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.
-------
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.

On Pondering Laments by Walter Brueggemann

We celebrate your steadfast love.

We praise you for your mercy.

We count on your faithfulness.

We celebrate and 

       praise and

       count on.

And then the world does not work right.

We find ourselves unsafe and anxious,

      caught up in greed and selfishness,

      beset by a culture of violence and threat.

We wonder about the mismatch

       between you and your creation.

Mostly we trust,

        deep down we sometimes do not.

We risk truth-telling

        about your absence and silence and withdrawal.

We do such truth-telling,

       telling it to you,

you...absent, silent, withdrawn.

You we address, you, our only hope

       in this world and in the world to come.