364 Days

Dec 31, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Wisdom, Writing

364 days have now passed in 2007.

I woke up early this morning for a vacation day and no alarm. I found myself lying there thinking about the past 364 days. There is much to ponder. I got up and made coffee instead.

It’s hard to spend time in a past that is painful. It’s also tempting to just look back on all that was good and choose to overlook the tough stuff. For me, at least, there’s a lot of both. I can’t, nor do I want to escape either. The irony is that the things that have been most painful have also been rife with beauty, growth, love, and life.

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief
But the pain of grief
Is only a shadow
When compared with the pain
Of never risking love.
(Hilary Stanton Zunin)

I have risked much. I have loved much. These past 364 days, pain has been rife in both.

I have never known the levels of sadness that have accompanied this year. And I have not been overwhelmed.

In the midst of circumstances and realities I was certain would drown me, I have kept afloat.

The tears I was sure would keep me from ever getting out of bed again have not been uncontrollable torrents, but gentle and kind reminders that I do feel, that I do care, that I do desire, that I do love.

The endings that I imagined as incomprehensible and even impossible have brought understanding and possibility I couldn’t have imagined. I feared death – not physical, but nearly every other sense of the word – and have known life.

Despite a large aspect of the past year’s reality and reflection: I am not alone. Neither death nor pain have conquered me.

Life returns.

Love wins.

364 days have passed. At the end of today 2008 will begin. I am grateful for both.

Time to pour another cup of coffee…

Happy 47th Birthday to Me!

Nov 30, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, Sovereignty, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom, Writing

After writing posts for both of my daughters on their birthdays, I thought it only fitting that I do the same for myself!

Happy Birthday to me!

This has been a full, rich, painful, beautiful, long, amazing, surprising, miraculous, arduous, labor-filled year. I have known many tears, much frustration, and deep anguish. I have also known more laughter and life than ever before. I have been struck again and again by how amazing it is that both can coexist and frankly, be enhanced when juxtaposed to one another.

I’ve had many conversations with Emma and Abby this past year about what it means to let more than one thing be true at the same time: disappointment and hope, sadness and joy, frustration and desire. And this has been a year of that being enfleshed within me – on their behalf, certainly, but powerfully, on my own.

I have found much strength within me these past twelve months; strength that has enabled me to make difficult decisions and then live with the ramifications of such, strength that has allowed me to survive – and even thrive – in places I’d feared (and avoided) for many years. And that strength has, amazingly, not made me tougher, harder, or colder; rather, its enabled me to feel more tender, compassionate, and “present” to my own heart and the heart’s of others. I’m grateful.

Last year at this time I could have never been convinced of or prepared for the twelve months that were about to commence. Note to self: be glad you don’t know the future! Out of curiosity, I went back to the past – to my blog posts from about a year ago to see what I was writing. I came across some October, 2006 reflections on the women of Proverbs 1 and 31 that were amazingly prophetic for the year that was to come:

These women – metaphorical and real – are who I want to be: wise, listening to and living with those on the margins, gaining strength through perseverance and struggle, dignified and fearless, forever laughing with the abandon of a child. God knows and loves this woman. I am becoming this woman.

Indeed, I am. I feel more wise, more able to listen to those who are unseen, forgotten, or harmed, strengthened through perseverance and certainly struggle, more dignified, more fearless, and often laughing both with the abandon of a child – and with my own children.

I am this woman. Amazing.

That’s a year worth celebrating in the midst of acknowledging and grieving its losses and pains.

Another year older. Another year of being the grateful recipient of consistent, unpredictable, mysterious, and precious life.

I’m Tired

Oct 1, 2007 | Mothers and Daughters, Women's Wisdom, Writing

There’s much to be done these days with work, children, life. All press for my prioritization. All require much. And, truth be told, all offer much.

Still, it’s hard to fit everything in. Something has to give and I can feel my resistance to doing the hard work of deciding what that will be. Even more, how that will be.

Obviously, my amazing and wonderful daughters must take first place. I cannot consider letting time or care go in this realm just so that I can have more time to get work done or have more time to write, read, or even watch a good movie!

That leaves work and life. Work is a huge category these days with so many projects weighing me down – all of which are important, necessary, urgent. And, honestly, I don’t resent or resist any of them. I want to get all of them done. I just don’t know that I can. Unless, of course, I let life go.

Life – those activities, spaces, and times that continue to offer me rest, laughter, sleep, relationships, breathing space, reflection, thought, writing, reading, and yes, watching movies. I can’t really let those things go because if I do, I don’t have the energy or desire to do my work or be the mom I want to be to my girls.

No answers forthcoming. Indeed, I’m tired.

So tonight, after the girls are tucked into bed, “life” and sleep win out over all the other things that could fill another hour or two of my night. I’ll have to trust that the one or two more hours of work or anything else will look better and get done more efficiently if I can actually stay awake tomorrow!

One might wonder how I’ve found time to type this post tonight. Honestly, these 10 minutes have been life-giving and well worth any expense. Besides, the girls are busy living their life – watching a good movie.

Remembering Madeleine L’Engle

Sep 18, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Writing

Just last week an amazing woman died. Madeleine L’Engle, the author of the well-loved A Wrinkle in Time and over 60 other books, lived well to the amazing age of 88.

As I rushed into work today, through the library, and on my way to the stairwell, I stopped and then backed up. A book was displayed in the “new releases” section that caught my eye: The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle. It’s beautiful: the cover, the photo of her, the pages…and the poems. Just one shared here:

The Bethlehem Explosion
The chemistry lab at school
was in an old greenhouse
surrounded by ancient live oaks
garnished with Spanish moss.
The experiment I remember best
was pouring a quart of clear fluid
into a glass jar, and dropping into it
grain by grain, salt-sized crystals,
until they layered
like white sand on the
floor of the jar.
One more grain – and suddenly –
water and crystal burst
into a living, moving pattern,
a silent, quietly violent explosion.
The teacher told us that only when
we supersaturated the solution,
would come the precipitation.
The little town
was like the glass jar in our lab.
One by one they came, grain by grain,
all those of the house of David,
like grains of sand to be counted.
The inn was full. When Joseph knocked,
his wife was already in labour;
there was no room even for compassion.
Until the barn was offered.
That was the precipitating factor.
A child was born,
and the pattern changed forever,
the cosmos shaken with that silent explosion.

…a living, moving pattern / a silent, quietly violent explosion. Isn’t that beautiful?

What might that look like today, for me? Madeleine L’Engle embodied that reality – offering exploding life in every word, every thought, every poem, every book. Oh, that we might all have her courage, her beauty, her language, her heart. May we be willing to be those precipitating factors…in memory of one who was herself.

My lie about writing and time

Jul 1, 2007 | Writing

I’ve been thinking more and more about writing – my desire to so, the things I so want to be able to say, the hopes I have for myself and my daughters as it relates to such. The more I think about it the more I wish I had more time. “If only I could take a couple of months off…just to get started.” “If only I could afford to just write and not have to juggle work and all the rest of life!” “If only…” Dangerous words I’ve fallen prey to before.

But this afternoon I picked up a book I’ve had on my shelf for many years: The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. Here’s what I came across in the third chapter:

One of the biggest myths around writing is that in order to do it we must have great swathes of uninterrupted time…The myth that we must have “time”–more time–in order to create is a myth that keeps us from using the time we do have. If we are forever yearning for “more,” we are forever discounting what is offered.

OK…I get it. I wonder what would happen if I repeated “I have plenty of time to write” as often as I’ve said, “I just don’t have enough time to write”? ‘Think I’ll give it a try and maybe, after chanting this affrmation a few times, I’ll actually start writing and stop chanting!

Oh yeah, that’s what I’m doing right now! 

Will I tell you what I want?

Aug 14, 2006 | My sort-of Sermons, Sovereignty, Women's Voice & Power, Writing

A friend loaned me a book last week that I can’t put down. It’s called Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to be
Wanted by Polly Young-Eisendrath. Check this out:

…as successful as (many) women have become, they often feel “out of control” in their personal lives. Although they can speak openly and passionately about the values and principles they believe in, and defend others’ rights, they still resist claiming and asserting personal needs and desires, especially when these are in conflict with others’. They fear being seen as too bossy or too self-absorbed.

There is something in me that reacts to this (and not favorably), while another part of me that knows it all too well. I am good at speaking openly and passionately about ideas and concepts, but when it comes to things I’m passionate about on my own behalf – both professionally and
personally? Well, that becomes a different story altogether.

I’ve been working a lot on this – diligently (and even passionately) – and I believe I’m making progress. It’s a challenge, though, to unlearn such well-taught and well-honed skills.

What does it mean for women to speak boldly of our own desires? Not desire for desire’s sake, but professionally, relationally, systemically, culturally, theologically. What does it mean to continue to speak and name what we see? To willingly choose to use our god-
given gifts of perception, intellect, and experience to provide alternative perspectives on things that often go unnoticed which can then cause subtle (and sometimes blatant) harm. What does it mean to have the courage to continue to speak, period?

All of this and then some is what I want
so deeply to be true for me – and for those with whom I live, work, and love. That’s what they deserve. That’s what I deserve.

In a similar vein, I read an article last night by the author of Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender. Though I struggle a bit with both the title and the general idea of the book, there was one paragraph that caught my attention and has stuck with me the past couple of days: 

[She] urges women not just to wait for a brighter day, but to speak up now, and particularly about the small things…She points out that repeated small slights constitute large-scale social patterns of repression–that mountains can, in fact, arise out of the accumulation of molehills. So women can and must do something to keep the pattern from being reinforced.

I want to speak. Not because I have something urgent that needs to be shouted out, time and again, until it’s heard (though that is true) but because I want to be seen and known fully for who I most truly am, not some censored, edited version.

Yep. That’s what I really want.