personal

people are marching for life today

It’s an important event, this March for Life…thousands of people converging at the Department of Justice to bring attention to a piece of legislation that never should have happened. So many decades later, it’s still a hot button debate argument, and one not likely to move the masses, um, en masse. It’s not the law that has to change, it’s the hearts of people, and when that happens, everything else will change.

I believe the way this happens is one person at a time. One. It’ll get the job done. Because each of us has a story to tell, and if we’d tell it, well, miracles can happen. I know of one. Her story is hers to tell, but I can share my part of it.

I’ve always been plagued by a cloud of doubt in my faith that creeps upon me unexpectedly. Perhaps it’s my academic training to question, maybe it’s some tragic flaw, maybe it’s just what makes me human — the point is, I know the right things to say, but the conviction? Maybe it’s there. Maybe it’s not. That’s not my story today.

My story is about a couple very dear and close to my heart, and the day they called to tell me that their 5th child, the baby she was carrying, had an irregular ultra-sound and would we please pray. Of course. And then the conversation turned to the quite dramatic medical diagnosis, the shocking news that the obstetrician recommended an abortion, and their plan, which wasn’t much of a plan. You see, all they were going to do was trust God.

That’s all. Not much, right?

Trusting in God’s plan was the right thing to say, but to really have the conviction? I know I didn’t have it at the moment. Still, I prayed with them. For them. For the baby. For some consolation and insight and understanding and strength and peace. And everything else that occurred to me. You see, they asked for prayers to learn what they had to do for their child. They never asked for a miracle to “fix” the grave and frightening realization that a  lobe of their child’s brain had not formed. It was a profound lesson in faith, this trusting in God’s plan and then working with it, instead of begging Him to change it.

The prognosis was hopeless. She’d have a miscarriage. She’d be stillborn. She wouldn’t survive the first 24 hours. She wouldn’t survive her first month. Every milestone that parents look forward to was always cast with the pall of death.

And yet, they chose life. Every. Time.

You might wonder what happened to that baby. I just spent the weekend with her. She’s a delightful young woman, very smart, very athletic, very … full of life. And capable of kicking some ass in this tough world everyone thought was going to own her.

Everywhere she walks is a march for life.

 

in which we laugh. heartily.

What is it with me and staying up all night talking?

For the second time this week I talked into the wee hours with a girlfriend — this most recent time, it was my sister. Long after our husbands fell asleep. John, at least, went to bed, but Alex fell asleep on the couch while she and I crowded into the love  seat and laughed. Loudly. Dare I say we laughed out loud?

There were just too many stories to tell. We get that gift from our mom, who is the best story-teller in the world. She’d be the best in the universe, except that she rarely gets through the story on the first go because she has a tendency to crack herself up before she gets to the end.

Anyway, Mom’s storytelling has taught us a great deal, and it has less to do with weaving a story well, and more to do with the attitude with which she approaches life. Thank God for that because I can’t tell a story without getting distracted and going down a multitude of  sidebars, back stories, and wild tangents (clearly, I get that from her sister).

The stories matter, of course. They are wildly entertaining and very funny, but there’s also some lesson to be learned. At the very least we can learn how not to do something that turns out disastrously, or we learn some grand moral lesson.

The best stories, though, have no discernible lesson beyond the simple sharing of an adventure, and the guffaws that follow. Those are the stories that family myths and legends are made of.  Our mom finds the comical in everyday events and turns them into little moments of joy worth sharing, and that, perhaps, is the greatest lesson of all.

She’s taught us, by example, that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously. That life, even when it seems hard and difficult to maneuver, usually has some little grace attached that shows us things will be all right.

And that, my friends, is nothing to laugh about.

just wondering

I think that the worst thing that can happen to a writer is to be misunderstood. To put something “out there” to be read that has some great meaning for oneself, and to have somebody go down some random lane and not get it.

Sadness.

That’s probably worse than being ignored. No. It’s definitely worse than being ignored.

Poor old Prufrock wonders, too:

It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

Also, I wonder if I used one space or two after the periods.

almost normal…whatever that is

I went to bed relatively early, and got up, if not quite making it at 5 AM, well, closer to dawn than I have in weeks. Tomorrow, God-willing, I return to work, and perhaps more important for me, I return to some good habits I let fall by the wayside. It’s a new day, as they say.

Who are they, anyway, always putting in their two cents where my life is concerned?

Well, one of them is St. Paul, and his advice is clearer than anything I’ll pick up from the anonymous they:

…it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness (and) put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day….But put on the Lord Jesus Christ….(Romans 13:11-14)

So I sit in the silence of my kitchen, enjoying an aromatic cup of fresh-brewed hazel-nut coffee with a splash of cream, staring out the window at the stubborn remnants of a crazy little snow storm.

My backyard, full of unmelted patches of snow, reminds me that perhaps I am like that. It’s just a regular yard — perhaps a little in transition. We fenced it for our dog, starting a continuous project of clearing and cleaning and prepping that seems endless.

This morning, I see it as a metaphor for my life — each season has wreaked havoc on the yard, bringing with it the dramatic changes that ultimately renew it and give it beauty, repeated again in the new seasonal changes. It’s always the same yard, right? But also new and different.

These days it’s looking a little tattered and in need of some work and we’re not even done with winter yet! The snowy blanket that covered my yard for almost a week changed the landscape, though. It didn’t really change anything about the yard — it’s certainly the same one, but made so much more beautiful — so much more gentle and inviting. It didn’t fix the places that need my attention in the Spring, but it softened them, drawing attention to the need but at the same time, gently re-forming it so that the entire effect is dazzling.

I thought about what Paul might have meant about putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and how He can transform us.

a lull in the insanity

So here I am lying on the sofa in a very lived-in living room  [read that there are little piles of unwrapped gifts scattered about in territorial piles, not to mention scraps of wrapping paper that we missed] drinking some hot tea and enjoying the scent of a spiced apple candle.  The cuckoo clock is ticking away in the foyer, lulling me to sleep.

The lights are off, but there’s plenty of sunshine coming through the shades — enough to illuminate the room but not so bright that it will cut off the nap I’m about to have.  I love these lazy afternoons in winter, especially during the Christmas season when there are only two speeds: intense and laid back.

In fact, I’m loving me some laid back right now.

Tomorrow will come soon enough with a crazy road trip, but for now I’ll just let that clock tick away with its soothing heartbeat… I can feel the pull from Morpheus….

no pain, no gain?

I can’t feel my fingers on my left hand.

In fact, my entire left arm is numb — when it isn’t in excruciating pain shooting down from my shoulder. This has been going on for over a week and while the painful episodes are getting further apart, it’s difficult to sleep at night and drugged sleep is not very refreshing, so I thought it would be a good idea to sleep off the narcotics.

Note to self: drool is not a good look for you.

To my surprise I awoke to an empty house. Not that it was full to begin with, but the men are gone, leaving Suki to watch over me. She seems to know something is not right and is content to settle down around my feet, looking at me every so often and then resting her head back on her paws. It’s a funny vigil, hers. She can’t do a thing for me, but she nobly sits by, watching.  I think that Suki is sad for me.

Well, shoot: I am sad for me.

While I’ve experienced some seriously painful events in my life, lately I’ve been a lot like Suki, sitting by while someone else suffers, unable to do anything but hold vigil. It’s a pretty helpless place to be, especially for someone used to doing something about stuff, so to find myself on the injured list is…well…annoying.

Spending Christmas with a clipped wing isn’t exactly what I planned for, ya know? It hasn’t ruined my life, ok? It’s just slowed me down some, and then, of course, there’s the pain….

So I sit here in the big comfy chair icing my shoulder, staring at Suki staring at me and I have this little bit of a revelation.  I’ve been given this little exercise in pain-management and patience as a wondrous gift this Christmas. Oh, God, you know me so well.  The only thing that was going to stop me is a bazooka, right? It seems to me that the appropriate response is thanksgiving.

There’s much to be grateful for in this minor infirmity. Oh sure, it hurts like the dickens; I’m not going to deny that my eyes have crossed in pain over the course of the week, but whatever it is, whether it’s a pinched nerve or a tear in my muscle or tendon, it will pass sooner or later. It’s not that serious.

But it has stopped me in my tracks and made me think a little bit. About redemptive suffering, of all things.  It’s one thing to tell others to “offer it up.” It’s quite another thing to be the one doing it.

Sometimes we just can’t fix things, or will them better. Sometimes, we just have to suffer. It’s a mystery, this thing called the human condition. It’s complex and beautiful and varied, and sometimes dirty and ugly and full of pain, but still we are a part of it and we are all called to something in it. To improve it? To celebrate it? I don’t know — I’m not being flippant when I say that part is a mystery — but we are called to share in Christ’s suffering as a way to join Him, otherwise, how meaningless our lives and our suffering would be.

This downtime has given me no choice but to sit still, perhaps appropriately during an Advent that would have had me running around like a nut. Instead, I’ve had time for more reading, time for more reflection, and time to practice being gentler with myself and learning to be patient.

It has made me think about suffering in a different light, as a way to grow closer to Christ. In this season when we celebrate the coming of the Christ Child, it reminds me that His Incarnation was meant for something else — for our salvation at the hand of great suffering. If my suffering, however brief, has any redemptive qualities in it, it is this, that it has indeed brought me closer to Christ.