Body Grief

Can a body grieve?

Tomorrow was my due date for the baby we lost in May. I have felt a general sense of malaise the last few days, a sadness that lingers on the margins, making me irritable and quiet. But strangely my body has just plain hurt. From my eyeballs to the soles of my feet. My hands hurt, my teeth hurt, what I think might be my spleen hurts. So much so that Becca had to try to convince me this weekend that it probably wasn't liver failure or cancer.

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. It doesn't feel like sickness; it feels like brokenness, like protest, like groaning.

Is it possible that even the cells in my body know that things are not as they should be?

Somehow I am still tempted to cave to the accusation that to say that out loud, to say that things are not as they should be, to say that women should not be barren, that babies shouldn't die, that my body shouldn't know what it feels like to create life but not give birth to it, indicates a lack of faith.

There is so much good here. So many gifts here. There is so much God in this pain. In small ways, sometimes, I'm even grateful for all of this. Like Naaman seeking a cure for his skin condition from the prophet Elisha and receiving as well a cure for his heart condition, it seems clear that I am being healed from diseases far bigger, far deeper, far more insidious than infertility. And I am so grateful.

It feels like a betrayal of all the good to acknowledge that things are broken.

But my body is more honest than I.

I grieve not because I lack faith that this pain has meaning or that our story has a good end. My grief does not nullify or deny all the good here. I'm sure (nearly almost most of the time) that it is grace that has brought me right here - to this shaky, post-traumatic-y ache.

I grieve because things are not yet as they should be. Not yet as they will be.

This is my act of faith.

"In its peculiar way lamenting is an act of faith because it speaks to our understanding that things are not as they should be." - Enuma Okoro, Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent

Thanksgiving

There are all these things in this season of my life - lessons, truths, insights, what have you - bits of broken glass, worn shiny and smooth by the relentlessness of grace and pain and breathing. I feel like I have pockets jangling with well-worn color, pieces to hold between my fingers while rubbing the uneven edges: the necessity of hope; the entanglement of joy and pain; the importance of gratitude for my soul's well-being and survival.

We set aside today for gratitude. And I wish there were something here today for someone else but I write because it's cheaper than therapy and my voice on the page annoys me less than the sound of it out loud and so, today, for me, I write my gratitude, this pouring out that fills.

It makes sense to start with whatever's closest and right now I'm warm, and full, and in the company of people who love me - against the odds - so I'll start here.

I'm thankful for Wes and Heather. I'm grateful for the day we first really met, them sitting at our dining room table, hours and hours going by while we caught ourselves in a hundred "oh you too?" moments, slowly and bravely telling our stories, finding in each other safety and community and church. I'm grateful that if I'm not sneaking baby Eli out of his carseat, someone is handing him to me, allowing this woman the gift of teaching someone to blow raspberries, of feeling the sweet limpness of a baby finally giving in to sleep while praying beggy prayers for grace and favor on his little life. I'm grateful for the way they have loved our friends, quick to take them as their own, and quick to offer their own friends for us to love. I'm grateful that we can choose our families and that I'm spending Thanksgiving this year with a part of mine.

I'm thankful that I'm learning these three terrible truths of my existence: that I am so ruined and so loved and in charge of so little (Anne Lamott). This is the kind of pain that heals.

I'm thankful for my family - these people who are still my training ground in forgiveness, and showing up for each other, and learning to share.

I'm thankful for a new understanding of "eshet chayil" from Proverbs 31 - that it's not necessarily about what we do, but how we do it - and the exquisite challenge to do what I do with courage and heart.

I'm thankful for my pit crew: Amanda, Beth, Sharon, Joan, Marcy, Mariah, Josh, Lisa, Micah, Cyndi, Corey, Anna, Janelle, Becky, Sandra, Katie, Amy, Jessika, Brooke, Jimmy, Becca, others even still. "What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them" (St. Anne again, of course). I am thankful for 3:33pm prayers, glasses of wine, life-saving sustenance via Facebook messages and homemade bread and the benefit of the doubt and sushi lunch. I am thankful for people who do not flinch at my words, who help me separate the true from the nonsense. I'm thankful for connections instant and deep and I'm thankful for slow, halting steps toward friendship. I'm thankful that I spent the very worst day of this year in bed with my best friend watching British soaps and eating gummy worms.

I'm thankful for cardigans from Target, for iced tea, for the homemade quilt Alissa made for my wedding.

I am thankful that I am finally learning to pray. I am thankful for this confession: "You and I both know what we are dealing with here" (Anne Lamott); for this honesty: "come as Your true self and contradict the world so full of unbearable deathliness" (Walter Brueggemann); for this awareness: "you can let the whole scenario be bathed in God's gentle, gracious light, and in that light even for a few stolen moments, you can behold" (Brian McLaren); for this consistency: "give us today our daily bread" (The Book of Common Prayer).

I am thankful that my unfaithfulness serves to render me speechless in the face of God's great faithfulness to me.

I am thankful that Todd Waggoner chose me nearly a decade ago and keeps choosing me every day. I know some days that choice is harder than we'd both like it to be - I'm thankful that most days it still seems like a no-brainer. I'm thankful that we are both equally certain that we got the better end of this deal. I am thankful that we still send flirty text messages to each other during church. And I'm thankful that I have never once felt afraid. God alone knows the enormity of that gift.

I am thankful for my grandmother's stuffing recipe and that my husband begs me to make it every year.

I'm thankful for the way this last miscarriage shook me out of my silence, making me so desperate to refuse the shame that I stripped down naked and paraded my bare, broken self around the Internet. I'm thankful for the sweet, freeing release of being denied the possibility of pretending that I have it together. I'm thankful for the light streaming in through the cracks in my heart and my sense of self-worth and my desperation to convince you of my competency. Oh my God, thank you. I'm so grateful that the light does get in.

I am thankful for the bread and the wine and that there is more than enough for this grace-beggar.

There is so much here and it's all a gift. And I am thankful.

Woman of Valor

I put the book down and cried. I had spent a delightful amount of a long weekend, cuddled up in my oversized yellow chair, wrapped in a quilt, devouring Rachel Held Evans' A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I read most of the book laughing or rushing to post quotes to Facebook, so I was a bit surprised by the tears leaking out as I finished it. I think they were tears of gratitude. I tweeted the author my thanks.

She gave me the gift of a new understanding of Proverbs 31. Entire women's ministries have been built around this one chapter of the Bible. It's a poem about a superwoman. She rises early and works through the night. She manages her home, runs several businesses, volunteers with charities, and is praised by her husband and children. She annoys me. Somehow she's become a standard for women, a measure by which we always fall short. And yet in modern Orthodox Judaism, it is men who memorize this chapter not women. They memorize it so they can sing it to their wives. It's not a standard by which women are to judge themselves. It's an anthem by which men are to praise their wives. The "wife of noble character" depicted here is more accurately translated "woman of valor" (eshet chayil in Hebrew). Valor - a military term, meaning boldness, courage, strength, intestinal fortitude, heart, backbone, moxie, guts.

I haven't felt like a woman of valor lately.

Though he didn't say the words exactly, I heard someone say to me, "you can't be intelligent on matters of faith and theology - you're a woman." And the persistent drumbeat in my head began: you are too much. Quiet down. 

In a moment this week that could have been a chance for graciousness and praise, I came face-to-face instead with the real contents of my heart: a lack of mercy and the ugly, rotting stench of unforgiveness. And the beat goes on: you are not enough. Not merciful enough. Not good enough. Not strong enough.

The depth of my desire for kids has been reduced to groaned prayers as eloquent as "babies. please babies."  And yet every month when the news that I'm not pregnant arrives, a piece of my heart exhales with relief. One more month to delay the consuming panic that accompanies every twinge and pang. One more month before another test of my faith and my stamina and my intestinal fortitude. One more month before I have to face the question: do I have what it takes? Am I enough this time? And then the guilt, oh, that ever and always present companion of women everywhere. Too much and not enough.

I am having trouble praying lately. Too antsy to sit still long enough. Too full to know where to begin. Too quick to assume that God is annoyed with me anyway. My sweet patron saint Anne put it like this on Facebook last week:

God isn't stalking around bitterly, muttering about how I've stepped away from the

heart cave where I can be with/feel/share with/hear from God. S/He isn't grousing, "Boy, I'm tired of that stupid narcissistic Annie Lamott. She makes me 

sick." I think He or She is thinking, "Poor Princess Tushy. Coming to be with me ONLY in between games of mental pinball: Amazon sales figures, candy corn, obsessively reading about Karl, Grover, and Peggy Noonan...." I think God gently rolls God's eyes, like I do when my grandson is fixated on a broken mini-transformer and how his life is ruined, and why he can't have gummy bears when he wants, plus why he SERIOUSLY will not take a nap, and is, as he says, "Soooo mod. I just sooo mod at you, Nana. No nap!"

That's me, I guess. Fixated on all the broken mini-transformers and certain my life is ruined when I probably just need a nap.

So what to do about it?

I'm having a sort of love affair with the Eucharist these days. Jonathan Martin tweeted a few weeks ago that while a time of worship and a sermon are good and have their place, it is the bread and the cup that compel us to come. It's the body broken and the blood poured out that transform. Communion has been a sweet time for me lately, usually a time for introspection and gratitude. This past Sunday, I couldn't muster the courage for introspection. I didn't feel a lot of gratitude. All I felt was desperation. So I stumbled fast out of my row, grabbed the elements, and just consumed. It didn't feel particularly holy. It may have been wrong. But it was honest-to-God desperation for what truly sustains and satisfies. If I thought it would have helped, I would have buried my face in the tray of crackers and poured the tiny cups of grape juice over my head.

And I stood in the shower yesterday. Home alone and desperate still. Not nearly serene enough for silent, contemplative prayers. So I just started talking. I'm not enough. I don't have what it takes. I'm too much. I don't have anything to give. Help me, help me, help me.

My phone chirped. I finally forced myself out of the stream of hot water, unsatisfied with the time of prayer, if you can even call it that. And on my phone, a response tweet from Rachel, the author of the book:

"Eshet Chayil!"

Woman of valor.

Neither too much nor not enough. Woman of valor.

What to do about it? Let's start with changing the drumbeats.

I am working to provide money for my family: woman of valor.

I chopped vegetables for a salad for my lunch today when I wanted to just go to bed: woman of valor.

I offered a friend an hour and a glass of wine when I didn't feel I had anything to give and left feeling like I had gained everything: woman of valor.

I spoke the truth a little too vehemently and shaking all the while, but I spoke it anyway: woman of valor.

I keep trying for a baby, daring to hope, risking my heart again: woman of valor.

I will keep praying when the sky feels like lead and I will keep desperately consuming the body and blood of my Savior because where else would I go: woman of valor.

Valor: boldness, courage, strength, intestinal fortitude, heart, backbone, moxie, guts. 

Eshet Chayil!

Major Baby Funk

I am in major baby funk today. Like my heart is ringing a bell and wearing a "Hope is for Sissies" sandwich board and marching up and down the street. Mocking me. Protesting all the hippie-dippie feel-good mumbo-jumbo I've been spewing forth in this space lately. On strike, walking the picket line, demanding more babies and less personal growth. I think it's Halloween - all the cute kids in costumes - and the remnants of the stomach flu and the domestic chaos two sick people can cause during two hurricane days stuck inside. Nothing permanent. Nothing irrevocable. Nothing disqualifying.

But when I feel this way - hopeless, sad, pathetic, and self-pitying - I smear salt into the wounds like some sort of deranged psychopath bent on torture and starting naming myself:

Failure.
Liar.
Hypocrite.
Wuss.
Unaccomplished.
Unworthy.
Not Enough.
Too Much.

I tell myself all my words of hope are thin and transparent, blowing away like all these leaves under my feet, fragile as cotton-ball spider webs decorating office hallways today.

Maybe this is hope: it takes less time before I realize I'm lying to myself again. I stop scrunching up my face to hold back the tears and I breathe in and out again and I find courage somewhere to stop the self-inflicted assault.

I've committed to walking through this pain, but it'll be honest pain, you bet your sweet self. None of that deceitful, name-calling bullshit. I confess truth. I'll stand up real tall and declare it with authority and conviction when I can, but I will speak it, even when my voice shakes. I am sad today, oh yes, but I am not failing. My emotions today are neither too much nor not enough. They are true and they are real, but they are not the most real or the most true. Hope doesn't feel true today. But it isn't any less so.

So I think I'll go home here soon and I'll open the door to little hands asking for candy and I'll make soup and I'll pick a few things up off the floor and I'll light a couple of candles and I'll wrap myself in something warm and cozy and I'll speak my real names, like confession, like prayer, like an incantation:

Brave.
Strong.
Beautiful.
Grateful.
Human.
Hopeful.
Beloved.
Enough.

You Don't Even Smell Like Smoke

It was a Wednesday in late September last year. I was newly pregnant again and it was still possible that the first lost pregnancy had just been a one-off genetic fluke. I had gone to sleep the night before with a worrisome pain and growing anxiety and had woken up to an increasingly clear confirmation that this pregnancy would not result in a baby either. I woke Todd up, made phone calls to the doctor and my office, took a shower. Todd eventually fell back asleep while we were waiting for our doctor's office to open and the panic wouldn't let me sit, made me want to crawl out of my skin, so I drove to Panera to bring us home breakfast, because that's what my people do when the sky is falling. We feed people, we bring casseroles, we eat jalapeno-cheddar bagels.

Back in the car, with the bagels and the decaf coffee, I started to pray. I expected to articulate the groans of my breaking heart with pleas for this baby's life, offering God various bargaining chips if only, but what came out of my mouth, my fists clenched around that steering wheel and hot, angry tears making the drive difficult:

I believe. I believe.

Eight months before, before the first pregnancy, before the floor of my expectations for my life had fallen out from under me, I didn't know if I believed. I was married to a pastor, I would have told you I believed, I would have told myself I believed most days. But the previous ten years had wrung my faith into tatters. I had seen people who professed to believe do horrible things. I was neck-deep in a graduate program about poverty and the faces of women trying to feed their children were wrecking me, surely more real than the God I mostly believed in. I was dragging around heaps of baggage, crammed full of well-intentioned but devastating teachings about God.

And it was in my car, driving home from Panera, on that Wednesday morning in September, losing again a life I was desperate for, that I realized something I never saw coming:  I believed. 

I have been haunted throughout this excrutiating struggle for babies by the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the book of Daniel. They are Jews in exile in Babylon and when the king declares that everyone must worship an image of gold, they refuse, despite the king's threats to burn them alive in a furnace. They respond like this to the king:

"If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:17-18).

It's the but even if he does not that haunts me. It's one thing to believe that God can save us; it's quite another kind of faith entirely to believe even if he does not. That's the kind of belief that I knew that morning. It wasn't intellectual assent. It wasn't something I felt. I just knew in that moment, in my gut, in my bones, that I believed. That this was the Really Real.

After my third miscarriage in May, in the ridiculously illogical bargaining phase of grief, I told God often that I would walk through infertility as long as God was glorified. I begged God to make this pain purposeful, to draw us and anyone he'd allow deeper into this mystery that what is truest at the center of the universe is Love.

We, inhabitants of this broken planet, drowning in grief and tragedy and mess and stupid, people who want to rip the face off someone because they disagree about which of two Presidential candidates is better, when we see the glory of God, we have to speak it. We have to whisper it into someone's ear real close or shout it at passersby. Look, glory! 

So here, look, glory:

I was sitting outside the other day, drinking wine and seeking wisdom from a woman I love like crazy, and she said to me:  you don't even smell like smoke.

I had forgotten the rest of the story in my hang up about verse 18. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into the furnance, where a fourth person "looking like a son of gods" joined them, and they are all just walking around in there. The king, freaking out, calls them to come out and when they do he saw "that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hear of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of smoke on them." (v. 27)

They didn't even smell like smoke. 

I have no idea what the end of our story is. I do not know if God will save us from any more fires. But I know this, I know this: He can bring us through so we don't even smell like smoke.

Look, glory!

Sunrise

We were offered a gift, a free weekend at a beach house, so we packed up some friends, a couple of coolers, that pile of books waiting to be read, and we headed off toward the sea.

Yesterday we decide we need to be there, on that beach, for the sunrise. I can barely sleep, I keep waking up, afraid I'll miss it, excited for the dawn. And I know this must be vacation, this eagerness for daylight, all my normal alarm clock-induced dread gone.

So Todd and I sit in the dark, wrapped in a blanket, our feet burrowed in the sand trying to keep warm. We watch the waves come in, constant and faithful, predicting which one will make it the farthest up the shore. As the sky lightens we read Walter Brueggemann prayers out loud and Hosea and talk about the hormonal God we serve and how to love God with our bodies, if toes in the sand can be an act of worship.

It's pretty light out now and this man I call mine, cold despite being huddled up next to me, says "alright, where is this sun?" I tell him I think it's already up, hidden behind the clouds on the horizon. It's beautiful, yes, and I've resigned myself, almost unconsciously, to this less-than-dazzlingly display, sure that the clouds and the haze are preventing something grander. I had hoped for glory, bright rays of pink and orange and yellow reflecting off the water, but I told myself this was good enough, I didn't want any more.

And then, a few minutes later, this:

A few more minutes go by and then this:

And I hear, clear as this day waking up right before my eyes: those who hope in me will not be disappointed. (Isaiah 49:23)

I have to get up. I want to dance. I run to the water, we play in the waves, holding tight to each other as the water races back to the sea. I literally want to break into a jig on this empty beach for the joy of it.

The heartsickness from hope deferred is miserable. I am unconvinced that there are sadder words in English than "I had hoped." But hope is not optional for me. I am called to hope. And I will choose to dance like a fool at the edge of the water with the joy that my ultimate hope will not be disappointed. I am so grateful that when I'm tempted to resign myself to a God who is just good enough, the sun leaps up from its hiding place below the horizon and I hear:

Oh honey, you have no idea.

Crying about Jesus in Dunkin Donuts

Todd and I walked to breakfast a few Saturday mornings ago. And I pause here to say again how fiercely I love living across the street from places to go. So we walked to Dunkin Donuts and not a cute little sidewalk cafe, but still. If I squint I can almost convince myself that I'm a hip city girl.

What is it about sticky tabletops, the chaos of screaming, powdered sugar-covered children, and all the suburbanites in Lycra bicycle shorts that inspires so much more intention in our conversation than if we'd eaten our bagels at the quiet of our own kitchen table? Whatever it is, Todd asks me to tell him about the best thing I'd read last week. And as is so often the case, I tell him about what Rachel wrote this week, as if she is someone we know or my BFF (because I'm certain if she knew me we would be, of course). So he gets out his iPhone and he starts to read it out loud. At first I'm distracted by the man on his knees trying to fix a wobbly table and the woman sitting with her husband and children who looks like she could never possibly have eaten a donut before, but then the words wash over me and I lean in close and when he's finished, even though I'd already read it twice, tears are streaming down my face.

He asks me why I'm crying and I say random, inconsequential things for a bit because I'm embarrassed and I don't really know and I'm afraid I won't be able to say it, I'll just sob it out like a crazy person. But I know he'll understand, or try to, so I finally blurt it out, sobbing of course, I just love Jesus. We laugh for a second at the absurdity, sitting in Dunkin Donuts, crying about how much I love Jesus. And then we talk while I cry some more.

I've heard stories of people reading the Gospels and falling in love with Jesus. And I've never really understood. The Jesus of the Gospels can be cagey, vague, infuriatingly unclear, answering questions with more questions, telling parables instead of just coming out and saying it. I suppose I've loved Jesus, because of my understanding of how, somehow, he died for me and saved me and now God and I are okay, but it seems to me now like I loved Jesus for what he did for me. Like you'd love a soldier who fought for you or a teacher who taught you something you needed to know.

But the Jesus Rachel described? I didn't know him before. The one who confided first in a sinful, outcast, foreign woman that, yes, I am the Messiah you've been waiting for, and was so satisfied by this truth-telling that he told his disciples he didn't even want lunch anymore. I picture him now, offering dignity to this woman who knew so much shame, telling her to drink up, he was what she needed and she'd never have to be thirsty again and then sitting back in the sun by that well, sighing deeply, full. 

The Jesus who chose to appear after his resurrection to his female followers, commissioning Mary Magdalene to go tell the others, entrusting the most important news in history to a person whose eyewitness testimony wouldn't hold up in the court of her day. 

This one who saved the woman caught in the act of adultery, exposed to a vengeful public right at the moment of her darkest deeds, her most intimate acts, her deepest, most shameful secrets, and he saved her life and then offered her mercy and not condemnation and saved her again.

This Jesus who inspired a woman to break open a bottle of expensive perfume, pour it on his feet, and wipe them with her hair. And then the men start to grumble and accuse her of wastefulness. I wonder if she paused, stricken by the idea that she may have done something wrong, feeling shamed for her impulsiveness and emotionality, wondering if Jesus was dissatisfied with her offering. But Jesus speaks in her defense, telling them that wherever the Gospel is preached, we will tell the story of her love for him.

Jesus who tells us he came for the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed. Who identifies himself with "the least of these." Who reached out his hand and touched lepers, these disfigured men and women who had gone who in the world knows how long without the touch of another human being, placing compassion far above any concerns about religious cleanliness.

Maybe all this is another gift infertility and miscarriage have given me. My story is small, but I relate to the shame and the brokenness just a very little bit. I think I understand a fraction of the desperation that caused the woman who had been bleeding for 12 excruciatingly long and lonely years to fall on the ground and reach her fingers out to brush the hem of Jesus' robe, on a hope that he'd be willing to heal her, too. And I think I can imagine what it must have been like, not just to feel healing flood her body at that moment, but for Jesus to turn around, seek her out, and see her.

I keep saying I feel seen. It's more accurate to say that I'm convinced I'm seen, even when I don't feel like it. Because it's easy to doubt, when yet another friend posts their happy news on Facebook (no offense! I'm excited for y'all, really!). When I'm happily cuddling my friends' babies, it's easy to believe that no one sees the longing that feels like it'll split my heart wide open. But if Jesus came to show us what God is like, I believe in a way I never would have dreamed that not only am I seen in these moments, I'm saved in them, too.

9/27/2011

Due date: 09/27/2011 is typed neatly in white block letters at the top of a grainy ultrasound picture of what looks to me like a lima bean with a heartbeat, now tucked away in a blue Rubbermaid container in the basement of our condo building. The baby box, we call it. It also holds the pregnancy test confirming our second pregnancy, which I added to the box on October 1, 2011 as I was miscarrying that second one. And the journal I started for the third baby in March, trying to be defiantly hopeful, that's in there, too. Should is a tricky word, but I can't help thinking that I "should" be counting baby kicks as I near the third baby's early December due date.

Of course I'm not and these days sneak up on me, dates that won't let me forget just yet, dates that always surprise me with how urgently they demand that I acknowledge them. That I observe and remember those tiny hearts that beat, even for a few days.

But how do you honor something that barely was?

As usual, I don't know, really, but it feels important to acknowledge what those little heartbeats gave me: a chance to be brave for someone else, to learn that I am seen, to feel loved in the deepest, darkest places I didn't even know I had.

I will honor these days and the hearts that beat, barely and remarkably, and my own heart by not swallowing any tears that need to be cried today.

By speaking kind, life-affirming words today - to other people and to myself. I may not have children to hold but I can bring life into the world, I can nurture the life around and within me. I have not birthed life, but I can breathe it, I can speak it. No one calls me mother, but I can mother today, I can protect, I can love without reservation or condition.

By breaking bread, by feasting, with friends who held our tears and our anger and our confusion. I can offer my thanks for them and I can celebrate that should our hearts break again, we will not be alone.

By taking a walk in the fresh air, rejoicing that I'm here, that I survived, that I got up off the floor, that it didn't kill me. I can inhale and exhale deeply and exult that it doesn't hurt to breathe anymore.

By kissing my man, full on the mouth, sloppy and loud and in wonder that we're making it, that I feel more and better loved, that I know him deeper, that I am more deeply known.

Each sad anniversary represents a no from God, a reminder that despite my pleading, I did not get what I asked for.  But, and this is one big, glorious but, I can hear more clearly His resounding Yes over my life.

I can remember today how I am changed, how three times over a mother and then not has carved itself on my soul and I can marvel at what effective companions Sorrow and Suffering can be.

I think I'm a little bit harder and a lot quicker to cry. More cynical maybe, but more fiercely convinced of the necessity of hope. Marked by sadness but what I'm starting to think is also joy. Less patient with superficiality, but more patient with the excruciatingly slow work of God. More broken, for sure, but desperately hoping I am in greater communion with the One broken for me.

I can commit to this: I will walk this out.  I will walk. this. out.  I will go all the way through. I will learn everything I can learn. I will not choose avoidance or distraction or indifference. I will hope even when I'm scared. I will not be ashamed of the shattering of my heart any more than I would be of the shattering of a bone. I will believe that miscarriage is not the last word for my life. I will hope because I know that the end is good, and this is not the end.

I started writing this, choking back sobs that came from a heart broken and now I'm crying because it's so good and maybe your heart has to break open for the light to get in?

I never got to hold them, but, man, am I grateful that those hearts and tiny, unfinished bodies existed, even for the short time they did.

I am grateful and I can't even believe it. It's a gift. It's all a gift.

In remembrance of babies I barely knew, I can say thank you today.

This is what it means to be held, how it feels when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive.

On Autumn and Hope

Becca and I diagnosed ourselves with Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder (RSAD) one particularly harsh summer during grad school. (For those just tuning in, Becca is my Ethel Mertz; the Louise to my Thelma; my exception (see He's Just Not That Into You)). Seasonal Affective Disorder, commonly, is when you get sad and depressed during the winter from the cold and lack of sunlight. Becca and I get sad and depressed during the summer. It's just too damn hot and humid in this swamp that passes for the nation's capital. You can't breathe and there's no hope for girls with thick, curly hair and all that sun is devastating to my alabaster skin.

So maybe it's just the turning of the season, but this year the cooler, humidity-free air seems to be carrying healing straight to my summer-dry soul.

The decadence of my first salted caramel mocha after months of unsweetened iced green tea.

A cardigan and a scarf thrown over the same outfit I've worn two dozen times this summer, making me feel disproportionately more competent and together.

Cool mornings to walk and pray and breathe and cool evenings to sit outside with good friends and sleeping with the windows open.

I try to remember to say a blessing on each healing moment. Bless you, chill in the air at 5am. Bless you, butternut squash. Bless you, apples to pick this weekend. Bless you, mountains in the distance that I couldn't see through summer's haze. Because when I do, I remember how these things are blessing me.

All this delicious autumnness seems to be fortifying my soul, wrapping my sad heart in a cozy sweater, making me brave, tempting me to hope. I hear whispers in the trees with leaves just beginning to think about turning, "it's time."

And so I bought prenatal vitamins and have actually taken them 5 days straight.

And even though it made me shake, I picked up the phone and made an appointment and my friends (bless them) threw me a parade, raining words down on me like confetti, celebrating the obscene amount of courage that one small act required of me, rebuking me for feeling stupid about that.

Summer is giving way to fall, like it always does and like sometime in mid-July I always fear it never will. As it does, I remember a universal truth, as true of my heart as it is of the seasons:  this too shall pass. This season of mourning and emptiness will not last. Joy will come, like the fall probably, in fits and starts and with a random heat wave in early October, but it will come. Indeed it appears to be on its way.

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot                      (Kenyon College in the Fall)

Happy Birthday, Todd!

A couple of years ago, on Todd's 31st birthday, I created a list of 31 things I love about him. I read it again this morning and yep, all still true (even the little Ashland shorts). This man I get to love turns 33 today, and specifically in the light of what I've learned about him during these last two hard years, I'd like to add to the list.

32. Never, not one time, not in the deepest places of grief, or when the very air between us crackled with helpless rage, has Todd communicated to me with words or actions or looks that he blames me for our pregnancy losses. Grieving together has not been easy. We have failed each other. He fights his temptation to withdraw while I desperately try not to lash out. We have tried avoidance, circling carefully around each other, hoping just to avoid brushing up against the raw places. We have moved closer, using our bodies and our words to cover the wounds, pressing hard to stop the bleeding. The ebbs and flows of this dance have been painful and beautiful. But every time he glimpses me bowed low from carrying this shame of a body broken, this certainty that he finds fault with me, these trembling "if you had known, would you have married me?" fears, he lifts my chin, looks at me straight with those blue-grey eyes, and tells me again: there is no shame here.

33. Grief can suffocate. It can feel oppressive and hot and damp. It can make the four walls of our home and our marriage and my heart feel like they are closing in on me. And always, always, always, Todd offers spaciousness. One of my favorite images of salvation is from Psalm 18, God bringing me into a spacious place, a wide-open field as The Message describes it. In C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, Aslan summons the children to follow him "further up and further in" and the deeper they go into his new world, the wider it becomes. In all the ways marriage is a dim reflection of God's covenant with us, this may be the clearest understanding marriage to Todd has given me of what God is like. Todd creates, around us, and around everybody he loves, a wide-open space. He makes room. There has been room in our marriage for me to grow up, to discover my passions, to try new things, to engage new ideas, to become (or to be becoming) more fully alive. In this last year and a half, he has created so much room for me to heal, to process, to shake my tiny fists at the heavens. He never forces answers on me or rushes me through the hard parts. Maybe most importantly, he never sets himself up to be the source of my hope or healing. Todd points me to Jesus. Sometimes just by stepping out of the way when I try to make him the center. If that's not reason enough to love a man, you know?

Happy birthday, beloved. Here's to another year of further up and further in.

When plain old rocks become altars

When Christians speak of the mystery of the incarnation, this is what they mean: for reasons beyond anyone’s understanding, God has decided to be made known in flesh. Matter matters to God. The most ordinary things are drenched in divine possibility. - Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

We moved this weekend, 3.4 miles down the street, to a lovely little condo situated on a suburban lake, within walking distance of the grocery store and a Greek restaurant and a sports bar where Todd is already planning to be for the Manchester United game this afternoon.

Thursday night before we moved, we asked a few close friends to come over and ask a blessing on our new home. I wrote up a prayer service, borrowing heavily from varying traditions, including our favorite prayers and Scriptures, boldly or brazenly writing down exactly what we wanted our friends to pray. They showed up and we prayed in each room, even in the bathrooms, friends standing in my shower, sitting on the toilet and the sink, crowded together and asking God to make God's presence known even here. In the kitchen we served each other bread and wine, sharing the Eucharist (it means "thanksgiving" which of course it does, you know?) for the first meal in our home.

Friday night people came to help us move. They paraded up and down the stairs and each time there were new people added to the train until thirty-five people were there and the truck was unloaded in as many minutes. Josh likened it to an Amish barn-raising and our new neighbors said "we saw all those people and thought this must be a church." 

I tried to write last week about finding God in pain, in this hard, dry place that is certainly holy. And now it seems that if the worst of it can be holy, the rest of it can surely be as well.

Each box carried down all those steps and back up more was a blessing, sweat poured out for us.

I went to sleep Friday night in a bed assembled by friends who wanted another task, on the spot where 24 hours before people who love us had formed a circle and prayed for our rest.

I will stretch out regularly on my couch, placed and replaced and just two more inches to the left and no, that's not it and yes, there by someone who just gets me and saw me spinning among the chaos and directed me: "come tell us where you want it." 

And I will look through windows that were washed and use bathrooms that were scoured by a friend I have failed before and will fail again and I'll think about grace and whose feet I can wash today.

The shower curtain in the bathroom will make me think of my friend, she who gave up two Saturdays in a row to help me pack and then unpack, who has made nearly every tedious task of the last four years bearable, standing in the shower curtain aisle at Target with me, longer than was reasonable, patiently saying to each one I pulled out, yes that looks good, and saying it again when I pulled the same one out for the third time before I decided.

The hideous yellow stain on my carpet, the mark that threatened to dampen my enthusiasm for my new home, now reminds me of the three women who got down on their knees to scrub, each with their own secret remedy, each laughing at defeat and suggesting that we leave a box on top of it.

The leftover beer in our fridge, intended as a mea culpa for showing up after the heavy lifting was done, but mostly reminding me that we have people who will sit on the floor between the boxes after everyone else has gone home and drink good beer and make plans for living intentionally and well and in the way of Jesus with us.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except that it seems important when we encounter God that we stop, gather up some rocks, and build an altar. A reminder that something holy has happened in this space. Sometimes we just wake up like Jacob did and need to announce, "Surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it!" (Genesis 28:16)

I also use a bad word. More than twice. I'm sorry too.

My fantastic cousin Margo posted a link to a popular blog yesterday. I like this blogger, mostly because she can be pretty irreverent. (Nothing makes me go weak in the knees about a woman like irreverence. Which is strange, because it's sincerity in men that makes me all swoony. What can I say? I'm a puzzle.)

What was I saying? The blogger. Here's the quote: 

"I believe that shit happens. But that with the right eyes, ears, patience, and perspective, that shit can become Holy. I just read this quote from Robert Frost… “In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: it goes on.” I think that’s so beautiful....Right now, if I had to define life – it would be this: Holy Shit. It’s all holy. All of it, especially the worst of it. I know this. Just gotta keep reminding myself."

Holy shit. Exactly. Besides the irreverence, here's why it resonated:

I was talking to my brother Jason last night. He asked how I was and the litany of complaints began: the move has me feeling unsettled, I don't feel well, I was put in a weird situation at work today, I'm failing as a wife, my heart is dark and uncharitable (it went on for a while. I'll spare you but instead say this: I love Jason Moore beyond words or feeling. It is so sweet to talk to someone who has known me my entire life (minus the first 20 months) and just gets me, you know?).

Jay started to comfort me, saying how sorry he was that life is so hard, but that didn't feel fair. Because, and again forgive me, but I can't find a better way to say it: 

This may be shit, but it is holy shit. 

God is here. 

I stayed home from work on Monday. I had some physical stuff going on that had me in ridiculous pain and evidently that was enough to spark a massive emotional meltdown. It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I was lying in bed, with a bowl of popcorn, a glass of wine, the TV on, and a brutal post-meltdown headache. 

If a friend of mine were describing this scenario, I'd tell her, "Good for you! You're sick and you've been through an emotional wringer today. Rest. You are loved. Can I refill your glass?"

I said to myself though: you are weak. Look at how pathetic you are. Look at how easy it is to make you crumble. Are you ever going to get over this? Get your act together. You're embarrassing me.

And then again Grace showed up like it does, sweetly and without condemnation, and I remembered: "my power is made perfect in your weakness."

And suddenly the moment was holy. 

It was still shitty, but now it was sacred too.

The Gospels tell us stories of people who were looking for God and missed him when he showed up in front of them because they were expecting him to come in power, with fanfare and trumpets, flexing his muscles and knocking off Roman soldiers. 

Nobody expected to find God in a manual laborer turned itinerant teacher, sleeping on the ground, being run out of town, his family convinced he was mentally ill. Nobody expected to find God being tortured and executed as a criminal. Nobody expected the sacred in a feeding trough. Nobody expects the divine in a grave.

I don't expect God in my weakness. I don't expect God in my loss. I don't expect to find God here in the smallness of my problems, in the smallness of my strength in response to them.

I believe God does still do big, powerful things, displaying strength and might. I saw it happen in a friend's miraculous healing just yesterday.

But I don't want to miss it - I don't want to miss God - if I'm only looking for displays of power. If a baby were to drop from heaven and appear on my doorstep tomorrow morning, I'd shout from the rooftops, "God is so good!" I want the kind of heart that can shout from the rooftops "God is so good" if no baby ever appears (although it terrifies me to ask that and I've deleted and retyped this sentence 4 times. Lord, have mercy).

Richard Beck asked if our insistence on looking for God's power is "hindering our ability to see God in the body of the demented mental patient. In the craving addict. In the senile old person in diapers. In the starving child. In the street walking prostitute. In the homeless man on the park bench. In the queer kid being bullied on the playground."

In my own, well, shit.

King David prayed this: "If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there." I'd probably pray it like this: "If I have my stuff together, you are there. If I am falling to pieces, you are there."

This is a dark place for me - infertility, grief, loss. But I sense God here and I keep feeling the need to slip off my shoes.

Could this be holy ground?

Mercy Like A Waterfall

"You hold my every moment
You calm my raging seas
You walk with me through fire
And heal all my disease.
I trust in you. I trust in you.

I believe you're my healer
I believe you are all I need

I believe you're my portion
I believe you're more than enough for me
Jesus, you're all I need.

Nothing is impossible for you.
Nothing is impossible.
Nothing is impossible for you.
You hold my world in your hands."

This song by Kari Jobe has been my lifeline and my torment this summer. I cling to the words in desperate and sometimes near-certain faith, singing them over and over like an incantation or a prayer. And then other times I can't choke out the words past the lump of doubt and resentment and fear that threatens to strangle me.

We sang it again this morning. And again the grief descended on me, like it does, fast, heavy, mercilessly and I'm gasping with the weight of the shame, hearing a voice that sounds for all the world like truth: your husband would be better off if he hadn't married you.

I fought back this time, struggling toward air and light, repeating, not by faith but by plain, old, unsexy desperation: you can heal this disease.

And then like a waterfall, like someone turned on the tap and let mercy spill down my head, I heard or felt or sensed: Daughter, that is not nearly all.

I can heal your grief.

I can heal your shame.

I can heal your anger.

I can heal your unfaithful heart.

I can heal your pride.

I can heal your loneliness.

I can heal your exhaustion.

I can heal ALL your disease.

And I repeat, my voice and my heart shaking a little bit less, nothing is impossible for you.

I May Need A Tailor

My mom likes to tell stories of her struggle to dress me as a kid. I had no tolerance for anything itchy, constricting, uncomfortable. She'd try to put me in adorable little shoes and I'd cry, "Too tight, Mama. Too tight." Fortunately for me (and my mother), leggings and oversized sweatshirts were all the rage in elementary school fashion in the early nineties.

Even today, nothing works me into a subtly snowballing funk quite as reliably as ill-fitting clothes. By the end of the day, that shoe rubbing my heel wrong, these pants that I have to keep hitching up, this bra strap that won't stay put for the LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY, all guaranteed to take some of the sheen off my normally effervescent personality (hehe).

I don't know a better way to describe how I feel these days except to say this: Nothing fits. 

I don't mean that literally my clothes don't fit, although God knows we could have a conversation about that. I mean that everything feels just a little bit wrong.

I'm about to burst at the seams in this job, which has never quite fit and is a classic example of this age-old truth: if you don't absolutely love it in the fitting room, you'll never love it at home.

My marriage - normally I'd liken it to my favorite pair of Victoria's Secret pajamas, making me feel both comfortable and sexy by some sort of synthetic magic. Lately, it's like someone's washed them in too much Tide. I'm all irritated and itchy and in need of a long hot rinse cycle (which clearly in this metaphor is a weekend at the beach. You see that too, right?)

I feel ill at ease in my faith. The brouhaha last week over chicken sandwiches and gay marriage and freedom of speech and whatever else we managed to work ourselves into such a lather about has made my religion feel like it just doesn't fit. It feels narrow and small and hot.

The Baby Thing is too heavy to wear right now. My feelings on being a mother, being pregnant, hoping, dreading, I don't even want to pick it up, all of it lying crumpled at the bottom of the closet, getting wrinkled and probably starting to smell. And then the grief that I'm wearing instead, I imagine the collective whispers, "When is she going to take that thing off? Is she still wearing that?"

I feel uncomfortable, cramped. 

And yet I can't deny the breathing room when it comes, the safety pins holding me together, as temporarily, as precariously as it feels:

"We pray confidently, but we will not deny in Your presence the negatives that make us wonder. We pray amid our honest reservations, give us patience to wait, impatience to care, sadness held honestly, surrounded by joy over your coming kingdom, and peace while we wait...Come as Your true self and contradict the world, so full of unbearable deathliness." - Walter Brueggemann

"I stand outside, in the wilds, banging my pots and pans, singing loud and strong, into the wind and the cold and the heavens, there is more room! There is more room! There is room for all of us! And then I'll slide right up next to you, I'll hook my arm through yours, I'll lean it, I'll whisper right into your ear, quiet, loud, it will sound like I'm singing or like I'm preaching, and I'll say, there is more room for you." -Sarah Bessey

"And I ask [God] that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights!" -The Apostle Paul, Ephesians 4:17-19 (The Message)

Levity as an act of faith (I'm afraid of the bus)

I just did something scary. I turned in my monthly parking pass. Just walked right up and handed it over. Even managed to stay strong in the face of Richie the Garage Manager's goodbye like I was headed off to war, never to be heard from again. That's right. I am officially a bus rider. Oh man, I will be heard from again, won't I?!

The bus. Marvel at my bravery with me.

Being on someone else's schedule.

No more stops at the miracle that is a drive-thru Starbucks that opens at 5am.

I concede radio control, temperature autonomy, and the privacy I require to sing loudly. Or really at all.

Maybe I should run and get that parking pass back.

No.

I'm strong. I can do this. 

The bus! It'll be great.

No more frothing at the mouth at the absolute morons who take to the road in Northern Virginia.

Think of all the books I'll have time to read! 

I'll save money, reduce my carbon footprint, decrease my stress level.

Picture it with me: I'm calm, zen-like, discussing today's Washington Post that I actually managed to read beyond page A1. Foul words at fellow human beings, dearly loved by God and sharing the road with me? I can't even imagine! I start my day with a (BPA-free) bottle of home-brewed iced tea and a piece of fruit, enjoyed leisurely while watching the tranquil beauty of metro DC pass by my window. Pay $5.15 for what basically amounts to a large cup of water, a tea bag, and a calorie-bomb passing as a scone? You must be crazy!

You won't even recognize me.

The inaugural bus ride is this afternoon. Yes, my man drove me to work this morning. And okay, so maybe I already walked by the bus stop just to make sure I knew where it was. And maybe I had dreams all night long of running after the bus as it drove all over town.

But I promise, I'm brave.

Life's hard enough. Laugh by faith like it's all gonna be alright someday. - Beth Moore

Not this bus, unfortunately

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.