Where did Tuesday GO?

My eldest son is out of school.

And that means, I have lost my Tuesdays. I have lost my quiet afternoon moments that I had really started to enjoy. Those ones that cultivated silence and boredom and lists of things I should accomplish and to do projects in the sewing room.
And writing.
And so my writing has slowed down. Slowed to a halt, even.

Lots of things have slowed down in my life in the past few years.
You know, my pastor husband used to be severely depressed. He was on medication and he was frantic in his search for wholeness. Things moved faster back then. The colors were darker and the mood was always heavy and terrible.
There was no slow and no lightness of being.
I stored up hopes and kept them under lock and key. I buried my trusts and my stories because there was no safe place for them to root. I was a water lily. I got really good at floating, blooming and dying, then blooming again.
Closing up in the afternoon when the sun beat down. Dying to a halt.
It was hotter then. I earned the lines on my face. Stifled tears are the ones that burn the deepest.

But it is different now. He is well and we are healed.
It was the miraculous work of the Divine God of all Creation. He saw fit to answer my pleading.
And there is no other source of my current state of cool, placid peaceful spring than His deep, great Love.
I am out of the hard and fast and
into

the slow,

drifting into the sunsets.

It is the only way to live.

head down and write

My son has a make-up writing test today.

He had some trouble with it yesterday. I told him that when he gets distracted he needs to just keep his head down and write.

It's pretty good advice.

There is nothing harder than to write when you don't feel like writing. There are no words, nothing seems interesting, no new insight exists, but still....you must write.

Many authors talk about the tenacity, the persistence as the quality that really separates known writers from absent ones. While I have little desire to be known, I do have a desire to be excellent.

I saw this documentary about a photographer recently who was completely unknown until after she died and all her work come out, by chance. She was amazing and her quality and quantity of work, inspired. But she didn't ever care about anyone knowing. She loved to take pictures. She just really loved it.

And I think about writing that way because there are so many moments when I don't love it, I don't feel like doing it. It is work, it is tedium. Do I love it?

I don't know.
I just know that for now, I am going to keep my head down.
And write.

For give

I hang on to things I probably should not.

There are letters and items of clothing and movie stubs that I really should throw out the window, out the door, down the hatch, but I don’t. I hang on.

I hang on because they remind me of a past event. They are memorials. And memorials are good, or they can be good. We remember birthdays and holidays, we celebrate anniversaries and graduations. We keep our kid’s first shoes and the notes our husbands wrote us when they were only young boys. We remember these moments because they fill up the well of our identity, our family, our purpose.

But I will sometimes hang on to other things. I will keep the letters my husband and I exchanged when we were contemplating divorce. I will keep the fat clothes hanging in my closet though I have lost the weight. I will stumble upon found pictures of people in my life who are long gone, whose absence I still lament (hello, Facebook). And while that can be okay, too, these memorials can also stir up trouble. It’s like I want a “Just in case….” Just in case, I want to remember how bad it all felt, or how wronged I was…. Just in case, I am having a bad day and need to feel sorry for myself…. Just in case, I am not getting the love I want or need or deserve…

These things breed re-unforgiveness (just because it isn’t a word, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a word).  And, as Christians, we are in the business of forgiveness. It’s one of our big things. I used to think that once you forgave, it was done. White as snow. After all, that’s how God does it, so that is how we are to do it. And it is The Call. Right? Unfortunately, because we are lacking the divine nature of our Lord, it doesn’t quite work that way for us humans. I now understand that forgiveness is a journey and a relationship. It is a path that, like any other, can lead to sin or can lead to freedom.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. . . . For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. (Matthew 6:12-15, NASB)

When you are wronged, the forgiving seems to need to happen every minute, if you even feel like you can forgive. And then it happens every day, and then every week, and eventually a year goes by and you find that you haven’t had to forgive for months. I still find myself forgiving for things so far in the past, I barely can remember the details; I just remember the hurt.

And that is what we have to be careful of storing and keeping and packaging and tucking away. The hurt.

Garage sales are great because, as hard as it is to get rid of some of your most precious stuff, it feels amazing when it is all gone. It feels light and easy and freeing. It feels like an easy yoke. And the funny part is that the stuff of our heart is the same as the stuff of our lives, it accumulates whether we want it to or not. It just piles up.

Our job is to throw it out. Get rid of it. Release those feelings of hurt.

I want to remember what our marriage has come through and endured with the grace of God to help us. I want to see the growth of my life to who I am today. I want to praise God for miracle after miracle of redemption, but I cannot go back to the same dark places all the time and lament the loss.  We must press into forgiveness.

Forgive more.  It is what He told us to do.

Don’t allow yourself to be abused, but ask your Heavenly Father for help with forgiving. Forgive your spouse and ask him to forgive you. And then tomorrow forgive him again.  For all the things, for the little things, for the big things. Forgive yourself so that you can be loved by your husband.

And then forgive yourself again tomorrow.

We not called to be punching bags, but we are called to forgive. We are not called to withhold the truth, but to speak it out, to ‘speak with wisdom and faithful instruction.’ We ARE called to release our hurt to a better Judge and we are called to FORGIVE.

As many times as it takes us to get it right. 

These days I have to fight for quiet and peace for my soul.

I suppose that is a pattern that humans have been practicing for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. Fight. For peace.

This is something that my atheist, liberal, borderline Socialist co-worker and friend does not understand. She understands peace, of course. But she would completely eschew fighting as a necessary path to peace.

She and her husband quietly separated when things got hard. They still haven't gotten around to the divorcing. Meanwhile for the past twenty years, they both date and live on opposite continents while their daughters become grown women. It is a mistake in thinking that the path of least resistance is synonymous with peace. It is not.

Peace is what comes after you have forged a path. Peace is not happenstance. It is labor and delivery. It is making something holy. It is setting something apart from the nature of this world and dedicating it to the nature of Another world. It is deliberate and it requires sweat and marrow and sacrifices.

The deepest peace in my marriage comes from those places where we have bled.
The most quiet and careful of my writing and my restoration comes when I finish all my chores, get the kids to bed the way they need, clean up my house, love my husband recklessly and seek the wisdom of some Words. If I get distracted, if I rest for a even moment, my peace will be snatched up by the busyness of this life, it will be stolen by the needs of my family, it will be swallowed by the quickening sun, my graying hairs, the growth of all my weeds.

I own my peace. It was given to me as a Gift.
And I fight for it.
I protect it.
I nurture it.

Blankets and Names

I lost my son's blanket today. What misery. I wish I wanted anything as much as I wanted to find that blanket. I probably want those Reese's peanut butter eggs that much. Maybe not even those. Oh Lord, I was desperate.

I was praying out loud. Over and over. People heard me, saw me. I was a crazed woman. I was frantic and I was rushing because I was sure that someone terrible had stolen it, trashed it, hidden it from me. I can hear the paranoia too; it's not just you.

But there it was. Sitting on the bench at the park, exactly where I had left it. Exactly where my two year old son had tried to give it to a six month old baby. He is a bird in the air. He does not worry about where he will eat or where he will sleep. He flies, he sings. He trusts me.

And he is so unaware of how bad it would really be to give away his blankie, his Bay. He doesn't consider his future needs. He just sees a baby and wants to comfort her, make her feel good, well, cozy, at peace.

His name means 'peace' and I see him walking in that birthright all the time. My name means 'temple, house.' I am sturdy, immovable, supported, framed, steady. I hate change. Big ol' house.

Of God. God has many names. Most are the ones we gave Him. We are still naming Him.

I call Him Blanket Giver.

Peace Giver.

Did He just see me and want to comfort me, make me feel good and well and cozy and at peace?He left it right where I would find it. He gives away so many things.

I wish I could be more like my son. Give away and remain at peace. Can I inherit the best characteristics of my children from my children?

I wonder if God ever inherits anything from us.

Panic

I think I am having a panic attack.

Right.

Now.

I can feel my heart rate up, I am nauseous and short of breath. I feel that impending sense of doom. I am dizzy. I want to throw up. The waves keep coming.

My husband and I are fighting. I suppose it is part of the whole thing, the whole marriage thing, the whole life thing. We fight, we talk, we grab at one another, we ask for our wages, our peace, and then work out the details, see what it is that we can live with.

And then we do it again.

My mother-in-law says that it starts to happen faster, the older you get. I could be 60. It actually sounds kinda cool. Simpler life, fewer people to be responsible for, no puppies, smaller house, more wisdom, more experience. Yeah, I could definitely wreck some shit if I was 60.

I am still in the worker phase though, the long days in the sun, tearing at the roots, pulling the weeds, preparing the soil, praying for rain. The young children, the money that never seems to stretch to the seams, the hard work at jobs that we need to support us, the mess, the clutter, the unendingness of it all.

It is not quite my time for faster fights.

I wonder if she still has panic attacks.

I hope I get to find out.

New Puppy

I don't know why God wants us to change and grow. My guess is that He is still creating this world and in this world and He prefers us malleable. Easier on the fingers, I suppose. I also think that He wants to improve our lives by gently or terribly, roughly, miserably drawing us farther from ourselves and closer and closer to Him.

We got a puppy. She is sitting next to me right now. And while this puppy is cute and sweet and she smells like puppy and she stumbles all over herself like puppy...the truth is that I hate having a puppy. I hate how out of control a puppy makes me. I hate that I cannot plan for the behavior of a puppy, the needs, the time commitments, the strain, the requirements of having a puppy. I hate how it makes my mind race. I hate how my heart beats in my chest and I can't breathe. I hate how sick to my stomach it all makes me feel. I hate puppies.

And it all really does make me feel this way. I am terrified of this little, tiny, nonhuman life.

She is change. Change for our family, change for my life, change to the routine, change to our rhythm. And I resist change.

And God keeps putting change in my path.

It is hard to not be hard-hearted about it. To trust that time will fill in some of these gaping, empty holes in my heart and in my belly. To wait patiently for a new kind of something to emerge with new relationships and new norms. To believe that something different could, in fact, be good.

I can't imagine how it felt for the Jews who encountered Jesus. How would I have ever believed it? Trusted, waited, believed? Sunday is Easter and all I can think is what a terrible Christian I am and thank you to God.

Thank you for changing the world through a puppy in my time and not the second coming of Jesus. I would be in so much trouble if that was the case. I would probably ditch the puppy, pray for the rapture, and board up my windows. Such faith....

She is waking up. Time to get back to it.