Thursday, November 22, 2012

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.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

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!