When Things Don’t Go as Planned

Feb 22, 2018 | Hope & Encouragement, Mothers and Daughters, My sort-of Sermons, Women's Voice & Power, Writing

I’ve been thinking a lot, even more than I normally do, about my daughters. About the trials and tribulations that, by necessity it would seem, visit every life. About how each and every one of these pains feel insurmountable to them right now. They are not. But neither of them know that yet.

So this: an open letter to my girls (and maybe to you, as well).

Sweet girl:

I know you hold a picture in your mind as to how your story “should” go, at the very least, how you want it to go. It might be one you began to create when you were so very young (which doesn’t seem all that long ago to me) – nurtured and nuanced over these past years: you’ll be safe, you’ll b  nurtured, you’ll be protected, you’ll be loved. It might be more specific: the white picket fence, the 2.5 kids, the perfect job-body-marriage-bank account. And it might be all of these and then some – including a strong-and-sustained sense of what, quite frankly, just seems right and fair: happiness, ease, satisfaction, fun, and a lack of struggle and pain. There’s nothing wrong with these pictures. They are beautiful manifestations of your desire, your longing for all that’s possible, your hope.

But reality doesn’t always (if often) comply. Life doesn’t always (if often) go as planned,
dreamed, or even pictured.

And when that dissonance arrives? I know, sweet girl: it hurts.

“So?” you ask. “Now what?”

Maybe, for now, allowing the hurt is what matters most. It’s completely acceptable: feeling sad and forlorn, lost and confused, discombobulated by the curves thrown your way. Yes, for now.

“For how long?”

I wish I knew.

But here’s what I do know:

You let go, or at least loosen your grip on how it all “should” be. Even more, you hold on – with all the conviction and determination you can muster. Yes, this I
know for sure: you hold on to you.

That is enough. Because you are.

You are strong enough to weather any set-back – including this one. You are brave enough to manage every emotion – whether fleeting or seeming to take up roost. You are tenacious enough to grab onto the tail end of hope and wrangle it back into its rightful place in your psyche, your perspective, your present tense. You are tender enough to make room for grief while trusting its healing power. You are bold enough to get up again tomorrow, to stand tall, to face all that awaits (within and without), and to step forward – no matter how tentatively – into the life that is yours, the one that spreads out before you in all its unknown, in all its possibility, and yes, right now, in all its poignant ache.

I know you aren’t buying most of this, that you don’t quite believe me. Not yet. That’s
OK.

In the meantime, you can hold on to me. Because I do know a few things that I’ll hold in trust and reserve until you are ready to try them on and take them in:

  • Things don’t always go as planned and they do get better. I promise.
  • What feels like forever, isn’t. I promise.
  • What seems a mess, might very well be, but it will turn into beauty. I promise.
  • Every bit of this is part of your story, a chapter you’ll look back on fondly (eventually) – aware that it formed you in profound and powerful ways. I promise.
  • It won’t always hurt as much as it does right now. I promise.
  • Though you doubt me in this moment, I’m right about this: you are more than enough. I promise.

Little consolation, I get it. Still, my heart on your behalf. Still and again, hold on, sweet girl. When things don’t go as planned you can rest assured that you are yet to live into a picture, a story, and a life beyond imagining.

How can I say such a thing with any degree of con dence, let alone sanity? Well, almost exclusively because of you.

When I was your age, I could not have possibly imagined a picture, story, or life that was big enough, vast enough, amazing enough to include you. I could not have
dreamed this big or believed I could love this deeply. And I could not have known that I was enough to bear my own disappointments, shattered dreams, mislaid plans, and broken hearts. But I was. And I am.

As are you.

So hold on, sweet girl. I promise: it’s all going to be OK.

January 1, 2017

Jan 1, 2017 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons

What dreams lie dormant hidden in the womb of your soul, quietly waiting, incubating seeking opportunity to come forth? Like the female cycle that comes every 28 days, over and over again, dreams come to rest in the soil of your mind. They compel you. They disturb you. They haunt you with visions of possibility. They prompt you to walk restlessly through life knowing that you may someday stop, listen and decide to nourish them with faith and action. Yield to the silent urging. Listen. Hear. Receive. Let the dream speak. For it will burst forth from the womb of your spirit. It frees into existence something that lives, brooding in the corner of your mind. Hold the seed. Grow the seed. Birth the seed. And life will begin anew. ~ Stella Payton 

May it be so.

Yes, yesterday. Now what?

Nov 10, 2016 | Hope & Encouragement, Sacred Stories, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom

Yesterday, November 9, 2016, I did all the things I always do:

I made coffee. I journaled. I gave my daughter a hug before she left for school. I made my bed. I took a shower. I blow-dried my hair. I put on makeup. I got dressed. I spritzed perfume. I donned earrings, necklace, bracelets, ring. I cooked oatmeal and added berries. I perused and posted on Facebook. I answered a few emails. I prepared for and talked with my clients.

You’d think it was just another day.

Which it was, of course.

Which it was not – in any way, shape, or form.

In the midst of doing all the things I always do, my heart was strong-but-heavy. I could not, nor can I yet today, escape the permeating awareness of the days-ago election or tomorrow’s unknown.

But as I did all the things I always do, as I sought to incorporate reality into my psyche, as my day went on and I listened to my daughters, talked with friends, answered more emails, fixed dinner, and prepared for a night of sleep, I found myself thinking of other women.

Centuries of them – who survived atrocities, hatred, violence, genocide, slavery, silencing, shame, and yes, misogyny. Who made the bed and hugged their children and got dressed and cooked breakfast. Who lived and lived and lived.

The more I thought about them, the more I thought about the particular women within the stories I tell. Somehow, despite all the silencing and shame they’ve known, the atrocities of their time, the layers of theology and dogma (and misogyny) under which they’ve been buried, they have survived. And that gives me hope. They give me hope.

Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. ~ Anne Frank

Yes. Hope is what we need. And hope is what women offer us. Centuries of them. As far back as the stories I tell, even further, and every age since. They rally on our behalf. They rise up and remind us that we are to do the same, that we will do the same.They come alongside us, even still, even today, especially today, in solidarity and strength. They catch our tears, soothe our tired brows, mend our broken hearts, and whisper – call – sing us back into strength.

Can you hear them? Listen closer. They are chanting, drumming, thundering the words they most want us to remember, most want us to believe, most want us to embody:

“Live and live and live!”

There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze. ~ Etty Hillesum

This is what we will do: live and live and live.

So, my friends, let us have faith in each other. Let us not grow weary. Let us not lose heart, for there are more seasons to come, and there is more work to do. ~ Hillary Clinton (from yesterday’s concession speech)

These are the things we always do – day-in, day-out: we hope, we persevere, we have faith in each other, we do not lose heart, we work, we love, and we live and we live and we live.

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.]

Chasing Rainbows

Jul 6, 2015 | Hope & Encouragement, Sacred Stories

The night I saw THE rainbow was the culmination of another out-of-town weekend. I was in my 20’s (a very long time ago) and driving home after having played too hard; wishing for any story but my own.  Discouraged and exhausted, I headed into the most desolate part of the trip. Endless miles with ample opportunity to feel sorry for myself, to become lost in familiar regret.

When I looked up, farther than the worn and mind-numbing highway dividing lines, I saw it: a breathtaking bow across the sky. It had to be a gift, a sign, some kind of divine apparition that meant I was not alone, that things were destined to change, that my hope had been worthwhile.

I wanted a picture to preserve this memory, this memento, this marker. I rustled through my purse, leaned over to check the glove-box, and then remembered I’d packed the camera in my trunk. I decided to watch for as long as I possibly could, drive underneath and through this arc that stretched from one side of the road to the other, and then stop the car.

I let the heat of the late-evening stream into the car – windows down and sunroof open. For the moment it lasted, I imagined myself enveloped in all that color, light, magic, and promise. Then, as planned, I pulled over, retrieved the camera, and lifted my head to frame the shot.

The sky was blank. Everything was gone. Nothing was there!

It is hard to understand how something so seemingly real and substantial can sometimes be nothing more than an illusion.

On the other side, from that angle, looking back with perspective, the rainbow I’d been
chasing no longer existed. What had I been thinking?

The metaphor isn’t lost on me.

*******

Back at the height of my piano-playing days, I perfected a piece called Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin. In the middle of a start and finish that were fast, complicated, and complex was a beautiful, calming, almost haunting melody. Years later, that tune was extracted out of the larger composition and made popular. It’s name? I’m Always Chasing Rainbows. Of course.

I looked up the lyrics:

Why have I always been a failure? What
can the reason be?
I wonder if the world is toblame.
I wonder if it could be me.

I’m always chasing rainbows,
Watching clouds drifting by.
My schemes are just like all my dreams,
Ending in the sky.

Some fellas look and find the sunshine.
I always look and find the rain.
Some fellas make a winning some time.
I never even make a gain.

Believe me,
I’m always chasing rainbows,
Waiting to find a little bluebird,
in vain.

The connection between this story and the one above is not lost on me.

*******

Still – and always – I am an optimist through and through. Hope does not leave me. It is relentless. And this gets me into trouble, spells certain disaster, and has broken my heart more times than I can count.

What is the alternative?

I don’t look at either of these stories with a lens of harsh scrutiny – beating myself up for my naiveté in the first or acceding to the inherent pessimism in the second. Instead, I see my patterns – with clarity and courage. Sometimes I can laugh. Often I am called to grieve. And I am certain that I’ll know far more of both – with a better (and wiser) perspective, with ever-increasing strength, and maybe with a camera closer at-hand.

*******

I grew up learning to associate the rainbow with God’s promise to Noah that the earth would never again be destroyed. That telling skipped over one incredibly important part of the promise-fulfilled that I now have the perspective to see and offer, one that is anything but illusion: Noah’s Wife.

Whether read as literal tale or mythic archetype, her symbolism and truth are rife. She suffers through incredible tragedy and impossible-to-fathom loss. And it is on the other side of the rainbow that her flesh and blood births new life; that her legacy enables the future to exist at all. She is hope enfleshed.

As her, so too, you and me. She calls us – her daughters, her lineage, her kin – to see ourselves as the rainbow’s promise fulfilled – life sustained, legacy continued. She calls us – her daughters, her lineage, her kin – to be the visible reminder and sign that destruction never wins, that hope always endures, that beauty and life always triumph. No illusion. Promise, indeed.

“What is the alternative?” Noah’s Wife asks.

Indeed.

*******

I have lots of stories in which I’ve chased rainbows; times in which I thought I was heading toward something miraculous and amazing that turned out to be something far less, even nonexistent. Still, from this side, with perspective, I don’t believe I would change a one of them. For in spite of them all, it is hope and hope and hope that has healed my heart. It is the surviving the storm, the flood, the tragedy, the loss that has brought me blessing untold. It is the chasing of the rainbow that has made life as beautiful as it is.