Happy 21st Birthday, Abby!

Oct 7, 2019 | Mothers and Daughters

Yesterday, when out running errands, I idled at an intersection and watched a homeless man holding a sign that said, “It’s my birthday!” As is always the case, I drove by feeling sad, frustrated, privileged, confused, angry, and profoundly grateful.

Why do I tell this story today? In this post? On your 21st birthday?

Because as I turned the corner and he faded from sight, I started thinking about the accumulation of experiences, realities, opportunities, losses, heartbreaks, celebrations, minutes, and seconds that make up a life; how any singular combination of these things can make all the difference; how we never know what our life will look like in the days and years to come.

There is more unknown than known, to be sure; but there are a few things I do know with absolute certainty:

You, my dear, sweet daughter, have a life both now and ahead full of possibility and hope, ecstasy and sorrow, mountaintops and valleys, wins and losses, all this and then some. And it is all this and then some that I see when I look at you: in college with determined focus; away from home via intentional and thoughtful choice; making friends who see and value your beauty, grace, strength, compassion, and endless empathy; embodying and exhibiting a hope that enables me to trust completely in your future, mine, and ours, collectively.

Why? How?

Because you will continue to exhibit what is inherent and embedded within you: perseverance, grit, determination, the capacity to grieve, an emerging and articulate opinion, a voice and perspective that is firm and solid, a heart that ever-longs for healing – your own, every person you love, and this world’s.

I say “continue” because none of these characteristics are new to me. They have been present in you from the start, from that first cry demanding your deserved nourishment, protection, and love; through your toddler and adolescent years in which you straddled the precarious balance of your own cries with others’ demands; through high school and beyond in which you cried out for understanding, for clarity, to matter; today as you continue to cry out on your own behalf – wanting more, wanting all of who you are destined to be, wanting, period.

Those cries are your super-power, Abby.

So many women my age never learned to want; never allowed themselves to do so. We were taught that desire was foolish, dangerous, and better tamped down; that our cries were a sign of weakness and most-certainly not to be taken seriously. You, sweet girl, are just the opposite. That desire – made visible in your pursuits, your longing for order and certainty, your infinite generosity with and for others, your endless, beating and oft’ breaking heart – is what will carry you into a life marked by the richness and fullness and ache and beauty that has marked my own – because of you.

You have marked me. 21 years ago today, I was changed the moment you entered the world. Every day since has brought me more of the same – because of you. And your cries have changed my own.

So keep crying out, sweet girl. Do not stop. Desire. Demand. Dream. Do. This is your destiny, to be sure. For you, for the homeless man on the corner, for all who are yet to be impacted by your heart. It’s inevitable. And you are invincible (whether you believe me, or not).

Happy 21st birthday, Abby. I love you beyond words, beyond what I can ever express or offer, beyond what I could have ever imagined.

My Heart (Monitor)

Aug 1, 2017 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, My sort-of Sermons

I am hooked up to a heart monitor right now. It’s mobile – just four electrodes connected to various and particular locations on my chest with wires that connect to a small timer-like thing that’s currently in my pocket – even as I sit here and type.

Other than the fact that I definitely know it is there, I barely know it is there.

I’m hooked-up because my heartbeat is erratic. The doctor asks me what I’m feeling. He listens with his stethoscope. He has me take deep breaths, “in and out, please.” He explains what a normal heart does and what mine is doing – which may or may not be normal. He tells me that he’d also like to do an ultrasound – just so he can see the heart itself and make sure there is nothing damaged or structurally problematic. Then he talks to me about a couple of possibilities: 1) This is happening for no apparent reason and may just go away; “it happens more than you’d think,” he says. 2) My heart is getting older and sometimes, for some people, needs help – more help, like not just a 24-hour monitor help. I’m opting for and planning on #1.

It’s somewhat paradoxical: the way in which stress impacts the heart. And yet here I am, stressed because I’m worrying about my heart. I’m trying not to, of course; trying to trust that my heart is simply making itself known to me in a very particular way, wanting me to be mindful. And once assured that I have given it due attention, it will go back to beating steady and strong, steady and strong, steady and strong.

May it be so.

*******

Today is August 1.

Emma leaves in early September for her 3rd (and possibly final) year at Western Washington University and Abby leaves three weeks later for Seattle Pacific University for her 1st year away. My heart(s) – leaving; the two hearts to whom I have given my heart – leaving; the two hearts who have filled my heart and enabled its strength – leaving.

I’m hard-pressed to not believe these two realities are interconnected. Could my physical heart be feeling this tug, this pull? Could my physical heart be beating out-of-sync as it tries to incorporate this lifealtering transition, tries to find equilibrium and balance, tries to determine its rhythm in the absence of my two girls? Could my physical heart already ache? Could my physical heart feel grief that my mind does not yet know?

My mind says, “It’s all going to be OK. You’ve been preparing for this season, this time, these goodbyes. Your girls are ready. You are ready. All will be well.”

My mind is wise, to be sure; but it doesn’t know everything. (I have to keep this in mind…and in heart.)

There is nothing I need to do about any of this.

Indeed, even the medical establishment confirms this unwittingly when they inform me the first follow-up appointment available isn’t until early October. “If we see anything serious in the monitoring, we’ll bring you in sooner; otherwise, that’s the best we can do.” Little comfort. And bizarre. The significance of the timing is not lost on me: when I return to the doctor, the girls will officially be “gone.”

There is nothing I need to say about any of this.

No pronouncement. No vows. No promises. No “if I only had 1 year to live” plans. No. Just awareness. Just presence. Just this.

Beat-beat——————–beat——-beat——-beat. The two quick beats, followed by the long space-and-pause are what keep calling me back to my heart – the discomfort, the impossible-to-ignore “flip” within.

My two girls, quickly gone, followed by the long space of just me – it keeps calling me back to my heart’s ache and its strength, its impossible-to-deny will and stamina and love. It will keep beating. I will keep living. Just differently – with a bit of arrhythmia – at least for a time as I adjust to this out-of-sync, not quite correct, and not quite steady way of being that waits for me.

*******

When I was pregnant, two hearts beat within me. I cared more about my daughter’s than mine. Hers was all I wanted to hear, all I wanted to see on the ultrasound, all I wanted to watch when hooked up to countless monitors during labor. Keep beating, little heart. Keep living, little girl. Come into my arms. Come home.

And now you are leaving. Both of you.

Three hearts have beat within me. Not always in sync, by any means. Hardly steady all the time. But all here. All beating. All together. Now, in just weeks, one heart remains and now, strangely, beats alone. Mine. Erratic. Unsteady. Imbalanced.

It’s no wonder I’m hooked to this monitor.

A story for Mother’s Day

May 8, 2016 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, Spirituality

Mother’s Day used to be the hardest day of the year for me – when lost in the throes of infertility. That is no longer the case. But I never want to forget. I never want to not acknowledge just how difficult today is for those without children, for those who have lost children, for those who have chosen to not have them, for those who have lost mothers (living or dead), sisters, friends, for so many women…and men. So today, this – in the hopes that it will encourage your heart, strengthen your faith, summon forth grace, and remind you that hope, yes always hope, endures.

A story in 3 parts:

The Ending:
One day, out of the blue, unexpected, unanticipated, unbelievable, I was pregnant. And again, 15 months later. Emma Joy is now 16, Abby 17. They are miracles. It is a miracle that I am a mother.

The Beginning:
I was 31 years old when I got married. Behind the power curve (in my insular opinion) where such a significant life-marker was concerned. Children were up next (and fast) on my make-up-for-lost-time agenda. There would be no leisurely year of nuptial bliss before we began the process of trying to get pregnant. The clock was ticking. There was no time to waste – or for which to wait. I was in hot pursuit.

The Middle:
After a year of trying with no success, the fertility consultations and moderate treatments began. By year two, we’d moved to more intensive, invasive testing. And with still no success or answers that satisfied, in-vitro was the next recommended attempt. Once. Twice.

Nothing.

And then I couldn’t bear any more. I was tired of waiting. I was tired of trying. I was tired of hoping. So I stopped. No more treatment. No more planning. Little-to-no conversation. Time for life to move on. It did, of course. And it didn’t.

In the nearly-three years that followed, no matter how I tried to ignore my longings, those emotions would not be aborted. No matter how I tried to put on a spiritual happy face and quote Romans 8:28 (And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love God…), I raged inside. No matter how I tried to tell myself that God had other plans for me, that my life would have other “births,” that my world would be rich in unimaginable ways, I was miserable.

But not for lack of trying to summon up any other emotion, any other perspective, any other experience. I tried to pray. I tried to be patient. I tried to let go. I tried to trust. I tried to have faith, thinking that would make sense of things, but every effort was impotent and infertile.

Oh, how I wish I could say that my (im)patient waiting, hoping, and tenacious trust resulted in a profoundly dynamic spiritual life; a seismic and never-to-be-questioned-again faith.

Even more, how I wish that I could say to others who struggle with such intolerable
heartache that “just having faith” will, indeed and ultimately, engender and enable a hope in God that comforts and sustains.

I cannot. I will not.

I grew up believing that faith was something I needed to (and could, with enough work) attain. It was a developed skill, a worthy goal, a near-requirement for the believer in God. I also grew up believing in some kind of Divine barter system: if only I could have what I wanted, what I desired, what I fervently prayed for, then I would have faith. I ask. God comes through. My faith exponentially grows.

I am still growing, but here is what I believe now:

Faith is not ours to work toward, aspire to, or command at will. It will not appear at our beck-and-call.

Faith grows in chasms of doubt. It is nurtured in the darkness of pain. It slowly, silently, almost imperceptibly multiplies in long, wide, and deep spaces of waiting, of questioning, of aching, of asking.

Faith is not a sense-making activity, quality, or attribute. It is a crazy, defiant, and nearly certifiable choice – made an infinite number of times within one day, one life, one heart. It does not come in miracles and breakthroughs, but in the pregnant spaces of life that are more-often filled with desolation than hope. Still, an occasional tinge of awareness that something is growing and will be birthed, but a complete and helpless inability to will it to arrive any sooner. It is a mysterious, un-navigable, impossible-to(pre)determine journey.

Faith is much like pregnancy: experience more than event. And faith is much like infertility: despairing, but waiting-trusting-hoping anyway.

Faith is living one day after the next. One foot in front of the other. One wish-and-a-prayer that is too-often dashed, but whispered yet again. One broken heart that somehow mends and loves again. One longing for success that decries a dwindling bank account. One more blog post when creativity wanes. One more load of laundry. One more commute. One more prayer. One more push.

Faith is not the ending of the story, nor is it the beginning. It is the way in which we be; the way in which we live in the middle.

Naturally, the gift of my two daughters – then and now – nearly takes my breath away.

Naturally, I am deeply grateful to the Divine for their presence in my life. But I have learned that the faith that spikes in such places rarely sticks. The faith that stays – and sustains – is that which is nurtured in the well-worn path of worry, the sleepless nights, the inconsolable heartache, the insatiable desires. In between the lines. In the middle.

I am aware that my story could have gone so differently. But my faith was not what made the difference. It was grace. And that would have been true no matter what…

Happy Mother’s Day to each of you: daughters, sisters, aunts, mothers-or-not, friends, women, men. May faith be yours. May grace overwhelm. And may hope, yes always hope, endure.

A POSTSCRIPT: I would not be writing any of this, thinking any of these thoughts, believing (and sometimes doubting) any of this were it not for my mom and her faith. Thanks, Mom. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

[Portions of this post first appeared in January of 2013.]

Nearly 20 years ago . . .

Oct 31, 2015 | Mothers and Daughters

It was nearly 20 years ago that I hastily opened the drugstore-purchased home-pregnancy test, that I tried to pee on that small pink stick without making a mess, that I left it sitting on the counter for the allotted time as I walked into the next room – disciplined and determined to wait the exactly-prescribed amount of time before I looked, that I held fast to my unswerving certainty that no line would appear, no plus mark would be revealed, no wishing, no matter how fervent, would ever be rewarded.

Over the next two days, I took six more tests. (Months later I found them all in a drawer and laughed at the evidence of my highly-honed doubt and disbelief.) And in the early-evening of the third day I went to the doctor because clearly, the over-the-counter tests could not be trusted. I needed an expert’s definitive declaration before I would allow myself the luxury of inhaling, of imagining, of believing that what I had longed for, prayed for, and grieved over for nearly five years could possibly be mine.

Every once in a while I can capture the emotion of being suspended between complete disbelief and overwhelming ecstasy. Every once in a while I can remember what it felt like to breathe in truth, to let in hope. Every once in a while I can recall what it felt like to finally feel whole, complete, and worthy. And every once in a while I will weep as I picture the moment they placed my daughter in my arms – how all the waiting and wishing and depression and despair vanished in an instant, how every fear evaporated, how something in me knew that I was forever changed by this miracle, this gift, this girl.

I was right. Forever and endlessly changed by her.

By you.

Happy 19th Birthday, Emma Joy. I love you. 

The Full Moon and other thoughts

Mar 6, 2015 | Mothers and Daughters, Spirituality

Whoever you are: some evening take a step out of your house, which you know so well. Enormous space is near. 

~ Rainier Marie Rilke

Yesterday marked another full moon. I’m paying attention to such things these days. I’m honoring Her cycle; my own. As it waxes, letting go. As it wanes, inviting in. This is liturgy. This is ritual. This is the Sacred.

But it’s not the Sacred I grew up with.

Back then I sat still in church. I listened carefully. I (tried to) dutifully obey. And though my required demeanor was calm-serene-peaceful, within was often a different story. Frustration. Longing. Grief. Desire. These emotions were parked at the door. The Perfect Persona applied, like a mask.

I’ll be honest: it’s not fair to drop this reality only at the feet of the church. It was true in so many other aspects of my life, as well; namely my marriage and my job(s). Oh, how well I learned and practiced the rules, the expectations, the unspoken-but-practically-shouted way of being that was required. Be good. Don’t rock the boat. Stay within the lines. Practice makes perfect. Seen not heard. Sometimes not even seen.

I’m grown up now. I no longer sit in church. And I’ve learned that obedience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Now, when my demeanor is calm, serene, and at peace, that’s actually how I feel! No emotions unexpressed. No masks. Just me. (And a
lunar calendar on my wall.)

This does not mean that I no longer believe, that I have abandoned all faith, that my heart no longer soars at a strain from a hymn or the stories that save me. In fact, just weeks ago, I did sit in church and watch my eldest daughter get baptized for a second time. 18 years ago, I held her as a newborn, silent tears rolling down my cheeks in gratitude for her miraculous presence in my life. This time she walked up three steps then stepped down into a huge hot-tub and allowed the pastor to dunk her completely under the water. Silent tears rolled down my cheeks in gratitude again – this time for her heart, her faith, her desire to express it in an acknowledged, bold, and unmasked way.

Last week I sat at a fundraising banquet for the youth ministry that enraptures my youngest daughter. She texted me throughout saying, “Aren’t you having the best time?!?” I knew she was; that this is a safe and sacred space for her. More tears as I watched her sing and smile and step into the life of faith she desires.

And yesterday I honored the full moon, the Sacred, my turbulent-yet- tenacious faith, and an ever-increasing love for/by the Divine (who, by the way, is totally into lunar cycles).

This is the Sacred. Nothing prescribed. Nothing locked down by dogma or doctrine. Possible. Open. Full (like the moon). Big enough, magnificent enough, glorious enough, and grace-full enough that any and every way in which our hearts are moved can be honored, resonant, and true.

May it be so.