Empty Space

This poem arrived in my e-mailbox today from Poem-a-Day:

Ghostology
by Rebecca Lindenberg

The whistler's
inhale,

the white space
between is

and not
or after a question,

a pause. Nothing
isn't song:
a leaf hatching
from its green shell,

frost whorling
across a windshield,

an open door
opening

Oh Lord, teach me to be thankful for the empty spaces. Help me to hear the silences as a part of the song.

I have never been one to deal well with emptiness. Or, rather, I have never been one to allow much emptiness to exist. On the rare occasion when I have chosen it, allowed emptiness can feel like a blessing.

I've been stiff and sore and oddly fatigued for the last week or two. I ran anyway. I thought maybe more running would make me feel better, more fit, more able to face the apathy and fatigue that seem to be haunting me.  Instead, I felt stiff and sore and sluggish while running more.  So I figured what I really needed was a good yoga class. Power yoga. Turns out that was NOT what I needed. I found myself unable to do some of the positions that I usually can do effortlessly.  Friday evening I was quite sore and quite stiff, so I planned to swim in the morning and see how that went before I planned my run. It was a big concession for me. By Saturday morning I was unable to move and nearly unable to handle the pain. For someone who runs and does triathlons for fun and who gave birth twice (once with pitocin) without pain killers, that's saying something.

And so I took Saturday off--mostly. I am a stay-at-home mom, a type-a, and an exercise addict, so taking a day off never ever happens. But it did. I stayed in bed for most of the morning. I got Gretchen dressed and sent the whole family out to do a Cub Scouts electronics recycling project without me. I slept, off and on, for most of the morning. I went downstairs for lunch, after it was mostly assembled by my husband. I did take Adam to his baseball practice, where I stood around, afraid to sit lest I get stuck and unable to get up. I came home exhausted and lay around some more. I slept through family dinner, which was OK since I had a dinner date with an old friend from high school. We had a delicious dinner followed by chocolate fondue and a walk that blistered up my feet but kept my back fairly limber. I had been invited to go see a friend's band play at a nearby bar, and although I wanted to see my friends there, I decided I had pushed myself far enough and went home to lie down again.

Sunday I marveled at how I had actually let myself off the hook multiple times. Realizing I could not bend enough to get into my swimsuit, I did not exercise. I didn't do the service project. I didn't make any meals or do any laundry or wash any dishes or floors. I considered the possibility that maybe the one who keeps me "on" those "hooks" is me. My husband picked up the slack, and he did it without accusation or complaint. My family did not eat as usual, but no one said anything about it. My friend never accused me of being wimpy for taking 20 seconds to stand up after dinner. The gym never called to ask why I hadn't come to swim. My running friends will be there next week and the week after.... Turns out, the emptiness was lovely. Freeing. And restful.

Of course, I couldn't repeat the performance on Sunday. I considered not going to church, not singing in the choir, but I went anyway. I sat through Adam's first piano recital, of course. I went through with the previously extended invitation to have friends over for pizza. Then when they wanted something other than pizza, I didn't hang myself all that high, but I did boil some pasta and heat up some store-bought pasta sauce. Nothing major. But not quite as empty as Saturday. I was not entirely off the hook.

Monday I woke up in much much worse pain. Saturday I didn't swim because I thought I couldn't bend enough to get into and out of my swimming suit. Monday I didn't swim because I was pretty sure I would get in the water (if I could get in the water, that is) push off the wall, immediately spasm, freak out, and drown. It seemed a poor risk.  Pain or no, I was going to have to be on duty again. Sure enough, while packing Adam’s lunch, I got stuck in the garage when I went to retrieve a juice box. I couldn't pull myself up the step without a railing. My legs wouldn't do it. Later, I cried, then coughed, then spasmed and screamed and hyperventilated, each while continuing the previous occupation. So I called the doctor.

The diagnosis: sprained back. Lumbar and sacroiliac. The treatment: rest.

Suddenly I find myself not only released from all of the activities that take up my time--kettlebell, running, swimming, yoga, laundry, washing floors, gardening, picking up after others, ridding showers of mildew, vacuuming, grocery shopping--but more or less forbidden them. Suddenly, what only days ago was freedom is now prison. A day off is lovely. Watching weeds invade the garden and dust gather and laundry piles grow is stressful. While I probably should take some time more regularly to be still and contemplate, I find that having nothing to do but be still and contemplate feels almost as painful as the injury itself.

To add to the emptiness, yesterday I was finally forced to face the reality that my covenant group is disbanding. I’ve seen it coming for a while. And most people are not coming to book club either. The plate that was, a few weeks ago, frustratingly full now has a fair amount of white space on it. I feel like suddenly most of me is empty space. In one week, I've lost most of my job, my covenant group, my running group, my yoga and kettlebell classes, and my race ambitions. I shouldn't even be sitting here writing, since sitting is one of the things that aggravates my back. I can’t sit and practice my horn or support the weight of it while standing. So what am I to do with all of this life I have?  More than once a day I find myself staring at nothing in particular or drifting off to sleep because the alternative is pondering the possibility or even likelihood that my existence is quite pointless.

Today I walked extra on the way home from preschool, walking being one of the few things I am allowed to do with myself. And, of course, I can think, not that I have that much to think about. I was struck, pretty forcefully, with the sudden understanding that I feel stagnant, stuck.  I recently read the autobiography of Beryl Markham, whose adventurous life in Africa was pretty much as far from mine as conceivable, and was stabbed by her assertion that “A life has to move or it stagnates.  Even this life, I think.  Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.” Ouch.  I’ve been doing the same thing for eight years now.  I have a master’s degree, but I have spent more years doing housework than any other full time pursuit in my life.  Oh, sure, the childcare needs have slowly shifted as my children have become potty trained and able to eat solid food and have begun to have sports practices and homework.  And I do change the details from day to day: what I make for dinner, which load of laundry I do.  It’s like the scene in When Harry Met Sally where Harry questions Sally about her dull recurring sex dream in which a faceless man rips off her clothes and Sally says, “Oh sometimes I change it a little.”  Harry asks how, and she says, “What I’m wearing.”  Should I mention that I have worn pretty much the same clothes every day for the last eight years, varying a bit by season?

I don't want to admit that I've been bored more or less since I quit my job eight years ago, but there it is, whether I like it or not. I love my children. I find raising children challenging to the point of being almost impossible, and I will readily agree with anyone who (condescendingly or sincerely) declares that raising children is the most important thing a person can do, but even so, it doesn't provide the sort of constant intellectual stimulation I seem hardwired to prefer. I need something else.  I have filled up my time with other pursuits to supplement the chores: band, running, triathlons, choir, covenant group, Bible study.  In a time when my body forbids physical activity, and the people who would potentially provide mental stimulation via book club or covenant group or Bible study are too busy with their own lives to concern themselves with my restlessness, I cannot deny that I am, in spite of my full calendar, miserably aimless and empty.  I survive from day to day.  I make the dinner and process the laundry.  Then the next day I make another dinner and wash a different load of laundry.  A dinner that will be eaten and forgotten.  Laundry that will be dirty again in a couple of days.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Indefinitely.  For years.

Oh, I know I should appreciate the blessings I have.  As Warren Zevon would sing, “Poor, poor pitiful me.”  I have not only enough of everything, I have too much.  And I have to wash it.  Boo hoo.  I have the luxury of lounging around whining about existential things while other people are worrying about where to sleep, how to stay warm, and whether or not they will get a meal today.  Those are the kinds of worries that are real, and the kinds of priorities that make lives like mine and Beryl Markham’s seem cushy and arrogant when we want something else.

So I am sidelined.  I’m not going to starve because of it.  Rather, I should probably use this time of forced stillness to figure out which direction I should move when I am able to go again.  When most of the buzz of constant motion is silenced, when all of the activity I use to distract myself from the emptiness is put on hold, what is left?  Who am I underneath the things that I do?  Why am I here?  If, as Lindenberg claims, “Nothing/ isn’t song,” this injury, this perceived emptiness has value.  Eventually, the whistler will exhale.

Holy Week: The Music

A friend asked me a couple of weeks ago if I would still believe in God if it wasn't for music. I'm not sure if he meant it as a serious question or a teasing question, but it felt serious internally. Would I? Hmm. Maybe not. And if not, is that entirely bad? Is it wrong that the way I physically experience the divine is through an art form? I rather think not.

Last night I stayed after the Good Friday service for choir rehearsal and after rehearsal to hear what my dad is singing at the early service on Easter. Sitting in the sanctuary at that time, I was privy to a conversation between Bill, the senior pastor, and Scott, the director of music, about the choir processing in at the beginning of the 9am service on Easter morning. This, I know, means that we will not be in the sanctuary for Widor's Toccata. It wasn't my place, of course, to mess with the high-church plans the staff was making for EASTER SUNDAY. Plus, I'm all for pulling out all of the stops on Easter. Give me Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus. Give me a trumpet fanfare on "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Fill the sanctuary with so many flowers their scent wafts out into the street. Let's have everyone wear their very best clothes and hats with ribbons and shiny new shoes. Let's eat chocolate while we worship! Let's clap and cheer and weep and throw streamers and hug and kiss and slap each other's backs and butts and hands. Let's take buckets of sidewalk chalk and hundreds of balloons and festoon every block of the downtown with color. So yes, by all means, let's have the choir wear robes and process. But, as I told Scott, half seriously, I will QUIT CHOIR if being in the choir means I miss the Toccata.

At first, I had a hard time believing the Good Friday service last night. My mind kept going elsewhere.  I was fully present at the Maundy Thursday service, but it took a long time for me to get to Good Friday. The Bible readings helped, of course, but what really moved me to grief was the "Agnus Dei" Scott had written. I was blessed to get to sing the solo descant, and by the end, I was singing it for the death of my best friend, for the loss of all hope in a new world. Afterwards, there was darkness. There was regret. There was sorrow. And then on the last verse of the last hymn, Scott did something with the organ that made my heart break. I was crying, nearly weeping. I am a word person. I love the Bible. But music. Music. Music expresses what words cannot come anywhere near. Of all of the people in my church who have contributed to what faith I have, Scott probably has the single largest share. There maybe are not words enough make Good Friday real again, 2000 years later, on the other side of the globe, in a different culture. But there certainly are organ pipes enough. There are a capella choir pieces. I cannot fully describe a broken heart, but Scott can break your heart for you, make you feel it all over again.

Likewise, Widor's Toccata, for me, is Easter. It is the mystery and anticipation of seeing the stone rolled away, a high and quick obbligato. Then, underneath that racing heartbeat, it is a joyful proclamation, heard over and over and over. Surely the voice of an angel would replay in one's mind endlessly: “He is not here; He is risen!” Those two things: physical response and exclamation, right hand and left hand.  It lifts the heart, or swells it. It quickens the pulse. And then.... Oh, the pedal tones! You can feel them in your rib cage and the soles of your feet. They shake the church. They are the sudden understanding of what all this means. Not a quick exuberant joy, not a sharp in-your-face kind of victory, but a dawning realization that the very foundations of civilization have been rolled away with that one tomb boulder. Oh, we had lost hope, but it is possible that Jesus was right all along, that his way is the way, and that you can't kill that kind of love with weapons or betrayal or armies or governments. God is bigger than that.  Big enough to shatter buildings and institutions with the vibration of his voice and big enough and loving enough not to do so but rather to starve in the wilderness with us, to carry a cross with us, to drink defeat, to wear humiliation, to weep, to die and then still to live. I cannot describe the power of that emotion with words—certainly not better than the authors of the Bible and the thousands of saints and scholars who have written since—but I feel it in my body and my soul when I hear Widor's Toccata.  For a few short minutes a year on Easter morning, I hear the voice of God, and God says “I AM.”  Or, rather, God sings: this.  This! Believe. Rejoice. Carry on.

Would I still believe if there was no music? Lord, I hope never to find out.

Holy Week

April and her four kids were here from Monday evening to Wednesday afternoon. Oh, it's wonderful to be with April. Even after not seeing her for months and months and not talking all that much either, there is no period of reacquaintance. The time and space that have been between us are immediately irrelevant. Although she is rarely a part of my daily life, I feel most myself when I am with her. There is never any question that I'm not going to be good enough in any way. I already am. And this is not because she only sees me at my best. She knows some of the messy little corners of my life. She has seen me sick and tired and discouraged and pregnant and hungry and indecisive. If April's love was ever a thing that I needed to earn, somehow I earned it long long ago. More likely, though, I think that I never earned it. It just flows from her generous and loving heart. It took no effort or decision. I don't believe it was earned or that it will be revoked.

Being around April makes me a better person. It never crosses my mind to do anything just to impress her, but without meaning to I strive to do things she would approve of or admire. When I do something well as a parent and April comments upon it, I want to be a good parent all of the time. April said once that she thinks I am brave, and so when my courage fails, I remember that, and I am brave. April thinks my house is lovely and clean, and when I remember that, I clean my house with a happier heart. April admires my cooking, and I wish that I could cook for her more often. April thinks I am smart and helpful and caring, and so I am, and so I wish to be. Not because April will love me more but because I wish to live up to the love I already have. I do not want to disappoint April or to make her sad. And yet, I trust her with my weaknesses, knowing that she carries my hurts with her but will never use them against me. They will never make her love me less.

It occurs to me, as I write about April, that this sort of love sounds strangely familiar. April is not God. She is not perfect. I do not mean to imply that she is or to burder her with such a comparison. But because of her, I begin to see how God might be.

Tomorrow is Good Friday. Sunday is Easter. It's a baffling time of year to be a Christian. Why must Christ be killed? I don't quite buy any of the major atonement theories. I don't like the picture they paint of God. But if I think of Jesus as a friend like April, someone whose love is absolutely certain, whose judgment is more like compassion than verdict, who has endless hope in me and in my capacity to be someone truly wonderful regardless of the confused and flawed human I have been and still am, who would look upon my worst crimes not with condemnation but with agony over the gap between the faith she has in me and my behavior, I begin to understand. God is that kind of love. The life of Jesus says to us that that kind of love is what changes the world, not with demands or punishments or threats or force, but one friend at a time, one day at a time. Good Friday and Easter Sunday promise us that it's a love so powerful I cannot kill it. I cannot ruin it. I can refuse to interact with it; I can forget to spend time on it; I could probably even ask it to leave me alone, but it will still be there year after year after year. It's always exactly what I need. Even if I lose faith in that kind of love, it still has faith in me.

How can I not go forth in confidence having experienced that kind of love? How can I want less than to show that kind of love in return? How can greed or hate or selfishness or even apathy ever triumph in the end if everyone lives with that kind of love? It cannot. It does not.

Holy week.



John 13:34
"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

It could always be worse

Yesterday, on the way home from visiting my grandmother, we toured an enormous dairy farm. The farm is so very very large that approximately 80 calves are born there every day. With multiple births an hour, they can make the birth process a tourist attraction, and so we were called into the birthing barn in time to see a cow deliver.

It began with what looked like a couple of little hoofs protruding from the cow's rear, just under her tail. As she labored and the feet came out further and went back in, of course some poop came out from pretty close to the same region we were all watching so intently. This was a fascinating development to my seven-year-old son, who happened to be seated between me and my mother. For some reason, he chose to ask his Nana his questions in an exchange that was pretty amusing. My four-year-old daughter was seated on the other side of my mom, and she was apparently listening in.

Son: Ew. There's poop coming out while she's having her baby.
Nana: Yeah, birth is messy.
Son: Were you messy?
Nana: I had to be cleaned up afterwards.
(Short pause.)
Son: Where did it come out?
(Pause.)
Nana: Between my legs. I'm not built just like a cow, so it's a little different.
(Long pause.)
Son: I'm glad I'm not a girl!
(Very long pause.)
Daughter: I'm glad I'm not a cow!!

First Fast

In the midst

I think that if John Wesley had the job of planning a menu, grocery shopping, preparing meals and then cleaning up after them, and if, during the rest of the day he was taking care of a preschooler and being repeatedly asked to play rabbits or to provide snacks, he might have found fasting less of a prayerful activity.  At least, that’s how I find it. 

Perhaps I am just a wimp.  I ate breakfast only seven hours ago.  I had a cup of chai with soy milk mid-morning.  I’ll eat a later-than-usual dinner with my family.  I’ll get in maybe ten hours at most.  I’m not even doing a full grown-up fast, but my head feels funny already, and I am very hungry.  That sounds silly to say while fasting, but there it is.  I am aware, though, that the reason my body feels so very hungry is that it is used to being fed constantly.  If I did this more often, or if I was actually, out of need, starving, seven hours since my last meal would not be such a big deal.  I am spoiled and soft and self-centered.  A wimp.

But I am not a wimp.  Four days ago I ran a marathon.  More to the point, I ran those last six miles when every cell in my body was asking to please please please stop.  I did not run them quickly, but I was still running when I crossed the finish line.  Perhaps I should have run them more prayerfully.  And surely I ought to be fasting more prayerfully as well. 

It just doesn’t feel holy.  Or maybe it just doesn’t feel holy yet.  It feels hard.  I am in the habit of eating rather constantly.  It was hard not to grab handful of almonds as I was preparing lunch or putting away groceries or cleaning dishes.  When a dribble of applesauce stood on the lip of the jar, my instinct was to scoop it up with a finger and eat it.  Packing (and unpacking) carrots for Adam’s lunch, my hand could almost not help picking one up and popping it in my mouth.  And a little voice in my head kept telling me that those little crumbs of food wouldn’t count.  I would still be fasting.  And it’s at least true that I would still have been hungry.  But just being hungry isn’t the point.

My woozy head, then, is asking, “Well, what is the point?”  Why am I doing this?

The wrong (but also true) answers are that I am fasting because it is part of my religious tradition, because I have never done it, and because I am afraid of it.  Isaiah writes about fasting (that you shouldn’t just do it because of tradition.)  Jesus fasts (for forty days!!)  Jesus tells his disciples how to go about fasting (not in public—so should I not post this?)  Saints are infamous for fasting.  John Wesley fasted.  We talk about fasting in my covenant group and, oh yeah, it’s in our covenant.  We talked about it at the retreat I helped plan.  Apparently, fasting is a way to draw closer to God.  But aside from the time about a year ago when I had to fast for the 12 hours prior to my surgery, I have never tried to fast.  I’ve given up chocolate.  I’ve given up dessert altogether.  But I’ve never given up food.  I am wildly dependent on food.  I’ve seen me without food (for, oh, a couple of hours at times,) and it’s a frightening thing.  My mind refuses to focus, and my memories of these times are like memories of dreams.  Lights are too harsh and my perception of distance is skewed.  My speech slows down and my movements falter a bit.  I stumble rather than flit.  The world and my place in it become so heavy and desperate: no way I can possibly endure another minute of whatever benign activity is annoying me.  And then my husband says to me, “You need to eat.”  I will continue, with slow and slurred speech, to insist that whatever situation I am bemoaning is the real cause of my misery.  My husband will not respond with anything other than, “I think you need to eat.”  Generally about half an hour after I’ve had a good meal, everything is better.  Magic.  Food.  I am afraid of intentionally getting really really hungry if accidental hunger can have those effects.  A part of me wants to try to fast just to face down the fear, to show myself that I do not need to be afraid, which is perhaps to some a noble reason, but it’s not a Godly one, I don’t think.

I should be fasting as prayer.  I might be fasting in solidarity.  I should be fasting as a reminder of what I have and from whom all blessings flow.  I am fasting as self-discipline.

Honestly, when it comes to appreciating my blessings, I think I’m above average.  Above average is not the goal, of course.  Complete and utter humility and constant gratitude are the goal.  Without God, I would have nothing and be nothing, and this is a taste (pardon the pun) of that.  So I guess this is supposed to be teaching me my complete reliance on God. Is it?  Maybe.  We’ll see where I am in a couple of hours. 

I’m not all that bad at self-discipline either.  I regularly get up well before dawn to run interval or hill repeats.  I sometimes get in nine miles before breakfast.  I run when I don’t feel like running, sometimes even when it hurts.  I like meat but haven’t eaten any in over a year, even right after a marathon when we were in a little blue-collar town with only meat-based restaurants.

I’m not sure I’m getting the prayer thing.  But then, I’m a novice pray-er.  I was sort of hoping that fasting would make prayer easy, like music does for me, but I suspect that fasting as a form of prayer is an advanced technique.  If anything, the hunger and the discipline, the not putting the handful of food in my mouth, is a reminder that is a day set apart for something different.  If I am not constantly communing with God, at least I am behaving in a way that makes me remember some aspect of God.  How many people in my church have brought up that the true order of faith is “behave, belong, believe.”  So I behave.  Well, in this small thing I do.

The solidarity thing makes sense to me.  It reverberates within and sets to singing my decision not to eat meat.  I abstain from meat because if everyone ate meat, there would not be enough earth to feed earth’s people.  Already, there is not food to feed earth’s people.  I cannot solve that problem, but I want to acknowledge it constantly.  I want not to contribute to it.  I want to stand as witness to the fact that we can live another way.  Heck, we can run marathons another way!  Of course, I still eat plenty.  I might even eat too much on a regular basis.  The fact that I am, with a lifestyle choice, acknowledging the issue of hunger is, to me, a matter of holiness, but how much more holy to actually be hungry as well once in a while.  Ah, now there we are starting to pluck some of my heartstrings, to get my soul into the song.  Perhaps is it just my brand of faith that I would rather do something for other humans than for God?  Perhaps Jesus and Isaiah would be OK with that sort of religiosity?

Day after: Reflection

The afternoon and evening went well.  I took Adam to his basketball practice, and while I was interacting with some other moms there, people I have come to consider friends, the hunger didn’t bother me.  It was still there, of course, but it was just there.  It wasn’t eating at me.  It was just sitting there with me.  I didn’t mind.  I even, in a way, liked it.  I liked that on the outside I looked normal (I hope) but had something different going on inside, a little secret between me and God.  Interesting that Jesus admonishes his followers not to fast in public.  I understand his point.  I would not want my fasting to become a topic of conversation in that setting.  I’m certain it would have made the fasting about me: how religious I am (I have nothing against being religious, but that label always feels false to me,) how hungry I must be, how hard it would be, etc.  Ick.  That certainly would have made the hunger less holy and more disturbing. 

We had left-overs for dinner, and although I had intended all along to break my fast at dinnertime, and I did, I felt like somehow staying in the spirit of the fast.  So I served everyone else first, and I ate the half-serving of sweet potato chili that was left.  I had some broccoli and a few crackers.  It was a meal, but it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy my hunger.  It wasn’t even as much as I would ordinarily eat after eating all day.  I did not have my usual post-meal piece of chocolate.  I went to choir still hungry.  I went to bed still hungry, something I rarely do.

I am very aware of the fact that as fasts go, mine was very small, but it was a beginning.  It was an attempt.  In looking back at why I did it, and thinking back about what I got out of it, I think it is an exercising worth repeating. 

I believe it did make me more aware of the plenty around me.  It made me conscious of how easy it is to pop something healthy and sustaining in my mouth without thought.   Yes, we say grace before meals, but I do I say grace while I am making my son’s lunch and sample the sunbutter?  Do I give thanks for the left-over popcorn I munch while I’m cleaning up the kitchen?  Do I remember that every mid-day handful of almonds is a great bounty of nutrients and therefore a blessing?  No.  Today I will, I hope.

It was also, I think, a sort of prayer.  It wasn’t always an uplifting prayer.  It wasn’t a prayer with words or a clear direction.  But it was a way of reminding myself that I am trying to be with God, and I am pretty sure that God gives partial credit for effort.  Paul tells us, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). Hopefully the Spirit did something with the fast, small though it was.

The most profound affect it had on me, however, was one that I originally thought was not a holy one: I faced down a fear.  When I wrote that yesterday, it seemed a very secular reason to do something.  It is true that a person not seeking God might undertake some adventure simply to face down a fear.  But, as I realized yesterday, the process of releasing a fear is also a holy one.  For me, it was the most holy result of my fast. 

I realized with a start last night that fear is a thing that ties us to this world.  This time last week I was afraid of the marathon.  I was afraid of disappointment.  I was afraid of pain.  I was afraid of despair.  And yes, this time yesterday, I was afraid of hunger.  I was afraid of what these things would do to me and what I, in turn, would do.  But in the last week I have been in pain.  I have been tired to the point of tears.  I have felt despair at ever finishing the last three miles of a marathon.  I have been hungry.  And I have come out the other side.  These things are not exactly pleasant, but there is great value in knowing for certain that if they are demanded of me, I can do them.  I need not turn down a call, should one come, because I am a slave to fear.  The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear, but I suspect that, to some extent, fear also prevents perfect love.  If I am afraid of discomfort, I am living for myself.  If I am living in fear, I am tied to my security.  I am tethered to food.  I am tethered to pride.  I must think first of avoiding my fears rather than thinking first of living fully.  If I am about food, I am not about the life that food enables.  I do not believe that God wants me to be hungry, but I also do not think that God wants my life to be about not being hungry.  As for pain, humiliation, and despair, Psalms 51:17 says, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”  God is not looking for perfection and complete competence.  God is looking for us to be willing to walk into whatever lies ahead of us and not think first about whether or not we have packed enough snacks.

Give us this day

My husband had to go into work early this morning, and my church class was canceled, so I planned to run during the daylight hours while Gretchen was in preschool. It is lovely to break routine once in a while.

The kids and I had a good morning together. I'm usually coming in the door when they have already started breakfast, so there was a sweetness to hearing them get themselves up and dressed, to make their breakfast and lunch at a relaxed pace. Even so, the family time started a bit too early for my preference. I was hoping to get through a short yoga routine before breakfast, but as soon as the kids hear stirring, they pop into action.

Adam was excited for the 100th day of school. They were told to dress like 100 year olds. I am not sure how a 100 year old dresses. Adam suggested sweatpants, which I thought was probably as good a suggestion as any, since you probably care more about comfort than fanciness at age 100, but we thought his sports pants didn't look particularly old. He took his glasses with big nose and mustache. I drew lines on his face with an old eyeliner pencil. I tried to make him to wrinkle his forehead, purse his lips, squint his eyes, etc. so that I could see where the lines would fall eventually. His skin is so young and smooth that I couldn't find many lines even then. He couldn't even MAKE lines. My children are so young.  So (sigh) I did the face wrinkling, found all my many forming lines and drew them on him: forehead, around the eyes, around the mouth. Nothing like examining your mortality first thing in the morning.

The good part of pondering my aging self is that when, after Adam had left for school, I did get to finish my yoga and was lying in relaxation pose and thinking about my body, I felt so incredibly grateful and alive. Sore: my hamstring is sore and my knee and.... But for that moment, it was all good because it meant I am still here. I was given at least this one more moment to make my kids' breakfast and tie their shoes and marvel at their perfect little bodies. One more day to hear and bear my friends' grief and show love to them and to my family. One more day to savor. One more walk to school. One more run. One more bowl of oatmeal.

The only blessings we are authorized to desire are today's, and if we are looking for the manna, we can usually find it. 

Days Like This: Tar and Bleach Edition

Although this happened last spring, I decided to post it today, for my friend Jen, who will understand.

My husband is obsessed with our driveway. Twice a year he gets it sealed. I wonder if his zeal for driveway maintenance would be diminished at all if he had to seal it himself, but since there are apparently dozens of companies and individuals that want to do it for us, that is something I will probably never discover. As it is, it’s a minor inconvenience, in that the things in the garage are trapped in the garage for a day, and a rather minor expense. I have mentioned before that maybe we are being excessive and left it at that. I have enough other things on which to spend my petty irritation.

Monday was driveway sealing day, and since we had an early gymnastics class, I didn’t even have to worry about someone ringing the doorbell and reminding me to move my car, causing me to go out in my pajamas and crazy non-showered hair. When we arrived home from gymnastics, the driveway people must have just left. The driveway was glistening with a thick layer of perfectly even new tar. (Note: I’m not sure if what they seal driveways with is true tar, but for the sake of convenience, let’s call it that .) The driveway had been nicely roped off with florescent string and a sign. We parked in the street and walked up through the lawn to the front door. We stopped to smell the crab-apple blossoms, which were just peaking and about to scatter about the lawn in a shower of hot-pink, but all we could smell was tar. Lovely. I had to go to the bathroom, and my hands were full, so I unlocked the front door and went in, calling to Gretchen to follow.

I made it as far as the kitchen when I heard screaming. It was more of a fury scream than a pain scream, so although I turned and headed for the door, I was not filled with panic, and I was not running, and I yelled to Gretchen, “What’s the problem?” When she only continued to scream, I yelled a little more irritably, “Gretchen! What is the problem?”

You surely see where this is going. The problem, of course, was that Gretchen was covered with tar. For reasons known only to Gretchen and her omniscient God, and perhaps only one of those two, as soon as I had gone in the front door, Gretchen had gone over to the driveway. She didn’t get very far on its newly slimed surface before she slipped, skidded, and fell. Her brand-new white gym shoes were black. Her legs (thank goodness she was wearing a little leotard and no pants) were black, her hands were black, large portions of her pink coat were black, and even her face was smudged with tar. I know the rare child who really doesn’t care whether or not they are naughty or filthy or any manner of annoying or disgusting, but, thankfully, Gretchen is not one of them. She is perhaps exuberant and curious and opinionated and independent, but she doesn’t look for trouble most of the time. Somehow, it finds her. And so she was standing there surveying her hands and legs and shoes and screaming.

I’m sorry to say that when I surveyed her, scream is what I did too. Not the wordless shrieking issuing from my child but repetitions of “Why did you do that?” and “Don’t touch anything! Don’t touch anything!!” in escalating octaves. Oh, who am I kidding? There may have been some wordless screams of anger and frustration in there too. What a colossal mess. I’m surprised no one came out to investigate our mingled screams. I’m surprised we still have a rabbit infestation.

I went back into the house for a canister of wipes and managed to get most of the tar off of her hands and legs—enough, at least, to get her jacket and shoes off of her without spreading more tar. I had a little on the top of my shoe, and that was the only further casualty. She was still crying, and I was still telling her that her brand new shoes and her pretty pink jacket were probably ruined and she would have to wear them around with black on them and why would she do that? Then I took pity. She was sobbing and sobbing, tears running down her tarred face. To be fair, I could not remember specifically telling her to stay away from the driveway. I put in her the bathtub and scrubbed the rest of the tar off of her. Then I washed the tar out of the bathtub and put her in dry clothes and hugged and cuddled her until she calmed down.

Then I started in on the shoes and jacket. Lucky for us, very little tar had gotten on her leotard, and the part that had been tarred was already black. Small mercies. The shoes came pretty clean. The leather tops are more or less back to white. The fabric around the ankle openings is down to gray. The rubber around the bottom has been changed to more of a fluorescent green, but in all, they are not a complete loss. She is going to wear them the rest of the summer at any rate. Honestly, how long were they going to stay pristine anyway? They’re play shoes. Not play in the tar shoes, exactly, but if it wasn’t tar it was going to be sand or infield dirt or plain ol’ mud. The jacket was a larger project. I scrubbed with water. I scrubbed with soap. I called my mom, who, amazingly, did not know how to get tar out of fabric. We googled. I facebooked. I tried Goo Gone, which, for some reason, I had a bottle of in the basement. I got the black tar look down to a dark-grey very dirty look and left it to soak. Most facebook suggestions ended with some version of give up and get a new one.

While the jacket was soaking, I decided to continue on with the laundry in process. I transferred the dark load to the drier and put the white load in the washer. I added a bit of Clorox Ultimate Care bleach. I must not have put the bleach jug all the way back on the shelf because a few minutes later, when I was back to working on the tarred jacket, the bleach jug launched itself off the shelf and wedged itself behind the washing machine. I reached down to get it, but my arms are too short. I tried to reach it from under the set tub, which meant kneeling in a puddle of water from the drippy jacket, and found that my swimming shoulders are almost too broad to get between the sink legs. Feeling like I had done quite enough annoying household labor for one day (I had spent all of the pre-gymnastics morning fruitlessly trying to scrub and bleach the mildew stains out of my shower,) I went over to our family calendar and wrote “get bleach” in Doug’s color. I scrub showers, clean tar, and do the laundry. He can unwedge the darn jug of bleach.

I came out of the laundry room to ask Gretchen what she wanted for lunch and was assaulted by the sound of preschoolers singing “Saturday! Saturday!” in their shrill almost-off-key voices. The cabinets were practically rattling. Gretchen had just been given her new big-girl mattress and a CD player for her nightstand, and she was relaxing from the stressful tar-filled morning in her room. I did not find the din relaxing. So I shouted up the stairs for her to turn the music down. I shouted again. I screamed. The music was certainly too loud for her to hear me, so I stormed up the stairs and yelled into her room. She just looked at me with a scared and startled expression. Her eyes filled with tears. Suddenly, I felt like the worst mother on the planet. It was a jacket and shoes and a little noise, and what are those things in comparison to my beautiful, loving and joyful daughter? I turned the music down for her and hugged her for a long time and told her I would make her lunch and read her a story. It had been a long morning for both of us.

Just as lunch was almost ready, the alarm in the laundry room alerted me that I could shift the laundry again. I went into the laundry room to find a large puddle seeping out from under the washing machine. I had left a towel under the sink to catch the drips from the jacket, so I was confused. Crap. Don’t tell me, I thought, that the washing machine is leaking. Of all the days!!! But when I bent down to examine it, I noticed that it was not just water. It was thicker. Slimier. Smellier….

The cap on the jug of bleach had shattered in the fall, and of course the jug was not upright but on its side. Without a cap. And so a huge puddle of bleach had formed under the washing machine and drier, along the baseboard, and was spilling out into the main traffic area of the laundry room. Seriously. But it was lunchtime, and I have never needed a lunchtime quite so badly. So I closed the door on the laundry room and resolved that when my guests arrived, I would just say, yes, yes, my home does smell of tar and bleach. Long story.

When my covenant group arrived an hour later, they miraculously showed up with apple slices and brownies. More importantly, they helped me laugh about the whole day. It’s just stuff. It’s just one day. And it’s worth it, somehow. If this is the holy work to which I am called, then may God forgive me for having screamed in the midst of it.

And thank God for that returned sense of humor. I spent most of my morning cleaning tar and most of my afternoon cleaning up bleach. When my husband came home, asked about the “get bleach” on the calendar, and heard the whole saga, he asked, “Is the driveway OK?” He was serious. And yes, in case you are concerned, the driveway is going to make it.