings we lift our hearts in praise.

Without a doubt we’ll know that we have been revived when we shall leave this place.

Truly it is only in the context of a Christian memorial service where these can be the final words sung. Words chosen by a wife and daughter who deeply adored the one who has died and believed that the service just wouldn’t be right without that song.

I rejoiced in the words, I rejoiced in the revival of my own spirit, and I rejoiced for my friend Jack who has indeed been revived now that he’s left this place. And I look forward to seeing him again.

Remembering Jack . . .

A former seminary classmate died Friday night.

And my heart is broken.

I made few friends during my time in seminary. Transferring during the middle of my first year left me without orientation and left me out of sequence for Church History–two missed opportunities for bonding with my classmates. Various other conditions limited my experience of the seminary community. I think, perhaps, married students without children were the most isolated demographic present. We didn’t live in dorms and we didn’t have any kids forcing us to socialize, each couple seemed to have their own little bubble of existence, unless they were of the extroverted variety. That exception certainly didn’t apply to Ry and me.

So, I made very few friends in seminary. However, there was one group of men with whom I really made a connection. Ry and I would always joke while I was in seminary that despite my outer shell as a twenty-something woman, I really was a middle-aged white guy. Going to a (emphasis-on-the-PC) PC(USA) seminary, we were frequently bombarded with exposed to new schools of thought that were intended to release us from the bondage of the Old White Guy School of Theology. The thing is, I really like the Old White Guy School of Theology. At least the Reformed Old White Guy School of Theology. I resisted attempts to win me over to the enlightened ways of feminist theology–despite my gender–or liberation theology or womanist theology. Resisted is an understatement there. Ranted and raged against them is more accurate.

So, during those years, I was blessed to become friends with a group of three other middle-aged white guys. Together we would have lunch in a basement room of our hallowed halls. Laughing, supporting, commiserating over the latest liberal lunacy taking place upstairs, celebrating the triumphs of the Gospel in a sometimes hostile environment. Encouraging one another through the sometimes convoluted call process of the PC(USA), helping one another as we struggled with our academics. Each of us had a spouse, two of us had children at home, all of us had responsibilities in different churches. We were busy as we straddled the stone wall between our school and the rest of our lives. As a result, I didn’t spend a lot of time with these men, but I spent enough to feel like I had found a home, my community. And even as I have lost track of them, I have continued to keep these men in my heart, continuing to lift each of them up in prayer as they have been about the business of the ministry God has called them to these seven years.

Last night I learned that one of these dear men died.

During our combined six years in seminary my husband and I came across a handful of classmates that stood apart from the others. They were men and women who were pastors before they even walked onto campus. Jack was one of those people. And, as with the others, it soon became abundantly clear that the whole Presbyterian ordination process was but mere hoops this man had to jump through in order to be declared what he already was: a pastor, one who cares for others and gently leads them in God’s grace and God’s truth. I watched as he shared that gift with everyone around us. I so appreciated and admired Jack’s ability to speak the Truth: to do so boldly, but—equally important—with grace. He was clearly not a man blowing hot air, but one who had experienced to his core the love and grace of the Living Christ. His life, his bearing, his very being were a witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Never was I so grateful for Jack’s kind heart as I was during our senior year. I spent the entirety of that final year pregnant with my first baby. As it so happens, I also spent a two-semester class—Word and Act—with Jack, so I happily saw him regularly that entire year. As I slogged through the first semester of that year, overcome with severe morning (all-day) sickness, Jack would ask me every day, “How are you feeling?” I still can hear his voice: kind, gentle. His was not one of the myriad voices asking the pregnant lady how she’s doing. No. He stopped what he was doing, he looked me in the eye, he asked me, genuinely concerned, “How are you feeling?” And I would share with him how I was feeling, and, frankly, most of the time it was pretty crummy. Yet Jack would have a seemingly unending supply of compassion, reflecting to me my genuine struggle, and leaving me with an encouraging word. Jack was such a kind presence to me throughout those nine months: celebrating with me when the worst of the sickness passed, getting excited for me as the big day approached, and sharing with me along the way little tidbits of advice for what I had to look forward to, after the new baby’s arrival. The advice he shared was so thoughtful. He wasn’t one of those nagging advice-givers that all pregnant women are subjected to. Somehow even his advice hit me just the right way, rooted in genuine concern, in a desire to help. I still recall vividly his recommendations for successfully staying dry while changing my little boy’s diaper. And it worked!

Throughout my pregnancy, what really stood out to me was how much Jack enjoyed reliving the pregnancy and babyhood of his own beloved children. He shared his admiration for his wife’s strength in carrying twins, and he glowed as he talked of his children’s baby days. Looking at him as he shared his stories that were several years old, I knew this was a man who dearly loved his family.

I am so grateful for the gift of having Jack in my life during seminary. I regret not maintaining contact in the years that followed. I lost out on the opportunity to continue to be blessed by such a wonderful brother in Christ, and I missed the opportunity to return to Jack a portion of the compassion and grace he had so freely shared with me. For that I am heartily sorry.

I will continue to keep Jack’s family in my prayers. Jack leaves his wife–they just celebrated their 25th anniversary on March 31st and celebrated a renewal of their wedding vows on Thursday–and a son and daughter, the twins whose babyhoods he so lovingly recalled, now in their twenties. I will pray for Jack’s family not only in these days, but in the weeks and months and even years to come, as Jack continues to come before my mind, and as I know his absence will continue to be felt by them. For even after having known him for such a short time, his death has left a hole in me. I cannot imagine the depths of his family’s grief.

May God comfort them as they mourn. May he turn their eyes toward his Promise that this is not the end, that Christ has won victory over even death, that he will make all things new. That the day will come when there is no longer pain, no longer tears, and all will be restored to new life.

Amen.