What is saving your life right now?

Sarah Bessey (please tell me you're reading her) asked this question: "what is saving your life right now?"

At the top of my list? This Cherry Coke Zero, saving me from nights when I resist bedtime like a 5 year old and all these pre-dawn drives to work. Over and over. Rinse and repeat.

The fearless, honest, reckless women I know only through this box on my desk -  Enuma, Rachel, Sarah, Nadia, Alise, Micha, Ann - saving me from feeling alone, saving me to beauty that aches. I open my Google Reader, sip this Cherry Coke Zero, and once again I'm brave. I read words like gifts and whisper "yes, yes, yes" and it saves me.

My husband, a word that can't come within a hundred miles of describing this man and how he saves me every day. This man who sneaks home from work in the middle of the day so my kitchen sink will be empty of dishes when I get home; who tells me he loves watching me lead; who says "I love you" in the middle of every argument, though I can't tell if he's reminding me or him or us both.

My little community of women, they call us infertile, but these women are teeming with so much life. Giving me so much life. Saving me on days when I couldn't find hope with a floodlight. Saving me by letting me point out hope when it's their turn to misplace it. Saving me with plans for a weekend away, just our despair, and our hope, and margaritas as big as our heads.

Reverently removing the Post-it notes on which students have written their burdens from the big wood cross we've laid on the floor and not being able to miss this one: "I'm scared." Me too, honey. But your courage to admit it on this little piece of paper and stick it to the cross saved me last night. The student who came to the Table and when offered the body of Christ broken for him said "I need a big piece" and grabbed a fistful of this bread and there was more than enough. There will always be more than enough for you, brother. For me. That kind of desperation, that hunger is saving me.

The church is saving me. Not the building, or the programs, or even the sermons (though my man can preach a fine one). The people sitting at my kitchen table, saying "I'm lonely and this is hard and I want to quit" and letting me say "I'm lonely and this is hard and I want to quit." I am saved by this authenticity, even though the word has become cheap and overused and uncool in the way all trendy things do. And this "oh, you too?" saves me from quitting for one more day.

I am being saved by this song. And by Burmese food. And the Chronicles of Narnia. Again. And smart people who know their answers and still invite me to my own conclusions and to conversations characterized by respect and grace. And the movie tickets and restaurant gift card someone slipped in Todd's mailbox. And the reliability of my best friend's "good morning" on gchat at 8am every day. And the student who told me I am already a mother because I am mothering him. And by the excessive abundance of answers I have to this question.

What is saving your life right now?

Now linked up with Sarah's synchroblog - these posts are saving my life today. 

Two steps forward, one step back

I've been fighting it. Sitting here trying to find words to make me sound mature and equanimous. I can't find them, so I'll just get it over with and embrace my inner drama queen. I had hoped to write a post today about happiness. About the discovery over the last week or so that a fog I didn't even know I was in had lifted.You know the feeling when you finally get new glasses or contacts and everything is so clear and you didn't even realize how blurry things were before? It's been like that. Or like this scene from Pleasantville:

I know this is all ridiculously melodramatic but I didn't realize how sad I have felt until I started feeling really happy again. And there have been so many stark moments of happiness lately: finding unexpected joy in the over-the-top Americana of a baseball game with friends; bonding with new friends (this extrovert's delight); uninterrupted time to finish a good book; a new Aaron Sorkin show; renewed and deepening relationships with people I am just flat-out crazy about.

This post, however, is not about happiness. Someone said something to me yesterday that has sent me reeling, certain that I'm free-falling back into the fog. Who it was and what they said isn't important. It was crazy insensitive and frankly, almost unspeakable but the thing about it that really bugs me? I feel like it instantly erased the progress toward healing I've made recently. All over again I feel sad and tired. 

And on top of the sadness and exhaustion, I'm angry at myself for letting one horrible comment overshadow so much good. Yesterday contained a chance to listen to my smart, sexy husband preach, a two-hour nap, an afternoon cooking my favorite food and watching How I Met Your Mother, a long evening eating tacos and laughing with friends I adore, and ended with watching The Bachelorette finale with my girlfriends while our husbands cleaned my kitchen. Sure, it also contained the twenty minutes I spent crying in a bathroom stall at church like an idiot, but on the whole, we can certainly call that a good day, can't we?

Maybe this is the way of things. Two steps forward, one step back? 

This kind of halting progress, characterized by feeling sad, tired, and idiotic, makes me want to take this advice:

I just may, but I'm also trying this: May our weary hearts be filled with hope. Amen.

In Which I am a Spazz

I think I'm normal. I can behave in social situations. I hold down a job in a professional setting. I went to a couple of good schools, know which fork is for the salad, and rarely perform acts of hygiene in public.

Maybe I'm finally losing the bubble.

I went to dinner with a woman I don't know very well. I'm sitting at the table, listening to her describe her affection for the theologies of C.S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and I very nearly started hyperventilating. I acted like a fangirl. Breathless, giddy, it's a wonder I didn't just come out and ask her to be my BFF. "You like theology and hate crafts? OMG, me too!!!"

I'm a spazz.

I read a blog post this morning by Erin Lane. I'm an oversharer (obviously - you're on my blog) and post too many links to Facebook to ever be accused of being cool. I usually attempt to abide by the rules of social media decorum: not too many posts, a sparing use of exclamation points, ironic disengagement, never ever all caps. The post by Erin made me want to write, "ACK! THIS IS SO GOOD! You must read!! LOL! Soooo awesome! :-D"

Told you.

Last night I sat in a room with 23 college-age students. The vibe was especially chaotic. Hyper, chatty, loud. A room full of the special energy of the young and just-starting-out. It was all I could do not to take each one by the chin, hold their precious faces in my hands, and whisper all intense and creepy, "You delight me."

Weird.

Eagerness is lame. We who get our news from Jon Stewart know that skepticism, irony, sarcasm are cool. It weirds people out when we go around telling them how crazy we are about them. Laughing out loud with the sheer pleasure we get from another person's existence makes everyone feel awkward. And really, is there anything less cool than Facebook PDA?

Eagerness about God is lame too. Reasonable conversations about theology? Interesting. Contemplation and quiet meditation? Healthy. An awareness that we don't know all the answers? Wise. But enthusiasm? Delight? Dancing and fist-pumping? Kooky.

Barbara Brown Taylor says it like this, "We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God."

I've been studying the Love of God so intensely these last few months, I forgot to experience it. I forgot that I bring God pleasure - not just (like Erin said) when I'm good and beautiful and wise and rational and socially acceptable. But when I'm so desperately in love with the person in front of me that I get weird. When I'm so psyched that a connection between human beings is being made at this moment that I get awkward and touchy. When I cannot hide my enthusiasm and pretend to be disaffected. When I'm a spazz.

Erin reminded me of "the living, breathing, dancing God-on-the-move of Scriptures. This is the God who enamors me when I am burnt out by piety, bored sick by contemplation, and berating myself for complacency."

Not more about God. More God.

Searching for a Teacher in the Practice of Lament

In response to last week's ramblings here on this blog, I had several people ask me if being around anything and anyone baby-related was painful for me. Yes. It is. Not entirely painful, not exclusively painful, but yes, it hurts on some level. So well-meaning people suggest that I should avoid babies and pregnant people and children and whatever. I appreciate the compassion behind this suggestion. But I'm uncomfortable with it on two levels.

The first is because it assumes that pain is the only or even the main emotion I feel. This isn't true. Yes, there was a moment while listening to my friend's childbirth story this weekend when I felt like I couldn't breathe I was so envious and sad. But it was also fascinating to hear her share about becoming a mother and a sincere joy to celebrate her new daughter with her. Yes, my heart broke last week watching Todd play with maybe the world's cutest toddler, but laughing and cuddling with this kid came from genuine affection and delight in his little existence. If I avoided these situations to protect myself from the pain, I would have missed all of this good.

Which brings me to my second problem with the suggestion that I should avoid situations that may be painful. Pain is not the enemy. But man, do we ever twist and turn and scheme and contort ourselves every which way to avoid it. May I humbly suggest that the Church is especially guilty in this regard? I read recently that 70 percent of the Psalms are songs of lament. Any guesses on what percent of the top 150 songs in the CCLI catalog (where most churches get their songs) are laments? Yep. Zero. 

We will all experience pain. But rather than running from it, denying it, escaping it, or drowning it, what if we learned to embrace it? What if we created sacred spaces where we could sing songs asking "how long until you do something here, God?" right along with our songs declaring that "nothing is impossible for Him?"

What if, along with the spiritual practices of praise and thanksgiving, someone taught us the practice of lament? 

It is good and holy to come to God with our declarations of God's goodness. But what do we do with our longings unfulfilled? What do we do with nagging questions that just won't go away? What do we do with the moments that feel like a sucker punch to the gut?

Why are we so insistent on getting people to feel better and move on when maybe what they really need is time to reflect, wrestle, mourn, and grieve? Especially when our experience bears out over and over again that we learn our best lessons in pain? Given that it's a pretty safe bet that we'll all experience grief at some point, why do so few of us know how to grieve well?

I am not suggesting that we wallow in pain. I am only asking how we will ever be healed without finding a holy place to bring our junk into the light. And suggesting that if perhaps we knew sacred ways of acknowledging pain, we wouldn't be so insistent on avoiding it in the first place.

We did something scary in the college class at church yesterday. We've been focusing all summer on the Love of God. We've read the gospel of John and now we're deep into John's letters. The apostle John was beautifully obsessed with the Love of God. It's been awesome to spend so much time talking about God's love for us and how we're called to love each other, but yesterday I raised this question: Is there anywhere that you don't see God's love? In our discussion the students shared a few places they struggle to see any love at all: girls enslaved in brothels in Cambodia; the reaction of some Christians to the LGBT community; their parents' divorces; their own deep loneliness. We had a time of prayer at the end of class, where the students took the courageous step of writing out their laments and their questions to God and then placing them on the little altar we made out of folding chairs and a tablecloth.

I don't know how to grieve well but I think we might be on the right track when we start being honest.

El Roi

I'm annoyed with infertility this morning. Or more specifically, I'm annoyed with my particular infertility this morning. Grief, anger, sadness can be such sacred, holy emotions, places to encounter God, feelings that seem healthy and reasonable given everything. Today this lack of children, my lack of children, makes me want to tell God, "This is one huge, unfair pain in the ass." Seems much less sacred, no? Oh but isn't that just the way of God - appearing in the places where we'd least expect to find God?


We had friends over for dinner last night and they came with their ridiculously cute toddler. Forgive me for bragging but my husband is amazing with children. Watching Todd wrestle, tickle, cuddle, and read to our friends' kid was fun, but this morning on my way to work I ended up speaking to God about it in less than reverent tones, which, honestly, for all my bravado about honesty and authenticity isn't really the norm for me. My prayers are usually more like "Okay, God, I get it. You're doing something here. Please let that be true. And please give us babies. Please. Thanks." Today without warning or premeditation this thought came blurting out of my heart: "don't you see what an incredible father Todd would be?!" And immediately these words followed: "I am the God who sees you."

That title for God, the one who sees, El Roi, comes from Genesis 16. A short recap: God tells Abraham and Sarah that they will have a child, even though they are old. Sarah gets tired of waiting and tells Abraham to have sex with her servant, Hagar, who subsequently gets pregnant and inspires homicidal jealousy in Sarah (anyone not see that coming?). Sarah mistreats Hagar so she runs away. God finds Hagar near a spring in the desert and tells her that her son Ishmael will lead his own great nation. Hagar then calls God El Roi, the God who sees me.

I've read (though haven't taken the time to verify) that Hagar is the only person in Scripture to name God. Hagar was an Egyptian slave, a woman, viewed as property to be given for sex with no right to consent, whose heir Sarah was planning to co opt as her own. She's pregnant, running away from an abusive mistress, out into the desert and almost certain death, when God shows up as the God who sees her.

Am I the only one who wants to pause here to whisper-shout an amen?

It is balm to my irritated heart that God saw this mistreated, scared woman, of little concern or value to anyone. I needed a name for God this morning and I heard it: El Roi, the God who sees me. The God who sees what a great father Todd will be. The God who sees the fears, doubts, hopes, dreams, and heartbreak all tangled up inside this word infertility deep within me. The God who sees me.


Can I get an amen?

(Claude Lorrain)

TGIF

I’m just about used up. Fried. Exhausted. Hanging on by a thread. Etc. Project deadlines, conference calls, traffic jams, late nights, too many yeses when I wanted to say no, hard conversations, holding on to resentments and listening to that nasty voice telling me none of it is fair – I’m spent. So for the sake of my sanity, my marriage, and my continued employment, I hereby declare the theme of this weekend: replenishment. With that goal in mind, I’m going to:

Go to the farmer’s market. Spend some time with the shiny, productive, healthy people. Stock up on food that came from the ground. Buy a vegetable I don’t know how to cook. Then take it all home, pour a glass of local Virginia wine, and spend the afternoon chopping and preparing for the work week. Remind myself that I deserve fresh spinach and strawberry smoothies instead of Diet Coke for breakfast.

Look at my husband. Eat a meal with the television off. Go for a walk with no destination in mind. Make a big pitcher of sun-brewed sweet tea for the man who still loves me at the end of this week though I’ve done nothing to merit it and plenty that would make a lesser man run screaming.

Soak up the Love of God. Sit on the porch without agenda and bask. Notice the mercies that promise to be new tomorrow morning. Teach it to my college students again. Speak fewer words when I pray. Say thank you a lot. Consider it all small offerings of love and gratitude. Resist the urge to be cynical.

Practice Sabbath. Unclench my fists and my jaw. Take at least one bath. And two naps. Try not to rush myself or anyone else. Accept the invitation to be and not do. Rebuke guilt. Repeat as necessary.

Buy new work pants. Justify it by acknowledging that it’s hard to be loving or successful when you feel like a schlub. Be a grown up and have new pants professionally hemmed. Save the laundry for next weekend.

Vignettes

I saw my first glimmer of acceptance, the final stage of grief, last week. I know, we skipped bargaining and depression. Well, we skipped it here. I'm not sure I escaped either. I don't really get bargaining, although I did catch myself for a time praying things like "I'll go through this, God, but only if you use it, do something with it, bring some good out of it." Which may be bargaining if bargaining is just plain stupid. What choice do I have? I am going through it and it seems to me that God will or won't use it as He sees fit. So bargaining was shortlived.  Depression came and then decided to sit and stay awhile, but perhaps by its very nature inspires few moments of blog-worthy wisdom. Instead it just wreaks havoc on my sleep and appetite and marriage and tear ducts. Boring. If I promise to stay in the stage of depression for as long as is necessary to healthily grieve, can we move to my story about acceptance? Yes? Excellent!

My friends had a baby last week. Beautiful, perfect little E. And because my friends are the kind of people who live beautiful, inclusive, open lives, Todd and I were welcomed into their home a few days after E's birth, bearing food and inappropriate children's books and itching to get our hands on this brand-new person. I felt joy and only a twinge of envy, so I didn't expect the sucker punch to the gut I felt when they first handed me the baby. Pregnancy loss loses some of its frustrating, merciful abstraction when a fresh baby is in your arms. The weight of my loss felt more real with the warm, wiggly weight of baby E in my arms. But as I sat there, staring at E's perfect little face and his long skinny limbs with loose, wrinkly skin that he hasn't quite grown into yet, feeling the hiccups shake his whole little body, breathing deeply of that newborn baby smell U2 described as the scent of freedom, something else happened: the world felt right. I felt sad about all that I have lost, scared about how tiny and fragile E seems compared to this big, broken world, and certain that everything was going to be okay. Acceptance? Maybe.
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We take Communion every week at the church I attend. Each Sunday we receive the same welcome to come to the table and take the plastic thimbleful of grape juice (symbolizing the wine that symbolizes the blood of Christ) and the dry, yeastless wafer that makes you thankful for the juice to wash it down and is the body of Christ. The point of this ritual as I understand it is to help us remember the sacrifice Jesus made that somehow made us right with God. Each week I approach the Table, grab the tiny elements, and rush back to my seat where God and I can do our business without my self-consciousness threatening to ruin everything again. We're supposed to take Communion with a repentant spirit and sometimes it is just that: a time to acknowledge my failings and drink deeply (or as deeply as one can from a plastic thimble) of grace. Sometimes it's a foretaste of the wedding feast I anticipate, when Jesus will welcome us to the party and announce that all the drinks are on Him. Yesterday it was an act of defiance. Can you take the Eucharist as an act of defiance? I came to the Table shaken, heartbroken, with tears threatening to spill and soak my little body-of-Christ wafer. I didn't want to come. I wanted to stand at my seat, mumble the words of the last song, and then take my friend up on his offer of post-church margaritas. But I came because maybe, just sometimes, we come to the table and embrace this ancient, mysterious ritual as a defiant act of hope. Hope that God is better than we think. Hope that somehow the blood and body of Jesus Christ broken for me really is good news. Hope that all this hope is not for nothing. As I held my cracker and plastic cup in my hands, begging God for something, anything, I sensed the two words we're reminded of every time we take Communion: Remember Me. Remember that I came to show you what God is like. Some days remembering that requires all the hope and defiance I can muster.