done.

It's been an interesting few months. Not long ago, I had this sinking, constant feeling that I was in control of nothing. My temper surprised me, my irritation was an addiction, little things exhausted me. Something had to give. I suppose I should elaborate on the feeling of lack of control: I couldn't control the timing of the adoption or make myself feel all the things I thought I should or make our daughter progress any faster in her journey, I couldn't make Silas any easier in the throes of toddler behavior, I couldn't seem to make myself any more patient with very long question and answer sessions with Nicky, it felt like I was going nowhere at work, and I continued to feel the loss of some things that are better not described here.

I was feeding the wrong wolf; I can see that so clearly now. The answer was not to keep shoving my feet into the shoes that just don't fit, or to force anything else, really. It was to find something I could be proactive about and get to work on it.

Turns out I'm a pretty controlling person. (It's been disappointing to realize this.) I honestly think it was God's hand, directing me to simply let go. Stop forcing. Fill my mind with other things. So I did: I took a leap and started a new job that was demanding of my time and energy, and my wonderful partner in life took up a lot of slack in the process. He wants me well too, and I love him for it.

I think one kind of tiredness is a cure for another kind of tiredness. It's the difference between your hands aching because you've been clenching your fists all day and your feet aching because you've been running with a purpose. That good tired when you fall into bed, when you've earned your sleep. I've found a lot of rest in getting good and tired, and I feel better. My mind feels like it's waking up, more than before.

As for those lack of control things: I've seen our daughter blossom under Ricky's calm and relaxed care, I've learned to enjoy my Silas again, and I now look forward to that moment when Nicky runs in the front door with his million questions and observations. Of course I still get frustrated from time to time, but I don't wear it like a heavy overcoat these days. Thanks be to God; I can say it with my whole heart.

I don't think the issue was ever actually about my children. Sure, parenting is such hard, self-exposing work, but there are other things in my life that felt wrong for such a long time that I was trying to keep plugging away at, and that created a toxicity that had to come out somewhere.

There are still things I don't know what to do with, but not everything is fixed right away (or at all, perhaps.) I can carry on. I've come to believe that it's okay to put things on a shelf and distract myself with the good. When the right time comes, I'll feel compelled to take them down, examine and work through them. In the meantime, I'm not forcing anything. I'm not enslaved to anyone's formula. I'll try to be better at listening, knowing we're all carrying quite a load around.

It comes back to this, over and over: walk gently through the world. Look for the goodness of God. Rejoice when you find it; rejoice with the people around you who see it too. Whoever they are, wherever you find them.

So I'm trying to look around, all the while feeling quite vulnerable and oh-so-tired. We're all in some stage of healing I suppose.

point the way

I would like to point the way to a God I am still seeking out, still trying to understand fully.
I would like to point the way to real hope, instead of more of the same.

Lining up to buy a chicken sandwich to prove a point? More of the same.

Demanding that stressed employees tell us Merry Christmas and fostering a culture of fear toward anyone who doesn't do things our way? More of the same.

Blaming a senseless tragedy on a lack of forced prayer in schools, never considering that we would not want our own children to have to pray a certain way against their will, or even more that God cannot be kept out of anything by humans? More of the same.

Counting ourselves as recipients of wild, ridiculously generous grace and then withholding it, or measuring it out cautiously, not wanting to overdo it? More of the same.

In my own heart, being so frustrated with these things that I run the risk of overlooking my own great sin? More of the same.

I am hopeful, and I am sad.

I want to point the way to something better, something I am seeking and finding in places I would not have looked ten years ago. This has been a year of speaking out for me. A year that began with tearing down, and progressed into a hard season of refining and shaping. My paradigm has shifted, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it shifted some time ago, but this year I've been able to acknowledge and work with this shift. Something beautiful has happened: I can see the beauty of God once again. It is good news, and I would share it gladly. That "more of the same" gospel that I was trying to hold on to, thought I needed to fight for--it was death to my soul.

Now, I can whisper to my God, and I don't feel anger from Him, or disappointment. Just overwhelming love and grace, and when I fail, a sense that He believes I can do better, that He is cheering me on. Love, not fear. It is a delicate, precious thing and I will fight for it. I will fight to not misunderstand Him again.

It's not a way of easy answers (or any answers, at times). Sometimes giving an answer, an explanation, is the cruelest thing you can do to another human being who is in sorrow. It takes bravery to just sit, and be.

He has rescued me from my own perceptions. I believe change is coming, and I am hopeful because I see it everywhere. God is bigger than all of this, though. I will continue to be surprised by Him, to shift my perceptions.

              And we are put on earth a little space,

              That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

              -William Blake

mystic

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes--
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Lately I see this gorgeous bit of verse everywhere.

I listened to a sermon about beauty yesterday; about how the Wise Men didn't know they were looking for Jesus specifically, but they followed beauty and so they found him, eventually. The point was this: if you follow beauty all the way back to its original source, you will find Jesus, because anything and everything beautiful is from Him.

I love this. God seems more beautiful than ever when I think of Him this way.

I suppose it was the exact thing I needed to hear, because I just stopped what I was doing and built a pile of stones right there. I prayed, curled up on the couch while Silas tinkered, about beauty and seeing, really seeing, and melancholy and anger and making decisions that are fear-based, about my heart-dreams and my sins against my own heart. About love and regret and persistent pain. I leaned against my dearest Friend, and wondered why at times I cannot trace all this beauty back to it's Source. Why I am satisfied with  enough beauty to last the day but tiptoe around these burning bushes. In the ordinary of our lives, there is such loveliness. There are whispers of what could be, of the true potential of all of us made in the image of the One who transcends it all. I need to remember this, in all of my interactions. I need to ask more people what they are dreaming of and where they see beauty.

Fear is strange because we fear our deepest desires sometimes. I fear becoming real, like the Skin Horse, because it means being worn down, but I'm worn down to exhaustion from retreat and withdrawal. Could there be anything more wonderful than being real? When you meet such a person, you remember. I sometimes think heaviness is my own personal thorn; I can't comprehend all this energy and lightness around me except for the brief moments when it flickers over my head. I don't seem to have many answers, but I recognize beauty, and I can give thanks for it.

Looking around is a good starting point.

I may never understand my own holding back. I may never deem myself worthy of such wild, limitless love. Oh, but may I continue to know it anyway. May I somehow point the way to the Source, gasping alongside the rest of creation at the glory all around us. May I be brave enough to believe it all matters.

I invite it. I want to be a mystic, taking my shoes off in ordinary places.

scattered

On Tuesday I spent most of the day with a feverish toddler draped over me. We lay on the couch and watched Brave about three times, along with old episodes of Friday Night Lights and several renditions of I Like to Move It on YouTube which, unfortunately, is a frequently requested song around here. He coughed hard enough to throw up several times. Sick days are sweet though, in a way: Silas is not normally so cuddly, and it's nice to lay around and still feel like you're doing something important. In the evening, his temperature spiked up to 104, and the possibility of going to the ED loomed its ugly head. It came down with Tylenol and wet hair and a cold washcloth though, and so we stayed home.

......

I can tell when I'm in need of some quiet, to-myself time, because I start to get angry with my kids for taking my time. It's Wednesday evening, and Ricky took the two little ones out to pick up some dinner, after having quite the long day himself. I'm not finding the right kind of food for my soul, these days; which is another way of saying I can't seem to write or pray. I wish it were truly possible to forget about yourself.

......

I got an email yesterday with a video attached to it. I should have known better but I watched it anyway. If you don't see Merry Christmas in the window, you walk right by the store, a woman sang cheerily, with children's voices accompanying her. I say I should have known better because these types of things send me into a tailspin, reinforcing nagging voices that I'd rather ignore in favor of focusing on love and justice. I get so angry at the Christian subculture that promotes such distracting fluff. Then I want to write an angry sarcastic response, then I want to write a thoughtful response, and then I just sort of shrug my shoulders and decide the best way to worship in the midst of all this is just to try to be kind.

......

I lay down with Silas after lunch, on the big bed, and he played with his stuffed horse while I took an accidental nap. His galloping noises woke me up. I don't think he slept, but he stayed on the bed next to me, and so when I woke up we moved on to the next thing together.

on rough edges

Three years ago, during our east coast summer, I read this book by Anne Lamott called Grace (Eventually) and kind of hated it. I had a really hard time relating to her, and can I say something honest and ugly and completely unflattering? I had a hard time thinking of her as a Christian. She didn't seem victorious at all over her issues, and that bothered me. (I know, that says a lot more about where I was at the time than it does about Anne Lamott. She's a brave soul.)

This weekend I read it again and pretty much loved it. I found the pockets of grace easily, amidst the political rambling and the lack of traditional Christian tidiness. I found good news there.

Here's the thing about her: she's rough around the edges, and she doesn't polish her image for her books. It was upsetting the first time around, this lack of polish. This time it was a relief.

What I get now, and I'm not sure why I didn't then, is that you can't possibly begin to talk about grace until you talk about the ugly stuff. Without one, the other doesn't exist. There's a startling beauty that begins to unfold when a person is vulnerable; truly vulnerable, not in the "I used to be this way but look, God helped me and I'm so much better now" way that we're all so fond of. She has a way of capturing the beauty of the human condition without airbrushing it, without leaving out the f word and the angry hot tears, and the confusion.

I'm definitely over myself more these days. I've prayed a lot of "why do I suck so much; please help me" prayers. I've apologized without any real idea of what I'm going to do to fix it. I've gone to bed bone tired just from being with myself all day. I'm in over my head and it turns out, much to my disappointment, that I'm not strong after all. I'm actually pretty ridiculous. I'm the proverbial old man grumbling "get off my lawn" and the optimistic kid saying "will you play with me?" at the same time. I read once that you grow up the day you look in the mirror and have a good, long laugh at yourself. Well.

But grace allows me to rest. Grace says, go to sleep and try again tomorrow, knowing full well that tomorrow might actually be worse. Grace teaches me continually to be kinder to myself even when I know that might be a mistake, because I might take advantage of it.

That's me, trying to make any progress at all with family, in work, relationships, self-image: scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reversal; bog, bog, scootch. I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark. 

I suppose that if you were snatched out of the mess, you'd miss the lesson; the lesson is the slog (p. 93) 

It speaks to me. I've become a student of the slog.

Silas came up to me just now, face covered in yogurt and said "Hey. Mommy. Owp." Too often I approach prayer like it's some kind of favor I'm doing. That's so not the case, ever. I just need help.

I'm making peace with the human condition (or you know, trying to). Opportunities abound for being taken up with our less pleasant qualities. It will always be tempting to say snarky things, to react, to judge. Especially in response to people who say careless, mean things....and oh, they are so much more up in our faces nowadays (or does it just seems that way to me?) I read today that the best way to be friends with people who you disagree with is to say "tell me why this is important to you", and then just listen. That pretty much sounds like the best and hardest thing ever. It is hard to have a conversation. It is hard to really listen and not just wait for your turn to talk some more.

All the ugly things that I bump up against and want to react to are inside of me too. I keep running into them. So I'm free to let others off the hook. Theoretically. Hopefully.

We are such fragile people, it's amazing we can experience love at all.