Until it's Part of Me

I heard a sermon the other day that wrecked me.  He started out by saying, “I wanted to speak really quickly about sadness.”  He went on to explain the intense experience of sadness and its great presence in the life of eternal beings, as we spend so much of our life ultimately letting go.  He discussed the use of sadness and grief and what it does to our souls, and yet how easy it is to let that turn to anger because at least in anger we feel like we have control.  Of course anger is generally unproductive as an emotion and keeps us from true growth and true comfort and mostly it keeps us from the capacity to see God.

Well if you have read my previous blogs you might have gotten a small teeny tiny sense of anger weaved within them.  I didn’t want to delete them out because they’re part of the process, but it’s there for me to look back on and see with clarity what becomes of me in sadness.  I couldn’t pray really, I couldn’t be gracious with people who wanted to me to find peace in God like they do, I couldn’t really sustain what I thought I learned all this year.  I thought I became a person of faith, and maybe I did to a certain degree, but it’s not until the real pressure comes that we see the depth of the faith we maintain. I don’t regret the wrestle with God because I think that is often necessary for true belief, but I did see my faith for what it was and can do nothing but decide to respond differently now. 

In difficult seasons of life I find that a world ruled by chance seems easier for me to believe.  Without divine involvement the cruelty of life can land on no one except itself.  And yet there are a lot of other reasons I believe, things that make sense of the world and this life, things that bring hope to a wretched place, and those things are still true in pain although maybe a little less clear.  I still want to live my life in light of belief, and although God may not feel like a real source of comfort at this point, I’m doing my best to choose faith.  Hopefully that choice will ultimately seep into my soul and bring me peace, but for now it’s just a choice. 

I learned a lot this year about how we cannot educate ourselves into faith, we can only participate our way into it.  Here I am in a different place and yet still learning the same thing.  I will never understand how pain exists in a world ruled by a good God, except for what I learn from C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain.  No one will sufficiently answer it for us and yet what may seem irrational to some is the only way forward for others - the will power to stand in faith even when nothing makes sense.  At some point it's simply a choice.  The decision to maintain belief is just that, a decision.  My soul aches and I still hate when people try to comfort me with “God’s great plan” but whatever his involvement I’m trying my best to believe he is good. And I supposed I’ll just remind my soul of what is true, until over time it becomes an accessible part of me again. 

Lemons and Emojis

I haven’t really talked to a lot of people about what’s going on.  I can’t seem to find the strength or energy to do so. Trever and I have lived in a little cocoon together for the past couple of weeks pretty much seeing no one but each other. Right now I have a cold and a fever and I’m laying in bed after an entire day of watching Friends re-runs.  I even managed to have miso ramen delivered to my door so I wouldn’t have to leave at all.  The delivery fee was only a little bit more than price of the soup, which I felt was a deal worth paying from the comfort of my sweats! My bedroom is my haven, allowing me to actually see what cats do all day, which right now is exactly what I do all day - we are soul mates. I do feel though, that my heart is running a fever too.  Like everything hurts really bad so if anyone even brushes past me the pain is somehow worse, so my bedroom is my space bubble in which I hope to heal a bit. My phone is on silent and I keep laying down for just a while.

I did however finally make it out to lunch with my friend Heather yesterday.  She was the first person other than Trever that I actually processed some of this with.  I had expected it to be difficult, and what it was, was a healing.  I didn’t know why so many conversations I was having with others felt unbearable and yet somehow in a cafe booth over iced teas I finally talked.   I looked back on our lunch and tried to determine why I could talk to her. People who have lived through real pain, for whatever reason, make me feel less alone and Heather is one such person.  But I also noticed how she responded to me.  She notably made no attempts to fix anything.  She didn’t try to make any of it better and it gave me the room I needed to feel what I was really feeling, because it’s actually that bad.

The people in my life who have tried to cheer me up have made me feel quite a bit worse than I did before.  When people tell me that I should be happy because at least this child exists and that in itself is a miracle, I want to crawl into a hole.  This makes me want to scream, mostly at God, this is my miracle? A child that may not survive? A pain exponentially beyond infertility is my miracle? When people try to ease my anxiety by reminding me God is sovereign I find myself wondering if I’m even a Christian.  Because there I am thinking, God has been in control for a long time and really horrible things have happened for a long time. So whatever we believe about God's control the truth of the matter is there is a lot to fear, because we were never promised anything but God's presence today and the hope of a restored world beyond this life.  And anyways, I feel like what people are saying to me when they say God is in control is, “well if it’s really that bad, at least you know God did it.” 

I know often times we are uncomfortable with the raw, purposeless and permanent grief of others.  Maybe we tell ourselves we’re trying to comfort the person with positivity when I think what we’re really doing is managing the situation, so we can ourselves feel better about the pain.  But it’s there and it’s bad and the person in the middle of it needs to feel ok feeling that.  They need to be ok not understanding God, they need to sob over worst-case scenario without being told there might be a miracle. 

I haven’t got the foggiest idea about miracles, I’ve never seen an undeniable one, and I think if we’re honest most of us haven’t either.  But I spent the days between our first ultrasound and our second one desperately praying for one. As it turns out the baby's condition went from being a minor case to being rather extreme in just nine short days.  Nine days in which I prayed desperately for healing.  Nine days where I believed that maybe things would be ok.  Nine days where instead of accepting our future I tried to push it away with belief and silver linings.  And I found myself in pieces at our second ultrasound because everything was significantly worse than it was before. When I saw in our ultrasound how much worse our baby’s condition had become since we last looked, since I had uttered those hundreds of prayers, I saw with my own eyes the tragedy that was this baby's body. So I finally accepted reality and sobbed in the darkness of the office. 

I once spoke with a hospice worker who found that Christians were the very worst group of people when it came to grief.  We aren’t known to be hopeful because of our belief in the life beyond these bodies, we are known for an incapacity to accept what is.  Inevitable loss isn’t processed because we can’t let go of the possibility of a miracle. I suppose I’m meant to keep praying anyway though, but I sob when I try. I cry big ugly tears and think, how can you expect me to keep hoping?

So I’m confused and I don’t know how to pray or really how to grieve.  I’m slowly starting to let friends in and am finding them gracious and healing to my darkened soul.  I’m finding they have a lot of space for me to be confused and angry.  I’m finding they relate a lot more than I realized to the ugliness of one’s heart in pain. I'm being reminded how much they love us and that they are very good at showing it. 

People like Heather.  There is something else I learned from Heather though, she was in the darkness of grief just a year and half ago.  I made a lot of miss-steps as her friend in that time and she was kind to me and never pushed me out because of it.  I remember I asked a question I shouldn’t have asked and I texted her to apologize.  She quickly responded and said, “these things are so difficult, please don’t apologize for not knowing what to say.”  I would like to be more gracious like her.

And, who really knows what to say to someone in pain anyway? Maybe sometimes we don't say anything at all. Maybe we recognize when it’s that bad and stop trying to fix the hurt with Christian silver linings. Maybe we let people be confused by God in great pain rather than trying to offer our positive perspective from the heights of joy.  Maybe we stop telling people everything will be ok.  Maybe we silently pray for miracles because the grievers probably can’t. Maybe we pray that the broken can hold on to faith. And maybe by the grace of God the sufferers among us might find peace.

Every couple of days my mom texts me the praying hands emoji and she left a bag of lemons on my door.  I suppose she knows it’s all I need, some alchaline fruit and a prayer emoji. It sort of is all I need, that and my bedroom, and right now some cough drops.

Shh It Hurts

*This was written a few months back

I just turned off my phone, this is something I rarely do but I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed  by an outpouring of love from people around me. My inbox is full of questions about when we find out about IVF, check ins to see how I’m doing, notes of concern and prayer, all the things that community provides.  I’m already terrible at responding to people in general and add the shear amount of responses I need to send and I just shut it down.  This is a weird response, I understand that. 

I have been having so much internal conflict over letting people into our fertility journey.  We told people what was happening because we wanted our family and close friends to be in it with us and we know that it is important to have community in difficult times.  But here’s the part that makes me weird, I am overwhelmed by the love.  There are times when a good friend asks me a basic question and everything in me shrivels, I want to just turn around and run away from them, or even better be preemptive about it and wear a sign that says don’t talk to me about infertility today.  The reason I know it’s not the specific person is that sometimes one person asks me and I want to scream and a couple of days later that person is the one I open up to.  This means the problem lies with me. Me and my maniacal self.  I cannot articulate why is happens with certain people and at certain times, all I can do is smile and answer quickly and try to walk, instead of run, away.

Here are my theories.  A. I feel confused about how I feel and so when people bring up what’s happening it makes me uncomfortable with all the things that don’t make sense right now.  B. I am actually feeling very deeply and so I am constantly at the spilling point emotionally so others questions can make me spill over very easily and this bothers me. C. I’m trying to do emotions maintenance mostly to avoid hoping and being disappointed, so when people talk to me they are exposing the lie I am telling myself that I am fine.  D. Other people’s feelings about my situation are a lot for me right now, so when people have empathy it feels like an invasion.  E. I’m a private person. F. I’m a bitch.

I think I do a pretty good job covering up for the fact that one out of every ten times I talk to someone about infertility I want to ask them to please stop talking now, but you’ll have to ask my friends if that’s true.  It’s hard to be a good friend to someone on an emotional roller coaster and my friends have been really amazing to me. When I was on bed rest we had friends and family come over for dinner with food in hand and a lot of happy, making being stuck at home just fine.  My mom spent the afternoon hanging out, cleaning my house and cooking for me.  Our small group brought us food and is always checking in on us and praying of us.  My sisters have been so caring and deeply concerned. 

I’m grateful for all of it and I know that I am so unbelievably lucky to have such amazing people around me and that without them I would be in a much darker place. Sometimes though, I need to turn off my phone and I really have no idea why. 

Don't Look at Me

 A few weeks ago I went on a spiritual retreat, alone, all by myself, alone.

I was staying at a Franciscan Monastery up in the mountains in Malibu, which made for a good distraction from the utter silence of being alone. I went for a six mile run down to the beach the first day I was there and I had a couple epiphanies.  Malibu is the center of wealth in LA and the retreat center is inside a gated affluent community.  From a hill above where the Franciscan retreat center sits, the measly middle class religious types can peer down on the .1% of the world while they play a quick round of tennis after work on their private courts, and hire valet service for their parties, but mostly just walk inside at 8pm and click on the Television for the evening.  A note on the tennis courts, do people really play tennis that much that they need their own court?  I doubt it, I think it’s just a silent nod to their level of wealth. 

So I’m running down this street and a guy in his driveway yells at me to pick up my pace.  I laughed awkwardly trying to discern what he was actually saying to me.  Thinking in my head, this is my pace jack ass, so I run a 10 minute mile I’ve made peace with it you should too. Then as I ran away I realized he was mad I was running on his street (which didn’t have a private sign, I looked) and he wanted me to move faster to get off of it, can you believe it?!? He already had a fence towering around his property that was filled in with hedges twenty feet high to be sure no passing giants would be able see in.  That is a serious need for privacy, he should just get a forehead tattoo that reads– don’t look at me.  

I kept running as Telsas, Bently’s, Ferraris, and a whole lot of Range Rovers zoomed past me in their immaculate uniformity, and I was so pissed, I couldn’t get over it.  I kept going through what I would have said if I went back.  Something like – “well if you don’t want anyone on your street maybe you should add another gate to keep everyone out, if you’re lucky it will resemble a prison and then you will really have made it!” Buurrnnn. (I am the youngest sibling, I have a genetic pre-disposition for being bad at come-backs). I was annoyed at myself for caring so much, it was probably because he made me feel like a criminal and like I didn’t belong, that’s not a good feeling.

So anyways, you remember in Farenheit 451 when Guy is walking and meets Clarisse and she tells him to his complete amazement that her family walks places and that her Uncle sometimes gets arrested for just being a pedestrian? She also tells him they don’t take part in all the entertainment? Remember that? How Guy’s wife spends every evening living as a character in her TV shows, which are projected on all four walls of their living room. Remember how they all have ear buds in for constant entertainment throughout the day not dissimilar from the new iPhone ear buds? REMEMBER?

Malibu is Ray Bradbury’s fulfillment! (sans the book burning). You get stared at if you are not in one of five acceptable car brands but simply walking instead. Everyone is inundated with constant entertainment, from TV to social media or at least some music playing in their headphones. This includes me, thus my second epiphany – entertainment necessitates entertainment.

Note: Ray Bradbury was sort of right, George Orwell was too, who knows, maybe Suzanne Collins has some accurate predictions as well.  DUH Duh duh.

The whole first portion of the afternoon that I arrived I could not settle down. I tried to pray but my mind was still at a city pace and thus restless in the stillness. Reading kept movement in my mind, which helped but I could not for the life of me be still. This is when I went running, got yelled at, spent a couple of hours trying to wordsmith the perfect come-backs for random rich guy, and finally ended back on the hill as the sun set. By that time I had been alone and unplugged long enough I started to settle in.  The view alone became wild entertainment, my eyes balls erratically followed the frantic bats for longer than would be normal, I stopped reactively looking for my phone for updates, and then I finally prayed. I am most connected to God in nature, I have no problem believing that a divine being created mountains and oceans and tiny sing song birds, they’re just too brilliant.  So in the quiet of nature, I prayed like someone was listening.  A.W. Tozer says we can experience God in intimate ways like any other human relationship.  I don’t really think that’s true, but whatever it was that I experienced it meant something to me.

I got in my car to go home at the end of the trip, and the idea of having the radio on felt like an intrusion on my space.  SHHH I wanted to say to the world, you’re so loud.  The caffeine jitters of my mind finally wore of and I was for once moving slowly, with one direction, and with clarity at last. I was perfectly happy talking to myself, slowing meandering through the gardens and smiling up at that beautiful birds.  Crazy? Maybe. At peace? Finally.