On Truth

I think

If you look for it

It’s there

Just beyond

Right there at the edge

But beyond it

We curl out fingers around the air

Just to feel like we’re grasping

To feel like we get it

But it’s mist

It’s fog in the morning

Silence in the talking

Listeners of music know

We see it in the mountains

At the sea

In our grief

Just enough

Not enough

It’s everywhere if you can see it

And yet nowhere all the same

The knowing is the not knowing

The seeing when our eyes are closed

Maybe the mist becomes dew

Liquid but there

Probably though, probably it never does

Nope, not enough

I often lie in bed at night and reflect on my day, I think of all the good moments and bad ones, the anxiety I held in my belly, the dreams I drifted off to, the moments of numb when I was on my phone, the good conversations, the way my body felt, what my energy was like.  I don’t go through the list in my head like that, but I sort through it all the same, letting my mind drift from one thing to another. 

I think of how I interacted with my kids.  Was I kind and patient, did I play with Colette, was I fun, did I shush her too much, did I stop to watch her when she asked, did I throw toys in front of Chapman so I could do other things, did I enjoy it, was I trying to get through it.  I allow my 80-year-old self to look on my day and tell me how I did.  The version of myself that is in no hurry and longs for the days when her children were young and at home.  She knows what it’s like when they stop thinking you’re funny, stop wanting to play with you, stop needing you, stop liking you, move away and then become adults who love you but never come home enough. 

I almost never reflect on my day and am pleased with myself. I almost always think I could have been kinder, more present, more joyful, less productive.  I end my day and think, I’m going to regret this, tomorrow I’ll be better. 

Is this ok? Is this just the urge to improve, the good sort of pressure that helps us make progress? Or am I living under an impossible standard? Should I always be feeling like I’m failing? Am I actually just always failing? Who sets the standard? Is my 80-year-old self an impossible critic? Can I be what she would want me to be in real life, with a house that does actually need to be cleaned, and laundry that has to be done, and this mind of mine that needs a break too.  Does she remember how many questions Colette asked? Does she remember that it was hard even when it was good?

I have a lot of grace for my younger selves.  When I think of painful moments I want to comfort myself, when I think of times where I was foolish and unwise I am grateful for the progress but understand the place I was coming from.  I hope I think of this season of myself as a young mother and I’m kind. Even with my rose colored memory I think I’ll be gracious. I think I’ll remember the challenges along with the good.  I think I’ll remember that on most days, not every day, but on most days I actually tried my best.   

And so then I have to ask, who’s voice is this at the end of the day? Who tells me I’m falling short? 

The answer is me

So maybe I should add another question to my list at the end of the day.  Were you kind to yourself too?

Cuddles and Wildfire

I was laying by Colette on our couch as she slept deeply.  She had the stomach flu and so instead of her usual insatiable energy she was sleeping for hours in the middle of the day.  I did what all crazy mothers do and I just stared at her. I watched her breathe in and out - the tiny motions of living.  I stared at her nose, which is no longer a baby button nose and is now becoming a girl nose.  I looked at her hands and I noticed some scratches she had that I hadn’t seen before, and I thought how odd it was that I didn’t know about these insignificant scrapes.  

Right then, I caught a glimpse of Chapman and thought about how I know exactly what his hands look like right now. I stare at them all of the time. Plus, I am with him constantly and so hardly anything happens without my noticing.  He is in essence, an extension of me. 

Colette used to be too, but now she is other than me.  She has scrapes that I don’t know about.  She has experiences that are just hers. She doesn't cuddle and I never just watch her breathe. She moves like wildfire and I spend much of my time trying to contain her. She is this whole other person that is separate from me and it’s beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking.

I think I remember the last night I rocked Colette to sleep.  She had passed that phase and it was unusual that she would fall asleep on me, but for some reason she was having a hard night and so she did.  I remember feeling antsy, like I was ready to be done for the night and have some time for myself.  I decided though, to just stay there, to hold her and watch her. I knew that one time when I rocked her to sleep it would be my last, so I just held her.

Colette has now recovered from her stomach flu and so today she ran around like a bull at a gate. She’ll go to school tomorrow and have a full day of experiences I’ll know very little about. She might scrape her hand. She will definitely yell in class. 

Chapman cried when I put him down tonight.  I picked him up and held him. I sat in the rocker and felt his body against mine. I didn’t rush to do my things. He’s part of me for now, I’m trying to be here for it.

Today is it

I’m always asking myself, am I here right now? Kids make you so aware of the passing of time and the pain of its passing.  Having a baby that is only a few weeks old has made me particularly aware of it.  They’re only this small right now and never again. I want to soak in the way his nose crinkles and his mouth makes weird shapes.  I want to feel his entire foot in my hand and put the memory in my pocket to pull out when he’s 18 and leaving for college. 

And the thing is, the passing of time is painful.  I think often of the redemption of eternity and the ways it will restore all that was lost.  But some things I just can’t imagine, the simplest of which, is the restoration of childhood.  We don’t get to do this again, even in some grand redemption story where all is healed, he was a baby once and we can’t get that back and that’s something to grieve. 

How depressing is that? It’s like my joy and love is so overwhelming right now that it is causing me to preemptively grieve the losing of it. 

So all that to say, I’m trying to stare my babies in the face. I’m trying to look at their hands when they hold mine.  I’m trying to soak in the feel of my newborn’s body against mine. I’m trying to be here for it, for every moment of it. I’m trying to live exactly where my feet are.  And yet, I’m utterly exhausted by this cognitive effort. 

It’s passing. Please don’t pass.  Let it pass. What’s over there? Ugh I need a break. Oh no, it’s passing! 

I try to open my eyes really wide so I can take it all in and maybe then it won’t fall out.  The memories can stay there and allow me to visit whenever I want. So when I’m 80 and I walk into the memory of my home I’ll see Colette’s preschool photo on the fridge next to her gloppy finger painting, I’ll smile at the pacifiers all over the house and the princess dresses littering the hallway. Of course, the mess won’t bother me because why would it? I’ll hear Colette’s “outdoor voice” as she makes up a song in her room and my heart will break over the perfection of her. I’ll smell Chapman and snuggle him into my neck and feel no need to put him down to accomplish anything. I’ll be completely content in the mundane of this ordinary moment. 

But then how can you always live like that? It’s exhausting to try. I don’t know. But here I am trying to just be here and I’m failing in one moment and succeeding in another.  It’s the best I can do.

Possum Living

I’ve been recently noticing that when I let the cats out of the garage in the morning their food bowls are licked clean.  It’s not typical of them, cats as they are, they prefer to whine over the crumbs and join a hunger strike until the bowl is refilled daily with a fresh layer of kibble. 

To make a long story short I’ll tell you Trever was out of town and a Possum was living in the photos umbrella above our cabinets in our garage and coming out at night to steal the cat’s food.  Once I realized what was happening I went into a panic that was highly disproportionate for the situation.  This is how I am with all rodents (rodents?) especially ones that are the size of a dog. I may have screamed a multitude of times over an animal whose key defense mechanism is pretending it’s dead.  Love me as I am though, this is how I feel about Possums.  

Trever coached me over the phone to shove the umbrella off the cabinets in hope that the large rat would flee.  As I climbed on the ladder at a safe distance I used a long broom to shove.  I had visions of the thing launching at me and attacking my face with its creepy claws.  My visions were detailed and horrifying and yet I prevailed and shoved until the whole thing came down.  

I was ready for a rambunctious and aggressive exit but what happened was nothing. It just layed in the umbrella.  It fell the distance of 10 feet and laid there like it didn’t care, just staring at me.  If I were someone else I could be a predator, and it was just looking at me like it didn’t care. It had its teeth showing but just stared, like it was mad but not about to doing anything about it.  

I was unequipped to deal with its passive behavior, so my step-dad had to come and finish the job.  I don’t mean that in the mobster way, he just shooed the thing into the front yard where it surely escaped into my neighbor’s garage.  Sorry Louie. 

I was later re-telling the story to my family and my sister Brittany was googling the horrid animals and educated us on the topic.  You may know this, but the possum has a physiological response to stress that causes it’s entire body to go slack. We know they play dead but what I didn’t realize is they can’t control it. It’s not a choice they can make, their body forces them to lay there, similar to the experience of fainting.  Their lips curl back so their teeth show and everyone around them thinks they’re dead. 

I almost gasped.  The possum, the ugly overgrown and fowl rat, IT IS MY spirit animal.  

Ok rewind for some context: I’ve been watching my sister grieve and it is so completely different from anything I have ever or will ever be capable of.  She’s warm and open with her grief.  She is welcoming others into her process and allowing them to share in her pain.  She is gracious and connected to her faith.  She is lovely and broken and it’s a beautiful and painful thing to behold.  She is present to her emotions and welcoming all of the pain and all of the questions.  She laughs still and cooks still and I cannot understand it. 

I found myself in my darkest moments under the covers of my bed with no contact with the outside world and a never ending marathon of friends episode.  My friend Natalie said she would have comforted me but we’re both aware she would have had to break through my bedroom window and lay next to me in complete silence without ever touching me or the remote.  I do NOT process externally, typically I have to have completely processed the entire experience and felt all the feelings connected to it before I maybe will let one really safe person into a tiny pin prick of all that is going on.  It feels so fragile within me, like an open wound that someone may not handle correctly. If someone says something wrong I have no capacity for grace when I’m in pain.  I’m ugly and secluded and dark in my grief.  

I’ve let myself off the hook by telling myself and others that grief is like fight or flight.  At the bottom of the pit there is very little adjusting to your natural response to tragedy.  I do however; wish I had Summer’s response to life and loss.  

But alas, I’m a possum, this is me.  My body forces my lips to curl up so I look as though I’m hissing at the world.  Grief makes my legs numb and my heart cold.  I lay there with barely a pulse and breathe until the pain relieves and my ears start twitching until I can begin to think about doing something else with my life other than lying in a photo umbrella in a garage.  I stare at others, foe or friend, God or man, and I respond with silence. 

I have deep empathy for the possum now.  The poor dears.  We get each other. 

I clearly have a long list of people who want to be my friend.  This will push that list to an unmanageable number.  I’m a beautiful spring flower. 

Now that I know

Now that I know what presence and mindfulness feels like I crave it. Where I used to be unaware, I now feel my mind become displaced as I scroll through Instagram. I’m worn out from following my thoughts like a hare with no direction. I wake up after a night of tv and feel as though I didn’t live the night before.

In the moment it sometimes feels hard to make the mindful choice. Reading feels like it takes more energy than the Great British Baking Show. Friends in the background might make the time while I’m cooking pass more quickly and with less energy. But of course we know that those things deplete us of the energy we feel like we don’t have. If we’re tired a mindless scroll through instagram may detach us further and tire us further. 

Once in a while I have the drive to choose space. I turn off the noise.  I move through my kithcen and listen to my knife cut through the crust of the bread.  I don’t rush through tasks but I’m in them while I do them.  I pay attention when I’m breathing and I do it properly and deeply.  I don’t fill the space with my phone, I just sit there and watch the world go by.  And I notice in all of that, my daughter and her absolute perfection. I become present to myself and how I’m doing. I feel the time passing and my gratitude is overwhelming.  I notice the world’s beauty. I notice the satisfaction of cooking.  I notice the strenght of my being.  I notice God, which is potentially the closest I’ll ever come to praying the way I’m meant to.

Why

I was raised a Christian and stopped believing in my mid-twenties.  But I’m a Christian now.  And here’s why: I believe, because I decided to stay in the fight.  I was determined from the beginning that I would not stop asking questions, that I would not settle for shallow peace in a trade for deep belief.  I was determined to follow truth wherever that may lead me and I was unwilling to stop until I found belief in something.

Because the reality is, we all have faith.  No one knows.  Choosing so-called unbelief requires faith in chemistry and biology and an explosion that brought about rational minds and love and empathy over the course of billions of years. Maybe the truth is a mish mash of it all, but we’re all believing in something.  So I decided to decide what I believed, not just let it happen to me. 

And as it turns out, when we’re talking about the basics of how we got here and why we remain, after a lot of studying nothing made more sense to me than creative design. All of the science can convince me of how stars and atoms all got here through evolution alone.  But when you talk about the gift of consciousness, the knowledge that we exist, rational thinking, a mother’s love, beauty, sacrifice, in my mind it all points to a creator. Thomas Merton says, “although it seems nonsensical, it makes more sense than anything else.” 

So there I was, deciding that the only thing that made sense was God.  So now what? The Bible only made sense to me because nothing else did. Reading the Old Testament would have made an atheist of me, saying God is good during a tragedy would have made an atheist out of me, even offering up a prayer got pretty damn close.  

So instead, I was quiet and I went outside.  For years, that was my spiritual journey.  God makes sense to me in nature.  I see the beauty and intricate design all around.  My questions about his goodness, his involvement, how and when he speaks, the mind bending confusion of the church, they were all silenced on a hike. I didn’t know the details and maybe I wasn’t ready for them. But on a trail I believed. 

At some point I knew God enough in the peace of the earth and decided to start reading books again. C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Richard Rhor, Christian Wiman.  They gave me language for this new faith I was discovering, this second simplicity, not born out of ignorance or youthful thinking but born out of surrender.  I had done the searching and discovered I cannot know the answers, the question was, could I make my peace with that.  

So I made a decision, I decided that if I’m going to believe in God, I’m going to live like it’s true. I was no longer interested in following the whims of my emotion and ever-fluctuating feelings about belief.  I instead made a choice.  I am going to be a Christian.  For the first several years I believed every once in a while and most of time I was deciding to live like I believed.  I had made a decision based on what I had deduced about the world around me and I mostly believed, which was good enough.  

I would tell this story all of the time, because it was the best I could do.  I would tell it as a doubting Thomas, someone who thought he got duped and everything he was living for wasn’t true, but who by the grace of God had seen the scars that made him believe.  Thomas’s prayer when he sees is,  “My Lord my God.” That prayer is my life’s prayer.  It’s all I have to say, nothing more, nothing less. I’ll be praying that prayer every day for the rest of my life. 

Then I went through suffering. The thing we avoid, the opposite of beauty, the opposite of good, so we say. And there, in the darkest darkness, I found God in a way that was outside of my rational decisions and thought life. It was there that I believed because I saw.

I still work to believe, but I guess I mostly believe now.  Looks like I turned out to be a Christian afterall. After the deconstruction of my belief I spent years frantically searching for answers. But I didn’t find faith there, I found it in the practice of belief, I found it at the end of myself. 

On most days I find the Christian faith to be true to me in my soul. I read the Bible, I fight it and I get mad about all the parts that don’t make sense, but I find wisdom there too.  I pray now, a very silent prayer, but a deeper prayer than I’ve ever known.  I often teach on the topic of believing the goodness of God in suffering and I believed it myself in the midst of great loss.  I have moments where my chest splits open and I think, Oh God none of it’s true.  But the unbelief comes less and less.  It seems that by living like it’s true my soul found God.

Scary Hope

It always most insightful to look back in order to understand how far we’ve come.  In the face of the greatest tragedy my family has known we have together been drawing to the faith we cling to, to bring us hope in what would otherwise be a hopeless situation.  I’ve watched every member of my family greive more deeply then I thought possible and I’ve watched them believe more deeply too.  

I figured that my faith would always be fragile.  I had seen my thin belief shatter in front of me when we were confronted with unthinkable suffering.  So I figured I would spend my life taping my faith together just to see it fall apart again. In deep pain some draw towards their belief and others away, I’m always away.  Until now.  

My sister is drawing towards the eternal perspective. She’s not yet asking why, I think because there is no answer.  She’s not asking, where is God, because He’s near to her. She is instead being bouyed by that fact that this pain is the promise of the fall, but that the simple veil that divides life and death is just that, a veil.  She remembers that one day, we believe, it will all be put right again.  

People say funny things when people die.  We try to reason and make sense of God’s involvement in it all, so we say - well isn’t it nice that God allowed this and that to happen so that when this life altering tragedy hits you’re prepared.  I think, well if he’s spinning this whole complicated sequence of events to create support, he may as well have saved us the pain by not allowing the tragedy in the first place.  We’re sprinkling glitter on a pile of shit. This is the type of stuff that used to spin me out. But now I shrug and I pray anyway. Where I once would struggle to seperate other people’s perspectives of faith from God, I now separate gladly with my faith still in tact.  I thought I had to subscribe to other’s logic to subscribe to this faith. And now I brush it off, I believe differently, I believe with peace. 

I have my moments though. I went for a long run bcause it’s the only way to calm my mind and I was listening to a worship song.  I had a flash moment where I thought, I hope this is true. I’ve banked my life on it. I’ve allowed myself the vulnerability of belief, which is just that, extremely vulnerable. And if it’s wrong I’m a fool.  I let myself believe and I could still be wrong.  

But that’s just it isn’t it? Faith will for me always be a vulnerable choice.  To give my life and soul and heart to someone is a leap, it’s a risk. I hope this hope is real, because it’s the only thing making sense of any of this and the only thing bringing light in the darkness. After my flash of panic I settle back in. It’s no longer worth it for me to fear vulnerability.  I’ve decided to give my soul to it, even when I’m afraid I might be wrong. Turns out that very belief is not just my life’s salvation, but my actual salvation now.

Heart Yoga

Anxiety feels so much like cramping muscles.  It lives in my gut and squeezes my heart and my stomach in nagging intervals.  I have so much of it these days and for the most part it’s unclaimed. I usually quickly understand its source and do my best to make peace with it or at least understand it.  These days though it’s no particular issue other than maybe life-altering grief. It’s my biology saying, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.  

In this case there is no making quick peace.  I know I’ll eventually get there and I do have a sense of eternal peace but today it feels wrong still.  It will always feel wrong in this life I think. God has done so much work in me so that I might see hope clearly even in the depths of pain.  I believe God makes good things of us when we suffer, I believe God grants us peace in our pain and I believe He’ll redeem it all in a way that will be worth it. But today it feels wrong. 

 And so I’m losing weight, I have no appetite and I always really need a nap. 

Until I run.  When I run it forces out the anxiety cramps like yoga for my soul.  Because of the pain of running I am forced to feel my body and thus forced to bring my mind back into it.  It’s mindfulness for those who can’t meditate. I learn so much about life when I run. I learn how to do hard things.  I remember that when our minds are panicking and telling us we can’t keep going that we can in fact take one more step, and another, and another, until we have kept going. My mind goes quiet and I believe in God when I run.  In nature God makes sense to me and so I exist in faith with each mindless or mindful step. My anxiety eases as my mind simplifies to breath and movement and it is that simplicity in which I find freedom. I see wildflowers and believe in goodness. I breathe salty air and believe in restoration. I see purple mountains and see God. And I run until I can’t and then I stop and I sob. 

My chest splits open in the heavy breath and all the pain explodes in heaving intervals. I feel the ache of my human body which somehow releases my soul and reminds me I’m more than human. God always finds me there, or the other way around. I’m living in my breath and suddenly reminded that man at his best is just that, a mere breath. What an upside down thought to know relief in knowing that even in heart stopping death there is life, as we will finally know wholeness after all of this brokenness. 

This isn’t it- this breath, these tears, this loss, these broken hearts. There is more. 

It's Not Enough

My sister’s husband, Bryan passed away on February 15th. I was there when the police knocked on the door and the sight of them was every person’s worst nightmare come to life. The moments following have imprinted themselves on my soul and left me forever changed. There are so many hreatbreaking and yet hope-filled details that I won’t share because this is her story and not mine. She will likely one day tell her story with more eloquence and better grammar than I could ever dream of. But I’ll tell bits of my own experience along the way, if only because writing is the only real way I understand myself.

So…

I left Summer tonight for her first night alone since Bryan died.  Together we walked down her hallway towards the front door. It’s a space that usually feels bright and welcoming and now felt dark and cavernous.  She hugged me goodbye with a stiff upper lip and closed the door and locked the bolt. I turned around and stared at her front door and sobbed. I could have stayed the night even though she said she was fine.  I could have knocked on the door and gone back inside. I could have momentarily been there while she sobbed as she was inevitably doing on the other side of the door. But at some point she had to sleep alone and at some point I would have to walk to my car at midnight and actually go home.   

I looked at the closed door before getting in my car to head back to my normal home with my normal family to live my normal life and I sobbed over the distance between us.  The truth is that as much as I support her and grieve with her there are certain places she must go alone. Her grief is something I can’t know completely and will never fully share in it.  She’ll have to sleep in her bed with an empty space beside her and I can’t fix that for her. She’ll have to have moments where she sobs alone and I can’t take them from her. She’ll be surrounded by friends and family and yet nothing will fill the void that was once filled by her husband.  As much as we stand beside her there are depths of grief only she knows, there is a loss only she understands, there are empty spaces we can’t fill and my grief over this is overwhelming.  

I laid next to Trever in bed that night and sobbed over my sister’s half-empty bed.  I sobbed over her sadness, over her loss, over her brokeness and over the fact that I can do so little to ease the pain.  I found myself praying which is the only thing I can offer. I prayed the only prayer I ever find that comes from me when I’m at my end, “Lord have Mercy.” I said the prayer with each breath, I sobbed the prayer, I let the rhythm of the prayer calm my heaving chest. 

And now in a calmer moment I fill out the prayer.  What I wanted to say was, “Lord lie next to her, fill the space I can’t fill, bring the peace you’ve promised, redeem this, make good of this, ease the pain, bring new life, oh Lord have mercy.  Take this ache in my gut and hear the wordless groan of my soul and step in to do what only you can do, what you’ve promised you would do - be the lover of her soul. Be near to her broken heart as you say you are. Oh Lord have mercy.”

I took a few deep breaths after the kind of sobs that always guarantee a cry hangover the next day and I turned on Sleepless in Seattle. I knew she too was playing it in her bedroom as she fell asleep.  I can’t always sleep in her bed but I can watch our childhood favorite and cry myself to sleep at the same time as her in my bedroom across town. It’s not enough. But it’s something. 

Broken Friends

Yesterday was the one month anniversary of the day Bryan drove away and never came home. We had a birthday party planned last night and we invited Summer to come along. She knew a quite a few people but didn’t know many of them well. With grace and a smile she joined with the quiet weight of grief. 

I stayed near her through the night but many times parted off into other conversations while she chatted with others. I would still keep my ear open though to be sure all was well, but for the most part I felt an ease being amongst friends with my fragile sister. 

There was a time in my life where someone encouraged us to move so that we could meet new friends that would push us and expand us in new and interesting ways. I thought little of the comment at the time but the older I get the happier I am that we didn’t take that advice. The people who have been with us through the mundane, the joy and even the tragedy. They matter more and form us and support us more than anyone new could. And so at this party we were at we were surrounded by of those people lifelong friends.

I found throughout the night as we moved from person to person a sense of relief each time. I kept thinking, oh well Keri is a good person to talk to because she just lost her dad. Or I would think Jen is great because she knows years of infertility and accepting life’s new path. Or Heather knows what brokenness is like she’s a good one to talk to. And on and on. With every single person I thought this. Summer was in conversation all night with people who love her, are praying for her and have the kind of empathy that only the knowledge of pain can offer. 

At the end of the night I felt really proud of my friends. Proud that I could bring my sister who was in so much pain and see her loved well by everyone. Comforted by others who are broken-hearted. I didn’t feel proud because they’re cool or interesting (although they are) I felt proud because they’re broken-hearted. There was relief being in the midst of those who know pain and who have been loved well and now love others well in the midst of it. There was peace in friends who didn’t shy away from the black hole of grief but approached it with wisdom and empathy. 

As I grow and live more life I think more and more that there’s a good chance that this kind of love and mutual brokenness is the entire point of community and that community is damn well near the point of the church and maybe even the actual point of life. 

I write to myself

I keep having the same conversation.  My life happens like that, I learn in little spurts, like inlets in my brain I scurry down them and find myself surrounded by a theme. This particular one is a tired topic, the horse has been dead a long time, and yet we remain the same.  The topic is us, millennial’s, and Christianity. Our peers and our parents are trying to understand us, why aren’t we Christians anymore, and we are trying to understand ourselves.  What did we come from, why did they do it like that, what is truth, does it have to be this way?  

The themes I have gathered have definitely been scoured and articulated by academics and the like. There are collegiate articles written on culture and Christianity.  Really thoughtful podcasts are taking on the topic and chasing after answers.  I know the themes of the millennial drain in churches, I know why we’re leaving from books and from what people are saying. But I know it in my life.  I don’t mean to make a cultural critique that I’m not qualified to make, but I see it in my community.  At some point along the way the church stopped being compelling, the collective Christian voice stopped being the choir we wanted to join.

I know it in myself too. I have all the feelings my peers do, I sit across from them as they relay their spiral down into the abyss of doubt and unbelief and their slow climb back to clarity in a new form.  I remember every single step, every moment my hands were pried open and I had to release all the boxes that kept my worldview in squares.  It’s so hard and most of us come out of that deconstruction in a state of silence, we have to heal from the very real pain of disorientation - or some word I can’t grab onto, one that describes a loss of identity and hope and the feeling of being duped and simultaneously being judged and misunderstood for the wanderings. We finally find our feet and have to heal. 

For a long time I was mad at God and the church; as I saw it, they set me up for the spiral of disbelief.  But I see with kinder eyes these days, I see the church and the community of Christians that are desperate to do right by God and I see the drifter trying to find God in all the rightness. They’re both looking for Him, I hope He embraces us all. 

I can’t figure out if I’m afraid or hopeful for us.  Part of me watches my generations and celebrates our efforts to love and accept people better.  We have been kinder to the LGBTQ+ community, we have worked towards elevating women, we have made concerted efforts to alleviate racism, less people are pretending, less of us go to church just because we’re supposed to, if we believe we fought hard to believe, we give less empty slogans for naked pain, we’re better at loving people where they’re at.  And yet, less and less of us are Christians, or at least we’re not in the church.  

Of course the greatest minds in Christendom are likely asking why (hopefully).  But I see themes, I see them in myself and in my community.  I think we got confused when faith was presented to us as black and white and it turned out that it wasn’t.  We thought that there was a cause and effect between making good choices and having a good life.  We understood it that if we had faith in God and didn’t fear the very real fear of this world then God would come through for us.  We counted our blessings and then went to Uganda and couldn’t figure out how to count theirs.  We believed in sexuality as God commanded it and then made friends with someone who was gay. The church spent all its money on being cool for us and it worked as well as putting mom in a leather jacket. We saw the needs of the world and simultaneously heard the collective Christian silence.  We saw a man elected into office who stands for everything but Christian values who was voted in by a great majority of our fellow Christians.  We read the Old Testament –  and that’ll do it.  

I believe in the life Jesus lived.  I’m confused about so much, but I’m not confused about that.  In the very middle of my heaviest season of doubt when I could not get myself to believe in God, I knelt before Jacob’s Well in Palestine where Jesus chose to deliver the good news to a half-breed, enemy women who by all accounts was not worthy of the news, and I sobbed.  I sobbed because I can live my life for that, for someone who saw and loved the least of these.  That moment was the beam of light in the chaos of doubt, and I will not let that go.  

I have so many conversations with friends who are trying to understand God and as they do they’re finding themselves in a mystical place that’s much less orthodox than our pastors might hope.  I hear in their voices a humble approach to faith, “I hope for hope to be true” they’ll say. I have so much space for these conversations, because on my best days I mostly believe, which I’ve accepted is the best I can do. I naturally respect the questions, I work to respect the answers.  

I want us to remember the main point.  I want us to be known for loving really well.  I want more of our money to go to the poor.  I want our communities and churches to be simpler and less self-focused. I want us to have space for each other’s differences in belief. I want us to empathize better with those who are different from us. I want us to be able to be honest about the pain of this life and honest about questions and doubt.  I want us to be really good at loving the orphan, widow and stranger.   

In all its simplicity and all its complexity this is Christianity 101, but we’ll lose ourselves and we’ll lose our children if we don’t respond. 

I write to myself.  

Deep breaths

A part of me has always longed for some future adventure. Discontent with today I picture us living in Paris and learning French. Or I see us taking long months to live in new places, meeting new people, eating new food. Or the most limited version is a dream of a smaller vacation that will be rounding the corner, always rounding the corner. Where to next? It’s a part of me I’m constantly trying to wrestle down and tame. This idea of adventure often takes from me the beauty of today. What could be, has overshadowed all that is. 

I have friends who know this beast within them and they live by its noisy rules. The beast of adventures ahead, who’s growl removes one from presence. 

I’ve never quite known how to quiet the beast, especially on slow and mundane days. Sometimes I’ve indulged it and ignored my perfect two-year-old to dream about and research a life in Asia. Or on a farm. Or in New York. Or in Israel. I’ve missed the moments that I’ll one day long for because of some far off, sure to be unfulfilling, dream. 

So I battle on. Until recently, when the beast has gone quiet. I have no idea why, except in part because I’m back at work and busier and in part because I’m off Instagram. But my mind sags in relief. The nagging noise saying this isn’t enough has shushed for now. 

We were planning on going to Japan and I could take it or leave it. Maybe we will, I’m not desperate for it though. For once it doesn’t own me. I went to Disneyland with Colette and it was perfect. I rode the tea cups which I hate, but it was enough. While she naps I relish the silence both within and beyond. Deep breaths today.

Thank God. 

Connection

I’m convinced motherhood was never meant to be done alone. 

 In fact not much of anything was meant to be done alone.  But while at the park today it was a breezy 65 and we were looking over the sparkly bay water and I breathed deeply.  To be with friends who I once went to bars with, who have grown up with me, who have navigated marriage and heartache and Christian values with me, I see them now as mothers and we’re joined by that.  

An image of myself at the park with moms would have terrified me in my twenties, but living it is peaceful.  We did the late nights and the travel and now we sit on blankets and laugh about our kids idiosyncrasies and bitch about how they won’t take that 3:00 nap.  We sit in peace together even when kids are anything but peaceful.  We sit together in connection for a season of life that is isolating.  We eat leftover string cheese straight out of our pockets and pass off crying babies while cheering for the toddlers on the slide.  

My 20-year-old self is panicking at the sight.  I would have assumed loss of self, loss of identity, loss of purpose.  But my all-knowing 20-something self knew so little of love.  She knew so little of what it feels like to give of oneself freely.  

She thought identity was in independence and has since discovered that it in fact lies in connection.  

Common

Someone asked me the other day if I align with my churches theology.  It’s a question I would have loved a few years ago, like talking shop but in a weird Christian way.  I would like to sparse out the details and feel my confidence (re: arrogance) expand as I filled the world with knowledge and nuance.  

But I got asked this question and it gave me pause.  I thought, I don’t know. I suppose I don’t think that much about it and also, I don’t care all that much.  The answer is actually no, I probably have a pretty liberal view of theology, it’s the only way I could make my way back to faith.  When my belief in God was de-constructed and I was in the process of deciding if I could believe in God again, I realized very early on that I could not believe in God in the same way I once did. If my only option was to believe with the same framework that my theology held then I would never be able to believe. 

I was once told, choose the hills you want to die on and make them few. 

So as I’ve made my way back into belief I have accepted and even celebrated that it looks different now.  I have so little interest in defining theology and forming clear answers to the great religious debate.  I found in my re-connection with God that I have so much space for mystery, for the unknown, for the nuance.  I feel so little urging to clarify much of anything because truly, there is little to be found.    

But I exist in a fairly conservative church.  Albeit one that is good and making space for extensive types of people but still I function in a world of black and white and see so much grey.  I exist that way completely in peace, I have no need to define much or change anyone to see through my lenses.  It’s a waste of time.  I find there is so much more we have in common that will take every bit of the rest of our lives to step into.  

I am part of a small group that is doing its best to engage in missional issues of justice.  We care about, or rather, would like to care about the least of these.  So we’re making a concerted effort to talk about it, to engage in mission together, to continually remind ourselves and each other that this is our purpose.  And to me, this matters, I’ll talk about that all day. 

Theological debates however, I have such little interest.  I read, I study, I question and I live in the world of Christian conversation and thought, but Lord help me if that ever keeps me from living life like a Christian with my community. 

Because if it does, all that Christian thought has been wasted. 

 One of our greatest calls is to unity, if we missed that we’ve missed the point. 

Joy Now

Sometimes I get this experience where I have a out of body view of my life.  I zoom out and see myself as a foreigner, and stranger, and it makes me see more clearly.  

The other night I was at a friends house planning a baby shower and we were chatting over a glass of wine.  I zoomed out and saw myself as if I didn’t know me.  A stranger with a friend.  I feel so much gratitude when I see life that way.  I see a person with friendships that have lasted longer and grown deeper than I had known before now.  I see myself with moms who are at moments loving and at moments struggling to love mothering.  I see myself at work doing something I love and have over time developed a giftedness for, by the grace of God.  I see myself with a daughter who is all my dreams come true.  I see myself at dinner with Trever and I’m newly shocked at his Jesus hair.  

There is so much goodness in the mundane, in the normal things of my life.  There is beauty at the park when I’ve pushed Colette on the swings for 20 minutes.  Beauty in her contemptment and if I’m aware in the moment, beauty in my own. The very spirit of God is working and moving in a counseling session that is taxing my mind. There is magic when I’m stirring the tomato soup for dinner, the smells, the sounds of my home, the grace of family.  The very stuff of life exists in all the normal.  I find the better I get at becoming silent the better I become at seeing that.  

When my input pauses, when I read and write and do yoga and cook dinner, when I don’t roam social media or put on The Office, my presence gives me life and joy that can be found nowhere else.  It can’t be found in dreams of travel or adventure.  It really truly can be found only in presence.  Even life in Paris would be dull if I wasn’t present to it.  

So that’s my word this year – presence.  To be where I am, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t bring along with it a new sense of joy. 

It won't always be this way

Some friends of ours lost their baby today.  She was born early with several physical complications and only lived a few hours.

It’s weird how trauma works.  Just the other day a friend was blandly talking about being catheterized once and I was instantly transported to a really tragic moment with Colette.  She was septic and on the edge of life, doctors were trying to figure out where the complications were coming from and so they catheterized her to rule out infection.  It was terrible and they were having a hard time with the procedure and Colette was screaming and I was helpless.  I missed a big portion of the conversation with my friend about her experience because I was nauseous and re-living our pain.  

But here I am today, with a friend a few miles away who is kissing her baby girl goodbye.  She’s holding her closely and doing her best to remember each curve and color of her face before they take her away. She’s feeling her scar heal across her belly from the life that was taken from her.  She’s feeling her milk come in because her body is telling her - this isn’t right, we have a job to do. 

And yet, the baby is gone.  There is nothing we can do. Our friends will go home to an empty house with an empty nursery.  They’ll go back to work.  Life will go back to normal but it will never be the same.

I was never good at grieving well, I never allowed friends and family, or much less God, into my darkness.  I had to live it alone.

And yet I pray.  I pray that in God’s mercy He would grant them peace that I cannot understand.  I pray that they find comfort in the great sustainer of life.  I pray they find hope even while living an experience that mocks our very faith. 

Life should not be this way, All-Mighty God where are you? 

I don’t placate them, there is nothing to say to fix this.  There is no solution for feeling pain and grief.   

But what I would say, is I hope our Lord cuts through all their black-out pain and consumes them with grace.  I hope when they’re heaving with sobs they take a breath and feel God in it.  

I hope they hear him say - I’m so sorry, it shouldn’t be this way. It won’t always be this way.

I’m not living in my trauma today even though this hits close to home.  I’m not living there because I didn’t live this, I know the fear of loss but I don’t know the true loss.

It’s a tragedy I was spared from knowing, and one my friends now know intimately. 

It’s never fair.  I cannot believe this is God’s will.  But with all my heart I’ve chosen to believe he’ll be present with them through the pain and that ultimately in life, and even more in death, that we are his.  

That is the hope today.  

That is the hope of the world. 

Opaque Me

Have you ever noticed that really emotional memories have the ability to thin out the veil of time?  

I pulled into a parking structure yesterday that’s connected to the building where Colette’s cardiologist’s office is. We were headed to a check-up that would more than likely be a quick exam and a sign-off for another year. I had no nerves threatening to make me sick, I felt no fear, my mind was mostly just reflecting my toddler’s behavior – all over the place.  

I was living very much in the moment as toddlers typically cause us to do, not mindfully but more absently responding to her needs while trying to make it to our appointment on time. But the moment I pulled Colette out of the car and began walking through the parking structure I was struck by overwhelmingly distinct memories of the place.  The gap of two years was squished and I was whipped into a clear memory of my former self. I could almost see an opaque ghost of myself two years ago, 7 months pregnant with black-out level fear making my arms feel numb, as I waddled towards the office with Trever.  You would have looked at my pregnant self that day and noticed nothing except my puffy eyes, but I was in pieces on the inside. I had so much fear that I could hardly let myself acknowledge it, and this appointment would confirm what all those fears were screaming at me, that Colette’s life would be short at best.  

2 years ago we were headed to a doctor to check on Colette’s heart.  They couldn’t see her heart clearly at the high-risk doctors office, so they recommended a cardiologist take a look.  When we arrived I laid down on the ultrasound table and stared up at the ceiling tiles while he started the echo-cardiogram.  Then after forty-five minutes of silence saturated in fear, he looked me in the eyes with compassion and said, “well, your baby has significant congenital heart disease.”  What he was telling me was that she wouldn’t survive, that our blessed Colette was just too sick and broken to make it, that our kindest option was termination.

There is nothing like a conversation like that to stop time.  He kept saying words but my ears heard nothing. I caught Trever’s eyes in the swirling chaos of blunt grief and somehow my feet moved and I found myself propped up against him hearing my own sobs, as if all the fear and grief inside me was an animal trying to escape me.  I held a giant printed diagram of a heart with the doctor’s scribbles all over it illustrating all her misplaced tubes, miss-directed blood flows, and some large x’s showing completely missing veins.  This was the end of the hope of her life, this was our greatest fear finally realized. 

I lay on the same table yesterday, I stare at the same ceiling tiles, I glance at the counter where Trever stood two years ago holding me up while I fell apart, I see myself there in opaque version as a pregnant mom who thought she would never get to mother.  I have so much empathy for her, it was so much harder than she even had capacity to take in at the moment.  I want to hug her, I want to tell her that yes, it’s that bad and that it’s ok to fall apart without the need to be cheered up.  I want to tell her to let go of the reigns, to stop working so hard to regulate her emotions, I want to tell her to be kind to herself and stop trying to be ok. I want to cry with her, to comfort her, but I’m snapped back into reality, “B.I.N.G.O. and bingo was his name O.”  I’m laying next to Colette during her echo-cardiogram, she likes the video they put on for her.  They hand her a slinky and without prompting she says, “thank you,” which sounds like, “day doo.” The doctor says, “looks good, see you in a year.”  From the same room but on two sides of the veil of time, my former self weeps with a grief she has never known, but in the present I lean against the warmth of my daughter, turn towards the ceiling tiles that hold an aching memory and feel a silent tear slide down my face.    

As I walk back to my car I see this parallel version of myself walking too. Everything looks different to her now, like a layer of hot tar the whole world is coated in her grief. She’ll go home and sleep all day and likely most of the next day. She’ll sob in bed so completely that she’ll have to nurse a headache for days after. She’ll find her new normal and smile at work in a few days time. She has so much ahead of her, but by the grace of God and a misdiagnosis she’ll get through it. We all will.

“Car! Car! Car! Carrrrrr!!!!!” Colette points out every. single. car. I give her a big smooch on the nose and give her a near-fatal squish of a hug and strap her into her carseat.

“You want Mac-N-Cheese for lunch?”

“Da.”

Social Disconnection

I plop my Colette into her highchair for the 34thtime that day, it’s a change in location, which brings about a moment of peace.  I take a deep breath as she squeals curiously, the beginnings of what will eventually escalate into frustrated consonants babbled at higher and higher volume and pitch with each passing moment. It’s all to say, “I’m bored, NEXT”. But for now I grab my phone and open instagram to see how the rest of the world is living.  

My favorite blogger is in some remote village in Spain.  I look it up and see its location and envision myself there for a moment.  I’ll have to settle for a coconut La Croix from my fridge.  I dodge IKEA plastic stacking cups that have been scattered around my kitchen floor and make it to my fridge just barely without incident.  A small noise becomes louder and faster as Colette discovers with pure ecstasy the sounds that comes from banging her toy on the counter. I see her smiling with excitement and flash a smile before getting back to my quick scroll.  

A friend has a work meeting over happy hour and I see her frosted glass of Chablis toggling from side to side in front of a slightly blurred bright blue ocean. I don’t think I’m allowed to drink at home yet, it only being 3:30 and all.  I quickly calculate hours until bedtime, 4.  I scroll on, and a family I follow has relocated to France for a year and has been traveling to every bit of Western Europe on the weekends.  They are currently in Biarritz surfing and the weather looks perfect, a nice contrast to the stifling heat outside my house. 

Colette’s squeals are slowly morphing from contentment to boredom just as my stomach reminds me I haven’t taken time to eat. My moment of peace is ticking away so I grab an entire bell pepper and eat it like an apple while scrolling.  The Australian fitness guru slides onto my feed doing one of her vomit inducing workouts. Just a few dozen burpees and a few dozen jump squats repeated a few dozen times.  I watch the video like I’m watching the Olympics; it is both entertaining and so impossible it doesn’t feel like a threat.  I chomp my bell pepper and feel my still soft belly just because I’m a masochist. I can now no longer shut out Colette’s frustration.  What she wants is to walk around, but she still so unstable and it takes a lot of work and concentration.  So I set my phone down and plop her on the floor with plastic primary colored toys I swore I would never buy.  

I grab my phone because if I don’t catch up it will nag at me like incomplete homework.  A natural beauty company comes into view.  A 20 year old without any visible makeup swipes a shade of sheer pink onto her lips and blots. She has pouty plump lips that owe themselves to youth and good genes, and probably some Photoshop.  Makeup free is the new makeup, and youth of course is the caveat, as it is for high-wasted shorts and midriff T’s. 

Colette has now escalated to a level I can’t ignore so I set my phone down to help her stand.  My ratted hair, that hasn’t been properly groomed in days, falls into my face and I lean over to lift her up and she grabs it for support.  I sustain the jolt of pain and tie it back in a bun. Undone is the new done, I think, I’m just being French is all. 

She wants to walk so we travel into the living room where she has many Colette sized pieces of furniture to scale.  I have to watch her closely lest she take a tumble, so I slide my socked feet across the floor and plop down onto our wood floor with a nice view of my thighs in my high school sweats.  Not a sight for instagram.  

I’ve left my phone in the kitchen and can’t be bothered to go get it. Colette starts pushing off the edge of the couch to precariously balance standing alone. She gets so utterly excited she can’t contain her toothy grin and looks in my direction to laugh.  I watch her tubby legs as they dramatically bend, lift and plop down like she’s walking through shallow surf.  She has tiny tan lines between her fat rolls and I laugh at how cute they are.  She’s so happy now she starts to babble incessantly, ba bada, la, dada. I listen to all the details of her noises while staring at her curly brown hair.  How can her hair be that perfect, I think?  How can her cheeks be that ridiculous? I smile and feel that blessed rush of contentment, the kind that comes from presence, from existing where I am.  The anxiety I was hardly aware of dissipates.  Simplicity slides in and I find myself in a moment I’m living in. If I have the guts, I’ll decide to keep living my life within my life, instead of somewhere else. Sometimes I think about permanently staying in my moments, sometimes I think about being present to my contentment, sometimes I think about the relief of disconnection, sometimes I wish for less comparison.

But in a few hours I'll be scrolling to catch up. 

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day.

I think so often about what this day means to different people. I think about the different types of mothers I’ve been and the mothers I’ve known along my short journey. I think about the ways it has formed me and defined me, the ways it has ran me ragged, the ways it has clarified me, the ways it has brought me profound joy.

I am a mother today, I wake up every morning with the task of loving my daughter and i don’t forget how lucky I am to get to love her. And I don’t forget all the other types of mother’s days I’ve had.

So, to the mother who hasn’t been able to have a child:  I’m so sorry for the way this day hurts for you in such a silent way.  I’m sorry you have to congratulate every mom around you with the quiet undercurrent of pain that reminds you that you’re not one of them. I know that when people who know your struggle and secretly elbow you and whisper a “happy mothers day (one day),” you’ll want to punch them in the arm for exposing such a raw bit of your soul and simultaneously cry on their shoulder because it truly is that empty without the baby you want to be holding. I’m sorry that baby showers feel like hot tar showers.  I’m sorry that the lack of mothering leaves your love to turn in on itself and eat away at your sense of identity. I’m sorry that today you have to fake-smile so much and ugly-cry in the bathroom.  

To the mother of a sick child: I’m sorry you have to wonder what next mother’s day will be like. I hate that you have to live in the moment by nature of the reality of your potential loss. I’m sorry you know hospital rooms and doctors visits and the soul crushing fear of loss. I know that watching someone you love in the midst of pain can all but wreck your heart, but I know too the strength of a mother to love through it all.

To the mothers who have had their worst fears realized and lost their child: I’m sorry you have to have the black hole of grief swallowing entire parts of you and morphing everything around it into something resembling grief. I’m sorry that the term mother feels like a brutal reminder of what you are to someone you cannot hold and kiss. I hold your emptiness near to my heart. I know the overwhelming power of a love for a child and with all my heart believe that the loss of one, goes most deeply against the grain of the way this life was meant to be. I can say nothing but that I pray for peace, for everlasting joy, for the grace of God to be what it claims to be - our only hope.

The very best parts of myself exist because I am, and have always been, loved with an never-ending love by my mother. And now I pass that on to loving endlessly my daughter.

I know the grace of God and see his greatest expression of himself through the love of a mother to her child. I find his greatest compassion and endless mercy on display in the heart of a mother. In all the confusion about the world we live in, a mother to her child is some of the best we have to offer as human beings. This love is what makes us human. It is what makes us godly. It is the greatest example of love that cannot be tamed.

May we allow the all-consuming love of motherhood to wreck us. May we see and love those for whom mother’s day brings pain. May we always recognize in the mothers who have raised us, what they gave to love us well. May the world resemble in greater and greater ways the powerful example of goodness found in a mother.

May a mother’s love be a beacon of hope for our souls and for our world.

Happy Mother’s Day!