yes, I said Christians scare me (and yes, I realize I am one)

This post is not about Rob Bell or the backlash against him, or even about Ann Voskamp and all of the opinions on her book. Then again, it is. It's about all of that and so much more...

:::::

I am covering my ears. My headphones are even making them disappear, lobes and all.
I am choosing my favorite station on Pandora and all I hear is melody, blocking out the conversations around me in this place. All the people and the grinding of the beans and the boots on hardwood.

It makes me think of the way we do that, burying our heads in the sand, not wanting to hear or see what other people are experiencing, trying not to understand their perspective because we're just so busy with choosing our own songs, our own opinions, our soap box issues.

I grew up around religious people. I guess you could consider me religious but I don't really like that word. I have faith. I believe. It is what it is and I am who I am...a person tuning in to the things that lift me and guide me. I am trying to hear the voice amidst all the instruments, so to speak.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, the way we humans believe things. Arguing about it all isn't rare, so maybe I should be used to people judging and fighting over theological differences, but I'm not. It turns my insides and I turn up my volume to try to drown it out, just like they do over each other. We don't get anywhere, doing that. In social media, we can write soap box tweets and facebook updates and blog posts and then anyone can join in, voicing their opinions, duking it out. It doesn't ever seem to accomplish anything though, so I guess I'm not sure why we're doing it.

When someone disagrees with us, I think it makes us fear our own validity. We're all just so insecure and scared and so if we stay in our camps and hold tightly to our melodies, we just feel better.

I understand that the people who stand on soap boxes in the name of Christian truth believe they must. They believe it is their duty to keep people from believing things they do not agree are true. But here's my question: How can we be acting in love at all when we're playing these songs so loudly, and if something isn't coming from a place of love, where is it coming from? What is the intention? And really, are we getting anywhere by taking the time to bang and clang? By beating the drum of condemnation?

The real voice of truth is drowning in all of these clashing melodies. I thought of that because something is wrong with my actual headphones. The wires are all stretched so the melody is clear but the lyrics are completely muffled. I can't hear the voice. So lately, as I've come across more of this, these posts or sermons or remarks, it all makes me think a lot and then I think out loud here. These issues to fight over come up and then they pass, it all ebbs and flows, I suppose. And when it's flowing, I can't hear the voice. The spirit of love, the intention of grace.

:::::

Most of the time I write about my faith through story here. There's nothing really overt about it. I've only really blatantly professed my Christianity once or twice. I'm totally comfortable with that. It's actually quite purposeful, but I don't want to get into all the reasons why today. I will only mention one of those reasons and it is this:

Christians scare me.

Yes, Christians scare me, and yes, I realize I am one of them. I guess I'm referring specifically to those Christians who bang their drums the loudest, each strike another blow of opinions, of "right," of frustration over anything that isn't played out as they see fit.

I am scared of Christians because I never know what kind I'm going to get and it is so rare to meet one who truly accepts me just exactly as I am, whether conservative or liberal, a drunk or sober, or whether I hold the exact same theology as they do, or not.

I am scared of how much it hurts when I'm talking to a Christian and it seems like all I can hear is a soft harmony, maybe like a violin and then screech! there comes a remark, a comment of harsh opinion that slices through the voice and cuts me or someone else down. I'm scared of how sad that makes me.

I can't figure out how to reconcile that kind of noise with the voice I hear in the stories of Christ.

:::::

I could live on melody alone, I suppose, but I don't want to live in bubbles with other Christians, all of us holding our viewpoints like a harmonica to our mouths, completely missing the point. I can't do that. That scares me the most, that I might miss the point, that I would never hear the voice.

Love. He said it with a clear voice, all accapella-like, when He left. It was very very simple.
But lately what I've been hearing is much like my actual headphones, muffling the voice with melodies too loud. It seems our wires are crossed and then this very simple truth--love--it gets so complicated.

As mushy and trite as it may sound, I can assure you that if we sat together, I would hear you and love you, no matter what you think or believe, where your fears and opinions lie, what melodies and harmonies you choose. I would hear your voice because it's so worth hearing. I would not cover my ears and blast my own safe songs because that scares me too. How would I learn from you and how would I hear the voice of love through you, if I'm not listening?

That is the Christ that I know. One who hears and loves, not one folded down to fit in a box, muffled, to be stood on, to be used to support our viewpoints, to have His words twisted to fit our opinions.

As I finish this post, I'm thinking and thinking and putting all my things in my bag. I'm getting ready to go, back out with all the other people with all their many ways. Suddenly the lyrics to the songs become clear. I can hear the voice, coming directly from the speakers, loud and clear. Because I took my headphones off.

open

empathy, sympathy, compassion
a passion for helping
and then...
empathy and sympathy and compassion
fatigue.

It's a dichotomy, isn't it? Being human. We care deeply for a while about a hundred different things and sooner or later there's too much or too little and we just grow
tired.

We stop leaning into the discomfort of trying and trying to help and to tell the stories of the hurting
and the poor
and we see the eyes of the orphan as we surf the web
and we turn our own eyes away to something lighter
and it is not fair to guilt us that way.

There's just too much.

But we can't stop talking about it
and we can't close ourselves off from it
because if we do, we're doing nothing
and even if we don't know that we still care
even while doing nothing
it hurts us to do nothing
and it hurts them to do nothing...
everyone loses.

:::::

I don't know how it happened, but some years back I became quite passionate about the human trafficking crisis, especially the sex trafficking of children, of orphans. Around that time, through the music and message of Sara Groves, I came to know International Justice Mission. Ryan and I then became Freedom Partners, financially supporting IJM's work to end slavery, trafficking and other injustices.

But that sponsorship and the support of two children through Compassion International is all our family is doing. We allow a small donation to be removed from our account one time a month and that's it...we call it good enough, and it's not.

What happens? What happens to this burning desire in me to do something? Is it apathy? Is it the business of life? Is it fear? Is it all of it?

It's all of it, for me, I think. Until I'm closed off, ears tuned out, heart turned off.

And then I'll hear a story and it will come alive because that's what story does to my heart. You know how stories wake us up...it's good. I hear a story through Compassion or IJM and I picture what happened and I think of that child
and that child feels more like mine
because that child is all of ours.

Every time the words from one of Sara Groves' songs--When the Saints are played-- "I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor--I see the man with a passion come and kick'n down that door,"
I cry.

And I'm jealous of him, that kicking man. I want to be him. I want to rescue that girl. I want to re-open.

:::::

Guilt is not helping...it never has helped me much at all, it keeps me closed. And I don't want to guilt you. I just want us to stay open. To free us of pressure and big scary thoughts that shut us down because we fear we can't handle helping.

I can't adopt...that's for other more patient and loving people--I'm just not that good.
So and So, THEY are that good, they must be so good, to be able to do that.
Maybe some day, but right now we're not like them.
I can't foster...that's terrifying and what about my kids? We don't have any extra money.

But maybe we need to stop scaring ourselves away with those big thoughts. Maybe our role is or starts smaller...everything starts with a small opening, after all. Maybe it's just one connection, one small idea, one small thought, one small belief, one small step.

What if I were simply open? Just open, to seeking and looking and watching and hearing. All of me open and starting to be ready for the undeniable message that I am needed and this or that way is exactly how I am needed?
No big decisions today...just a willingness, an openness, an awareness,
letting the next step
be the next small step
to open-hearted action.
After all, no child that needs us is asking us for perfection in the way we are led to help. Fear is asking for perfection, not that child. That child simply needs us, just as we are, with our buried passionate hearts and our love for them.

:::::

Have you heard of the Idea Camp? Please take a moment to click on over and check it out--I highly recommend watching the short video under "videos" on the right side of the events page. It will not only inspire you, but it will help you understand what the Idea Camp is all about. It's something different, something powerful, I just know it.

The next Idea Camp takes place in Northwest Arkansas on Feb. 25-26 and I really want to go. To imagine sitting with people who are full of passion, collaborating and living...it would be so good. If we're able to swing it, while I'm there, I want my heart to be open, to hear and give, to be inspired and to say yes.


"God has a plan to help bring justice to the world -- and his plan is us." ~ Gary Haugen (International Justice Mission)


COMMENTS ARE CLOSED. You know, so you can go meet the Idea Camp.

fully alive

This post was originally written on January 19th, almost a year ago, and on the day before I quit drinking. The experience described in this post was a catalyst for change in my life. Because it's true, what are we here for, if not to feel fully alive? To take risks and let go...to strive and overcome...to find ourselves wrapped up in the journey while we tell our truths and help each other. The moments with my boys in this post were just the taste I needed of all of that, and I'm so grateful.

:::::



We laughed until our cheeks hurt.

We burned down that hill like gravity itself with our coats and mittens crackling under the cold and we just couldn't stop laughing.

We bounced and spun and grabbed tightly to each other. We even face planted once, spilling off the sled in a pile, me on top of Miles on top of Asher. Poof! and then a split second of silence, the kind that holds a mother's breath while she waits to see if it will be the laugh or the cry.

It was the laugh that came. The very best kind of uncontrollable belly laugh, from both of my beautiful boys. A laugh that said I cannot believe that just happened it was so terrifying and so great.

We lay there, all three of us propped up on our elbows, laughing too hard to get up and feeling the ice cold of snow pushing through our layers. We looked at each other through tears brought on by laughing in the cold. We had done this wild and crazy thing on the biggest hill in the state park and then crashed and only we could know exactly what it felt like.


It was joy.

Again, they said, the very moment we came to a halt, every time. Let's do that again.

We're made to feel like that, fully alive. Like maybe we could even get hurt but the risk is worth the doubts and the adrenaline is a keeper of heartbeats and we just so badly want to feel them.

So that's what we did. We would feel alive like that and then stand and trudge our way back up so steep, legs feeling the uphill burn, huffing and puffing but not minding at all because of the expectation, the excitement.

Over and over we went and we were so tired when we slowly climbed back in the car.

It was so good. So worth every bump and grunt and huff and puff. So worth all the effort and strain.

To feel. Chilled and working hard and then riding the adventure for the sake of the joy.

~~~~~

"The glory of God is man fully alive." ~ St Irenaeus

Christmas Change

"Sometimes I ask myself to find words to defend the audacity of my belief in it all. And I guess I could...

The thing is, I wonder if people don’t want more than that anyway. More than scientific proof. Maybe we all just want to learn how to believe in miracles again...

The Christmas Story. Ridiculous and far-fetched, beautiful and believable, entirely necessary and deeply desired. We’re made for that kind of mystery..."


For more of this post, please visit Christmas Change...

comments are closed on this post

while Love goes

Christmas, for me, is about one enormous gift.

On 12/24/08 I wrote,
"I love to imagine the unexpected fulfillment of love that first Christmas, breathing for the first time in the manger. His love filled the air like a scent, and moved through the people who came to touch Him. Love was all around."

Today the boys and I were driving slowly through the dirty and snowy streets to make our way to a new place to eat. We were going to pick up lunch and then head home. I was going to take a break from opening the fridge and staring at its contents for too long, wondering what to make for meal 2 of 3 in this day.

I had my heart set on something fresh and healthy and it felt like a gift, to not have to make it myself. But the parking lot was full, very very full and so I drove through it to go around the block while hoping someone would leave an open space in the meantime. And as I drove I was thinking about other gifts, these amazing gifts I'm continuously given in my life, and the way that I deal with those gifts.

Why is it never enough? I thought. Because I've been in this funk and maybe it's just this time of year and how I've been reflecting on nearly a year of sober living and it's all so much and so heavy sometimes. There are Big Gifts, yes. I see them and I appreciate them and sometimes I still feel so...wrong. Or maybe like the other shoe is going to drop, that thing. Maybe I'm doing that thing, in which I wait for the shoe and shake in my boots rather than just relaxing and being...happy. Maybe it's that, I thought.

And then I said to myself, It's Christmas, it's here and I see the enormous gift and I see all these other gifts and everything in me wants to push it all away.

Why?

Then it hit me and I couldn't believe how simple and obvious it was.
I'm afraid I'm going to screw it up somehow. I'm going to trample on these gifts. I've been really really good at doing that in this life.

I do this thing where I start to believe that I won't do right by my kids or my husband, and I won't get this book thing to come together, never sending even a page to my agent. I'm going to screw it up, I thought.

I've always been so afraid of throwing away gifts because before life with my own family and then even after that gift, I threw away so much. I withdrew, that's what I knew to do. And old habits die hard and sometimes now I still withdraw and I coil up and turn inside myself and I can't look at anyone. I say, Wash your hands-I already asked you twice-wash your hands and Put your coat on-put your coat on-put your coat on-I'm not going to say it again-put your coat on. And I don't like the ugly in my voice and I think it means that I'm failing, that I'm screwing up all my gifts. I watch myself do so much trudging and I figure my value is dropping with every moment that passes in which I do not just buck up already.

But today as I drove around the block, trying to find my way to one small gift of food, I remembered the most enormous gift in my life, this expression of Redemption that came so small and it's free and I complicate it. I can feel it, this love so enormous, sucking the ugly out of the universe like a well-meaning cobra and taking care of me while it goes.

~~~~~

We're back home now and I've eaten my healthy and fresh. A small gift in a hard day. All my angst and hurt, my thoughts, they are prayers and I've been heard amidst the clamor. So in the next three or so days before the Enormous Gift Christmas Day, I'll be doing some metaphorical driving around the block, not turning in and away in fear, but anticipating and believing that there's a place of receiving, just for me.


from 12/24/08~
"He brought a love that only He possessed, one that most people had quickly forgotten how to live. It was the gift of all He embodies, a love beyond our comprehension. One that reaches past our despairing seas, pushes through our hate and anger, and fills us up with love. What a perfect gift."

~~~~~

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds:

"So I'm told, or so the story goes
the people he knew were less than
golden hearted
gamblers and robbers,
drinkers and jokers
All soul searchers
Like you and me
Like you and me"

His heart was full of love
love, love, love
love, love, love...
love was all around


Merry Christmas, friends.

grace packaging

I'm sharing some thoughts on chameleon grace over on the highway blog today. (The post is over there because that blog's focus is on faith and religion and thinking out loud about God stuff. Just.so.you.know.)

Here's a little ditty for your sampling. You know, so you can see if you want to go read it:

The foundation of my beliefs at their core are definitely Christian, and for that I'm not the least bit ashamed. It's just that I continue to try to reconcile those beliefs with how things are in the Evangelical Christian world of today and I can never do it. So often, not much of it makes sense to me. So often, Christians create their own version of something good by adding or subtracting, to align their religion with their opinions. I've never been good at swallowing that, and I've even been known to rant on and on and on about how much I don't like it...

You can read the rest (if you'd like), over on If Life is a Highway.

(Grandma, click on the words If Life is a Highway above and that will take you there. Love you.)

The post there is linked up with Chatting at the Sky today. Thank you, Emily.

mystery

Dr. P. has enormous hands. When we met him about two years ago and knew he would be doing Asher's brain shunt surgery, Ryan joked, How is he going to manage surgery on such a small head with those sausage fingers?

I watched those same hands I've come to know (and maybe even love) as they circled Asher's head at his check-up on Thursday. He knows what he's doing. He knows what he's looking for. He runs his pointer finger and thumb along the valve (shunt) on the right side of The Noggin and he pushes a little to feel for something I don't understand. I was right next to this big man and my boy and I was vacantly watching because the fear I have as Asher's mom always rears its feisty head in the children's hospital. I float through it all while we're there, holding more tightly to that small hand and staring in wonder at x-rays and the yellow tape measure always wound and pulled snug around my boy's crown, for the measuring.

Dr. P. is so smart and exceptionally good at his job. We are in really good (big) hands. Our Asher is a patient in a long stream of people knocking down the door to get to Dr. P. We are blessed.

On Thursday, Dr. P. ran his hands softly through Asher's blond hair and I saw his nails, short as short can be, bitten as far as possible, cuticles mutilated at every edge. And I thought, even the brilliant Dr. P. has something in him that needs out. Of course...

Anxiety, sad stories of children lost and grieving parents, never being able to have all the answers, pressure, information, schedules, questions, fear...

This week was long and hard and I found myself grieving, wanting, failing...sitting around with a house that needs so much and kids that need so much and I felt so inadequate. And all I could do was just sit, looking around at all the needs unmet, getting more frustrated that I can't take the edge off anymore. I can't disappear and zone out with glass after glass of wine. The TV doesn't work for me and sometimes books don't either. I'm left with too much thinking.

None of it would work to bring me peace anyway and I know that. I find peace mostly in one place these days--in the company (online or off) of fellow alcoholics.

I emailed Ellie and I said that I miss drinking, in that moment I did anyway, because it seemed the only thing I could do, and she said this sounded like good news because instead of living in fear that I might drink at any moment, I've moved on to grieving. This was a really wise thing for her to say, as usual.

Drinking doesn't feel like an option anymore and that is an ironic sad goodbye. I've moved on to simply knowing alcohol is not what I really want, but sometimes just wishing I could escape somehow, and that's normal. For everyone. But instead of doing that I'm just sitting in it, in the feelings, sometimes that looks like something close to despair.

It hurts. It sometimes feels lonely and so I don't know what I would do without the knowledge of a higher power. Because I'm a bit afraid of church, I talked to a pastor about his new one with a hope-inducing name--Open Door, this week. He said he's never met a person in recovery who didn't know for certain they were not doing sobriety on their own. He said that whatever the person chose to call it, they knew that something spiritual was happening outside and inside of them. He also said that he wished there were meetings for everyone, and that he thinks church should look like those meetings, unconditional and accepting. I liked that.

Then on Saturday morning I sat with fellow alcoholics and three of them got stoned...Let me explain. Three people received stones with 2 years or 3 years or 4 years inscribed on them in beautiful colors. And we celebrated with coffee and good food and we each talked about the journey of those getting stoned. And there was no way around words like redemption and miracle and grace and faith. We were all in that same place with all different backgrounds with religion or no religion and we were all using those same words.

Some of us have nails bitten short and some of us can't keep our legs from bouncing with nervous energy. Some of us feel shy talking in a group and some of us nervously chatter on too long. Most of us smoke cigarettes and many of us drink too much coffee. And all of us know freedom from it all is entirely possible, if only we let go and release ourselves to the journey, expecting only progress rather than perfection.

When we grapple with spiritual things I don't know that it's proof we're looking for, or even the answering of our questions...I think it may be that we're looking to trust ourselves with a mystery, to trust the possibility that there is something greater than us...we who think only about ourselves most of the time. We twitching, nail-chewing, broken and hurting vessels just waiting to be willing. Willing to be filled up with good, if only we'd sincerely take the leap.

I think maybe we don't know if we can surrender to an unknown spirituality that our minds can't grasp and so our hearts stomp their feet and ask questions that can't be answered instead. And then we try to wrap our personal feelings and experiences around that greater thing. I think God is so big and he keeps trying to throw off these strings we tighten around his ways and maybe all he wants of us is a bit of awe that he can do things like end my drinking with a love I couldn't escape.

Maybe it just starts there and then snowballs into this unbelievable miracle and it's mysterious so we pretend it just can't be so. We say coincidence and we say proof and we fight doing anything blindly until we see that we ourselves are the proof. Open vessels just waiting.


~~~~~

I found hope in a room of broken people, drunks and addicts of every kind, and I could not deny the way our souls string together and come alive with recognition and a deeply rooted holiness. We experience freedom and the hairs on our necks rise up with the words of our friends. We are healing together and we are traveling with purpose. God created us this way, so clearly in need, so that we could reflect his face behind those walls and in our worlds. I am floored by that. I am just...amazed. We are able to sit together and live out love. There are few masks, there is acceptance, there are tears and there is genuine laughter. This is church like church may never be...without condition.

There is this palpable spiritual movement in those spaces, one that makes us unable to live in disbelief. I haven't heard anyone put words to it because it's a mystery. We can't wrap it up nicely and we can't describe something our minds don't understand. It is not religion. It just is.

~~~~~

Dr. P. has enormous hands with fingernails bitten down to the quick. I have no choice but to trust him with everything he knows that I do not. There is no possible way I could fix my sunbeam boy with my will or my way or my knowledge. I have to let go and allow him to work even while I bite my nails and bounce my leg and believe in the mystery of his knowledge.

Faith. It goes something like that. Face to the ground. No other option. Knowing my weakness. Letting go. Believing...because the alternative hurts too much to consider. Trusting. Seeing it through. Awe. And then acceptance that the outcome might not always be what I thought I wanted, but it is always what is best for the mystery.

the whole story

We painted. For hours. It was our anniversary and the two short dudes were staying with Nanny and Bapa. Painting may not sound like a very nice way to spend a day celebrating six years of perfect wedded bliss, but there we were. (Actuallly, we like to work on house projects together when without the kiddos. We talk, we boss each other around, we take our time.)

Anyway. We were painting the kitchen and taking turns observing out loud how annoying it was that the paint didn't seem to want to be on the wall. Or maybe, it was the previous coat of paint that was trying to shirk off the new and better, brighter color. We rolled and rolled and brushed and brushed and the paint put up its fight, acting all see-through no matter what amount of paint was being slathered over it.

Of course, this was an analogy to me. There I stood, arm going up and down and back and forth, remembering the last six years of our marriage and how different I am now and how hard I fought the changes. Ryan asked me (not because he wants this, but just for kicks) what I thought our life would look like if we hadn't had kids, at least not yet.

I said that we would not have changed, grown as people, in the specific ways that we have. And then he said, I'm pretty sure we'd be having a nice time, but with something missing all the time.

Now, I'm talking about our individual journey here. It's not that I believe that every person needs to have kids in order to start to grow up. I don't think that. A person can grow in a million ways. It's just, in our story, our Miles and Asher play the part of new paint.

There is such a stark contrast in the before and after lives of having children. We went from a soft beige to a muted lime green, just like our kitchen. And what we were made of, from before, made it impossible to take on the new vibrant color easily. Our new skin, it needed smoothing and time before we could get comfortable in it, blanketed in lime. We have spent so much time with gaping holes of beige always opening up like old wounds. Most likely because they are just that, heart injuries that need healing before covering.

What I realized last night, while rolling paint across a glossy wall that refused to cooperate with its new satin finish, is that I've been just as impatient with myself and my process as I was being with the day's task.

I was glossy beige before my boys came along, you know? Pale with years of self, so much I'd never tried on. And it was as if I was drinking to keep that particular sheen, to stay the same, to fight the growth that rolled over me again and again. I was terrified of being changed entirely, comfortable in one part misery, two parts angst. So there was no other option for the power that is greater than myself, a higher power I like to call God. He had to drag me through a process that would bring me from a fiercely self-centered child to a woman on a journey through adulthood, brighter and never without the pale child underneath, but maybe even more attractive, glowing. He did that for me, not against me but despite me because he loves me, that's what I believe.

In her book, Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes, "In a word, alcohol is what protected me from growing up."

Alcohol was glossy paint for me, repelling the hard and good things of a grown up life.

I suppose a person needs to really feel the changes that life brings on its own terms, in order for them to stick. I spent so long repelling those changes, kicking and screaming my way through detour after detour, off-roads I dug up with my heels as I went along.

Some people accept the responsibilities, the roles of adulthood well, taking it all in stride and making up their minds to be 35 because, well...they're 35. Others of us feel too inept and broken to fully realize our space in time and life.

When that's the case, it takes us a while longer, but we're getting there, friends. We will go from a pale cream color with a glossy protector, to a subtle muted lime that knows its worth...we'll get there. It will be hard no matter what, but certainly easier if not kicking and screaming and detouring and beige.

I never would have dreamed that being lime could be this good. But it is, as I slowly step my way through this new space and time.

Hello, my name is Heather. I'm an alcoholic, but that's not the whole story.
Hello, my name is Heather. I have, I am, a pale child underneath this glow, but that's not the whole story.
Hello, my name is Heather. I'm trying on lime green and seeing it isn't half bad, but that's not the whole story.
Hello, my name is Heather. I am loved like a deep red and I know grace that is a flowing and endless ocean blue. Those are the only colors of life I know will always remain. And that's the whole story.

knees

I think back on it. Back before we moved, nearly eight months ago already. I think back on the difference and I compare for a while. I feel sick to my stomach for a while. Then I feel grateful for a while.

There was rarely anything that could interrupt my drinking routine. And if something came up, I almost always found a way. You'd be amazed at how there's always a way when your will is that strong.

But one night, after Miles had been sleeping for an hour or so and I was getting sufficiently buzzed, or trying to, anyway, he woke up with a cry. This rarely happened, and when Ryan and I went to him, he threw up and threw up and threw up. His sheets and pillow, his floor, his little blankie, everything covered in vomit.

I sprang to action and forgot my wine. I held him and cleaned him carefully in the tub. I talked to him about how it was going to pass. I explained how his body would tell him and then he could try to make it to the bathroom in time. I scrubbed the floor around his bed, knees to the hardwood, while Daddy held my sweet sick boy nearby. I stripped the sheets and started the endless task of barf laundry. I was unstoppable, as we mothers are.

Halfway through all of this, a thought rolled through my clearing mind, this feels really good. I had forgotten the wine, there was no time for it. I was more concerned about my boy than anything else. And I thought about the way that life works, the way humans are at their best when they're taking care of each other in love, forgetting themselves for a while. I wanted more of it and then felt the sinking feeling as I let the truth roll its words through my thoughts...I'm bound, I'm addicted, I take no time for anything else...every...single...night...and isn't it sad that I'm enjoying vomit because it's a break from the chains, a respite from myself?

All I knew was that I wanted more of this less of myself thing. I tasted an hour of freedom from my obsession and I wanted more but I had no idea how to keep it. I did that thing we sometimes do where I almost wished for bad things to happen so I'd be distracted enough to let go of my addiction. That terrified me. After all the hard things we had been through, and how my addiction had only worsened under stress, I even believed that lie. That tragedy would be the only thing that might take me out of myself enough to quit, that maybe something really hard would distract me just enough, keeping me away from thoughts of drinking. When the reality was that anything I could conjure up on my own would not save me, only help and treatment would do that. These attempts on my own would only bring me deeper and deeper into darkness because they never worked and oh the shame.

My thoughts and feelings were that twisted, floating out of me and out of control and irrational and deceived.

Now, I still feel the same way when something happens that has me leaping into busy action. I love it. I love to care for my short people, but the difference is that I'm doing what I need to do to love them without the pull back to something else, chains clanging to the floor with each step, only allowing me to go so far.

As I near 7 months of sobriety, I move ever so slowly away from my obsession, and I'm finally starting to believe that life will truly be better if only I never drink again. I'm learning freedom. A person learns freedom in a new life, that's the only way. We start again and we're so scared and then with each step we're lighter and lighter and lighter.

All I know to do today is the next right thing in love. This includes loving even me. That's the hardest part. When I want to tell myself I'm failing, not good enough, a terribly wife, an unpredictable mother, a failure at so many things...I have to stop. I have to stop. The chains of those lies are just as heavy and hard to quit as booze.

I have to fight for myself like I fight for my boys. I need to love myself in a way that loosens my chains, knees to the floor, scrubbing myself clean of fear and insecurity. Because there are these thoughts that cripple me and leave me lonely and comparing and coming to the conclusion that I dont' measure up.

Truth be told, friends. I'm terrified about this whole book thing. I'm afraid I won't find the words and won't be able to put them in the right order. That I'll disappoint a very supportive and encouraging agent. That my beautifully talented co-author and friend will soar and I will sink. That I will not have enough time for my husband and children and they will suffer for it. Etc. Infinity.

Lies like vomit to clean sheets, covering my mind and heart.

I want to be done with them, and so I will clean house with those knees to the floor, begging. And I ask you kindly to throw up some rainbows on my behalf...thoughts and prayers that my confidence and creativity will come, slowly, as the chains of these lies drop from my ankles, left behind.

I really want to leave them like the wine.

need

I need willpower. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I know what I need. I can rise up in the morning and tell myself, today I will do the right things, and then I believe I will reap the rewards of self-discipline and self-control. My intentions are so good that I believe I'll do it all (and more) and then maybe I'll feel more peaceful.

As if everything works like checks and balances and tit for tat and punishment and reward.

Do 'A' - Get 'B'

I need to believe in grace because I can't believe A gets B because so often I get a really good B without finishing my A, without following through or doing my good-intended right thing. Grace isn't fair in the best possible way. Grace does not fit in a box, but it remains in all things even though it blows my mind like galaxies do.

I need creativity. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. And so I tell myself I will write from my heart-gut and I will read the words of artists and scour the etsy for beauty. I turn up the sound on music that settles my heart and then I believe I'll feel peaceful.

Most of the time, I'm interrupted, unable to do what I set out to do, unable to focus. And somehow, the beauty is always rising up all around, inside and outside the deafening noise and blinding light of home life with small boys. It's in them and on them and in me and beyond us, like galaxies.

When people say "Higher Power" that's what I think. I think of something beyond and in and on and above and below and never needing food or water or rest but always needing to redeem broken things and to love.

I need God. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I try to hear his voice and see truth. But most of the time, my mind and heart don't match. My mind runs and settles down my heart, covering it with the lies of man-made Christian systems that steal the grace and joy that a God-Man brings, twisting it up to fit a box.

I need acceptance. The knowledge that I'm still good when my willpower fails me again. The acceptance of myself, just as I am, right now. The acceptance of life on its own terms, that whatever life is doing, it is not out to get me, because of the under and in and on and beyond.

I need to be accepting in the same way I must accept and forgive myself.
I need to forgive the systems and the people who tell the lies because they cannot help what they do in their fear and confusion that leads them to unacceptance. They need too, and then they grasp.
~~~~~
For so long, I got up day after day, trying to ignore the reality that by late afternoon I would inevitably throw in the towel and reach for wine, hoping it would fill the need, every need. I was hungry and thirsty and needed a place to sleep. And always, always, there was still that spark in me, holding on and hoping for me, being the grace that's under and in and around and beyond.

When I stopped drinking, I did not stop being hungry and thirsty or needing a place to sleep. But when I stopped, I uncovered the always-gasping-in-me spark, to see that beauty was still there, in a mercy flicker that never snuffed because the in and on and beyond never stops.

I can't stop being hungry or thirsty or needing a place to sleep. I need.

I need to stop fighting that I need.

Help, I will say, and then the flicker will reach up, find air, and spread so I can pass it on.

I will be grateful to need because we all do and fire is contagious and I want to give it to you and to her and to him and to them. To help in any small way that I can.

And then I'll feel peaceful.

P.S. I wrote something in response to a "talk" I heard last night that got me a bit riled up. SO. What I wrote is a response to that and it's titled, "The truth is, most Christians think alcoholism is a choice." Check it out if you'd like. Thank you.

More

I read something last night. It was written by a woman who struggled with alcoholism like I do and it said that when she drank to enjoy it, she couldn't control her drinking, and when she tried to control her drinking, to drink less, she didn't enjoy it at all. Seems kind of obvious that this would be the case for an alcoholic, but it takes most of us a really long time to recognize this reality.

I thought about all the times in my life that I could, for one reason or another, only have a couple of drinks at a time. Maybe it was in the presence of non-drinking people, or we were about to go to a movie, or any number of things. And I realized how true it was, that I would get so uncomfortable with only a couple of drinks. I didn't see the point in that at all, ever. If I was going to drink, I was going to DRINK, you know?

And when I had the freedom to drink in a way that brought me what I thought was enjoyment, it meant that I could not, would not, be able to control the amount. If I tried, I was frustrated and miserable. My head would stay in only one place, thinking more more more I want more now I want more. I'd be so unaware of whatever experience I was having because my head would stay with alcohol.

After years of my brain taking this particular route of thinking, I'm realizing I have to be patient with myself...it's going to take a long time to re-train my brain. When I see a woman sitting on a porch, reading a book, what flashes through my head is that her experience would be better somehow with a glass of wine...or seven.

It's frustrating to have those thoughts, while never having even two drinks.

The pleasure center in my head still beckons to light up. It stomps its feet and fidgets. It just doesn't know what to do. It wants something to look forward to, something to consume with no control. It wants.

As I continued to read this alcoholic woman's story, I saw myself more and more, even though many times I wonder if I'm really even an alcoholic at all. (That's another thing the alcoholic mind does all on it's own, cunning and baffling.) When she said that she was always a caretaker, always striving to be perfect and even being seen as perfect by everyone around her, I understood. And it hit me in the gut when she said that the first time she got drunk with a group of other drinkers, she finally felt like she fit in, like no one expected her to be perfect anymore. She felt flawed and rebellious and totally accepted.

Me too.

And to be honest, the only time I've felt that way again is at a meeting with people just like me. There is no place like it on this planet. None. There is a circle of complete and total understanding, a passion for grace in the eyes around the room, and power in transparency. It is redemption and I am just me, flawed and rebellious and accepted. Like no where else. It is much better than the acceptance I found when drinking in bars and over bottles of wine with friends.

It is authentic and pure and good. My sick alcoholic thoughts make perfect sense to the people with nodding heads around the room. Grace takes on human form in those rooms, embodied in my fellows and leaping down my throat. It wraps itself around my insecurities and sets me free.

I think this is how it's supposed to be, and I wish it were this way everywhere. But then, I suppose the experience would become too common and lose its holiness.

As a believer in a God who supplies that grace in our struggle, I am starting to see that this is how heaven will be. We will not sit on clouds, bored, playing a harp for all of eternity. No, we will sit in circles and feel free, never pretending, already perfect with our pleasure centers always lighting up in a constant glow of true joy.

Too much? Lofty? Unbelievable? Idealistic? Insane?

I think not. Because I've tasted it here and I am made to want more because there is more.

The whole

I finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller on Friday. Then on Saturday I went to pick up his latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. As Anne Lamott says, "I love Donald Miller. He's a man after my own heart."

I'm going to have to paraphrase a line from Blue Like Jazz because I've already given my copy of the book to a friend.

There is no more powerful drug than the addiction to self. (Sorry, Don. I probably butchered that. That line I'm remembering was probably more poetic and profound and probably hilarious, because that's just you.)

Anyway. Of course I thought of this line on Saturday when there I was, with myself taking pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror for myself's profile pictures on the world wide web.

Ouch.

The thing is, I wasn't taking those pictures because I think I'm hot. Actually, it's more that I think I'm not. So if I can try for the right lighting and then delete all the photos that show the two furrowed brow creases and the bags under my eyes, I'll try. Because then maybe I'll somehow get just the right picture for my Twitter profile and for Facebook. But mostly I just end up thinking I don't measure up, and that's why I was taking so many pictures. And now I'm only sharing this handful of the eleventy-gillion I took because these particular ones don't make me look like I have 3 chins like the deleted ones. And still I was looking at the ones I kept and thinking ugh. And I was thinking that I look almost 35 because I'm almost 35 and also that I need a haircut. So then I edited the pictures a lot on Picnik. So this isn't even actually what I look like.

It's only fair that I admit that, right?





As my wise and lovely friend Maggie said more eloquently recently, trying to walk through recovery from addiction while blogging is tricky, and I've been struggling with that too. When I read that line in Blue Like Jazz I realized that we are all walking that fine line. Yes, it may be a little more clumsy for those of us recovering from an addiction to substances, but I think all of us are here trying not to appear narcissistic.

But one of the hardest things to admit and then change is the fact that we are.

If we're not grandiose, thinking we're smarter or better in some way than other people, then we're self-deprecating and insecure and trying to act like we're not. Either way, we're dealing with a twisted form of pride, a self-focus that leaves little room for truly caring about other people because it's so exhausting. I don't mean just bloggers and I don't exactly know how to fix it, but I really want to try.

I've come to learn that I'm powerless over alcohol and I have to think that or speak that every day as a reminder. But what really makes recovery hard is the very thing we're all dealing with. Learning to accept that we have to do the very same thing with our very selves. I'm slowly learning that this is what will get me through, this is what will help me recover: Admitting that I'm addicted to myself and then praying for that addiction to be lifted and replaced with humility that isn't defined by insecurity, because that's not true humility anyway.

These are things that I knew, but I really didn't. I don't know that any of us can truly grasp just how focused on ourselves and our lives we really are, soul deep. Mentally, physically, spiritually...all parts of us pointing toward ourselves and our lives. It causes us so much pain and gets us all tied up in messes of our own making. I think this is why I'm a Christian. I believe in this God-Man who sat with whores and cheaters and drunks and saw through, soul deep, and He just wanted to listen and love that person and tell them true things about that love. They could stop thinking so much of themselves or so little of themselves because they were seeing in His eyes that they were free because of Him, somehow. Being next to Him makes it hard to stay self-addicted because He wasn't and isn't and that is powerful and contagious.

I'm a Christian because I love being next to Him, to Grace, to Love. And so often I forget to sit down next to Him because I'm just so busy thinking about myself.

And now I feel insecure and funny about sharing these photos and more thoughts about my faith. Because I don't want to be seen as narcissistic or the stereotype of a Christian because I'm not. And then again I am, I guess. But only in parts. I'm glad that the whole of me is greater than the sum of its parts, and that the God-Man I believe in sees me as the whole and that He has no problem sharing His perfect humility. I need to go sit by Him and ask for it, because without doing that, I'm powerless over my self addiction.



COMMENTS ARE CLOSED. (I always love what you have to say, but today is just simply a 'closed comments' sort of day.)

P.S. I will be thinking about Blue Like Jazz for a very long time. I'm certain it will be added to my list of favorite books ever. So I want to say thank you to Donald Miller because his words hit my heart at just the right time. His "nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality" put words to so much of what's in my heart and I'm so grateful. And he made me laugh out loud a thousand times, and I love that.

(And no, I'm not being compensated in any way to say that.)

(I get nervous about writing about my faith here and this is why.)

(The End.)

Peanuts

He is not a kid on a table or a boy looking up at his Mommy for a hug.
He is Snoopy and he's on his dog house and he can't wait to fly a plane with a cape.
He is pawing at Charlie Brown, begging for a treat.
I'm Charlie Brown.

This is fitting because I have a really hard time figuring out how to grow up.
I trust Lucy over and over and end up flat on my back while she laughs.

I have the imagination of a child and sometimes, when I should sit up and learn something,
it's like my teacher is going 'wa wa wa wa wa waaaa.'
My brain is too busy to take these lessons to heart.

I'm always thinking, just like that boy of mine, never taking things at face value,
always digging deeper. And at the end of the day, we're both terribly exhausted, the world finally dimming down, hiding at the loss of light, taking cover in the shadows.
The 'wa wa wa' becomes a slow and soft whiiir but never stops.

We rest fitfully, clenching and grinding and tossing and turning, vivid pictures dancing through our dreams, and then we're up again to a world that's blindingly bright because we take it all in, every detail, the slightest twitch of face easily read-she's sad, the softest of sounds too loud, echoing.

We feel it all in the deepest parts of who we are until we're too full to feel anything at all.
We are overstimulated emotion addicts gone dry.

I am so busy taking it all in and processing every part. He is so busy taking it all in and processing every part. He is perched on his red roof in the sun with eyes always wide open, not remembering to squint, and I am running and running and then kicking at a ball that isn't there, up and over I go with a thud while the thoughts continue to swirl.

We are Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

"...and for you and myself I will pray, let our weakness become our strength." - A lot like me by Sara Groves on her album Station Wagon-songs for parents

Nothing

I was in church, for Easter, and I felt nothing. I have been feeling guilty for my lack of feeling in church my entire life. It isn't that I don't like church, at least not most of the time. It's something else.

My emotions over the things of faith aren't triggered in a place of worship often.

But as an aside, you should know that they are triggered here...

Easter2, originally uploaded by Heather of the EO.

In the changing landscape of a Midwestern spring. In the face of a boy I was once worried I may not keep. My soul wells up with hallelujahs on a daily basis, in the ordinary things of life. I carry those praises along in my heart and when we go to church, something happens to them. They go quiet. Sure, sometimes I have a moment, a certain song or words said at just the right time to bring a lump to my throat or to cause me to grab a pen and scribble down an aha moment. But for the most part...nothing....(continued)

If you'd like to read more of my thoughts on faith and church- including why I think my hallelujas "go quiet"-head on over to If Life is a Highway. (No pressure. If church-talk isn't your thing, I understand. But please know, I'm very honest about my struggle over there, so if you'd like to think with me, click on over.)

COMMENTS ARE CLOSED. (but they are open on the Highway blog.)

Comfort

"Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That's why it's a comfort to go hand-in-hand."

{Emily Kimbrough}

Motherhood has shown me how little I know about much of anything. It started right away. I thought I would know exactly what to do {pffft}, but I second-guessed everything. So much of the time, this unknowledge loomed over me, past and present and future. I knew instantly that I desperately wanted control of everything and I had control of nothing. It was terrifying. To fiercely want to protect while feeling so helpless.

Sometimes it feels like all I've done since we had our boys is stand in one place trying to figure things out. Thinking about how to do right by them or fix this or that while all the clashing thoughts bounce around my head and heart. Most often, by the time I work through the mess and come up the best possible response, the moment has passed. The child has moved on, feeling better or not, issue resolved or not. Life does its speedy thing and I'm the only one still standing there.

Motherhood, like sobriety, is humbling in the best possible way, because it forces me to reach out for help. It demands that I ask for peace and then for the healing of even the things that have already passed by while I stood there, numb and worrying.

I'm slowly learning to stand and worry less and to trust my gut more. I call it my heart-gut, and I may not know much, but I know God speaks there. I also know I will always be there for my boys. I'll be there, asking for help and giving it, moment by moment. And even when I stall and stand numb with life whizzing by, I have these things to wake me up to my need. They are sobriety and motherhood, so tangible it's as if they actually reach out a firm hand and give me a good shove in the right direction. In the direction of help.

These two labels on my life are definitely looming and so big and also gifts. I am a mother and I am an alcoholic. Those two words are reminders to surrender to today and to listen to my heart-gut. That is where I find comfort, and then give it to my boys.

I carry you

I Carry You~originally posted on June 31, 2009

I look down and my hand is doing that thing,
it's resting on my lap in a curve.

Dad, your hand was just this same way today, I saw it.
It was sitting there resting exactly like this.

Just like Grandpa. The same hand in the same spot.

Curved just so, fingertips to leg.
The lanky fingers that grow thicker with time,
they curve on the lap and rest.

I do it too and it's just like the unconscious way I run my finger across my lip like Grandpa Glenn when I'm nervous. Or how I grab the bottom of my shirt and rub my thumb across the fabric, like Grandma Helen. It's the way I care like Aunt Elsie and understand like Grandma Colleen.

It's the way I laugh like Aunt Sandi and cry like Auntie Kay.

Today I'm thankful that I carry you, all of you.

My family.

Today, I'm thankful for you.
The man with the curved and rested hand and skin like leather
turned brown from the sun,
all the working in the sun.

The one who still says I'm the greatest
and falls in love with my boys
just the way that I do.

The man with the heart so big.

I carry my family.
I carry you.

I love you,
Dad.

Happy Father's Day.
~2009

~~~~~~~

Today

He quit drinking when I was very young. Just like that, proving that he could, fiercely. Years and years have passed and he's never picked up a bottle. I can't seem to wrap my mind around how he did it. He said not to do it like he did with no meetings and no treatment. That's not the way to do it, he said. Get help.

I listened.

That first day, two months ago, we sat him down and I cried and I said, I can't say it, I don't know what to say. And then minutes went by and I finally said it, I have a problem and I drink too much. I wasn't worried about his disappointment in me, I knew that wouldn't be there. But I was worried about his guilt. I would never want him to think, I gave this to you, because he gave me so much more than this.

I carry him and I carry me and I carry my boys. And we are not a family of alcoholics first. We are people and loved first. People with a greater capacity for giving that love because of this, this broken down part of us that shows us we're all the same and then reminds us to accept people just as they are.

In the end, strangely, this is a gift. And when I get scared that my boys will live it out next, that the chain reaction of lifting the glass will not end with me, I have to remember...my Papa, and me, we're both okay. We are fighters. God pulled us to our feet so we could walk through it and out of it and he can do that again.

But of course, I beg and plead. Let it skip them...please please please, let it end with me. Help me show them how to be free, with my life, just like he did.

Yes. I carry him and he showed me how to be free.



It's not his fault. It's not my fault. It just is. Like curved fingers, resting just so on our laps, worn from the years and still beautiful because they're carried through to the next generation. The way they show our sameness and shout that we belong.

Like an author's final masterpiece, we need the messy parts of the story to bring us to a richer place. Redemption. We move on from there, people ready for the next chapter because of the painful growing up of us, carrying each other.

The stone

I was thinking about everything, the fact that I found myself in the vice grip of alcoholism, and the fact that quitting is good and hard at the same time. I was thinking about remorse and regret and redemption.

It is all so big.

And then I just set it down. All the thinking, like a stone I'd been lugging around.

kerplunk.

There is no figuring it all out in one day, I said to me.

So I played myself a song and I sat with it. Just sat with it.

The next thing I knew my arms were above my head and I was dancing a bad 80's dance right here all by myself, stomping and even spinning. I shook it and I sang louder and louder and I didn't care about anything.

It wasn't until the song was done that I thought even one insecure thought like, This must look ridiculous, what if the neighbors see me through the window? I just didn't. I was feeling too light for that. Like when you slip or trip on the sidewalk and all you can think about is catching yourself. And it isn't until the moment passes and you've found your balance that you have the wits to look behind you, sheepishly checking to see if anyone was there.

The dancing was like that, my body too busy to pay time or fear any kind of attention.

Here I am, this girl. One who believes with all of her soul but sometimes not her mind and heart that God is really actually totally and completely who He says He is. That He is all things love and that He's here despite the mess and because of it.

Here I am this girl, but I've never in my life felt freedom void of insecurity like that. Sure, I've danced a thousand times, at school dances and bars and weddings and in the kitchen with my boys. But this just felt different, more joyful, and maybe even holy.

~~~~~~~

It's as if there's always been a stone in my belly, churning me up and pulling me down. A thing that had me standing in church and everywhere else my entire life, looking out of the corner of my eyes with my arms crossed, afraid to trust the love that gently walked circles around my heart. That was me, always standing there, scared that I was somehow more irrevocably flawed than the next person. You know, so unique with all my faults and fears and mistakes that I would worry, at least at some very deep level, that I was the only person on the planet undeserving of unconditional love. And then the stone would grow in the pit of my stomach.

I was scared of freedom, comfortable in my uncomfortable skin. Addicted to the familiar trappings of my ruminating mind.

I quit drinking and then I saw it was all still there, that fear of never being good enough, that stone. But I can dance with it now because I finally know this stone is not stuck in my belly for good, and even if parts of it will always be here, I'm finally realizing that even that is okay.

Just own it and let it teach me something, you know?

~~~~~~~

That first night without wine, I did something that finally triggered a true commitment to really working at something, for the first time in my life, honestly.

When I kissed my sleeping boys, I whispered I promise you while tears dropped to their pillows. I've done that same thing again, every night since the first, smelling their hair while whispering those same words. I promise you. I am saying it even though that stone in my belly throws itself around when I do, and I start to doubt that I can really do it.

I'm saying it anyway.

For me, faith in God or myself or anything else takes a kind of getting lost, while I still don't understand it. Like those unsure and sacred whispered promises in the dark, sometimes my head and heart aren't certain and yet I say it, I believe. It starts something miraculous when I do that, like the joy in terrible and holy dancing.

A month ago, I was tripping around and fumbling for balance, my arms out, my knees bent. Then I slowly and sheepishly turned around and there He was, standing on the sidewalk like the old friend that He is. And that belly stone, it sat still and quiet, afraid of that kind of love.

In that moment, my head and my heart ran to do some catching up with my soul, tripping and sliding and fumbling and caught.

"So Heaven meets Earth like a sloppy wet kiss
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest.
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
when I think about how He loves us..."

"If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking."

-John Mark McMillian

Courage me

Courage me.

I say that like I'm at the bar, beer me!

What is it, this courage? Maybe if it's been given to me, I should know. But I don't. Am I called courageous because I quit drinking?

Let me be honest. I don't feel very courageous. I feel foreign, like I'm learning the customs of a new culture.

I'm swinging up here in the corner of the room, watching myself walk around in a fog, not drinking. I said that in an email to someone still stuck in her web of addiction and feeling so ashamed in comparison to those of us who have quit. I told her that I've only gotten as far from the middle as to dangle from my corner perch, watching myself, this strange person who can't figure out how to be. That's where I am, just hanging there like a spider needing her prey, wanting it, poised and ready to feed her need.

So please don't think I have more courage than you do, friend.

Sure, I'm not stuck in that middle anymore, trapped. I did quit. But I'm still here in this web of me, good ol' addicted me. It's like a friend said, he may have removed the alcohol from his alcoholism, but he's still got a whole lot of the ism to deal with. Me too.

So yes, I'm holding on to my addiction even while abstaining. I'm holding on to it at least by a thread, not finding myself able to fully let go. After all, the addiction web is sticky and I've been in it for a very long time. If I do let go, I'm terrified this last string I'm connected to will break and send me crashing to the rock bottom I've narrowly avoided by quitting. So I'm allowing myself to miss the booze, to grieve it even. To think about it way too much just like I used to, until my mind and body are a little stronger and can figure out what else to do. I'm hanging here until I'm more prepared to say goodbye, and more able to see the good things in me. The good things that aren't of my ism. The things that are waiting to be lived out more fully and have been there all along.

The dictionary describes courage like this: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.

quality of mind or spirit

without fear

That kind of courage takes a long time to find, to learn. I don't have it yet. This whole sobriety thing demands it, but it's not there at first, at least not for me. To refrain from drinking is hard, yes. But once I voiced my need for help it was as if the option was taken away. No choice. Frozen. Stuck. Foreign.

Now what?

I was thinking about this on the way home from an AA meeting yesterday. About all of it, and I started to feel the mind and soul numbing exhaustion of this experience. I came through the door and kicked off my shoes. There was my family, on the couch, content and shiny beautiful to me. I watched Miles carefully oh so carefully construct his latest Lego creation. It amazes me, the time that boy can spend on these elaborate buildings and airplanes and ships, not following any kind of pattern or picture, just creating to the beat of his own drum. The patience he has for it and the work he's willing to put forth are simply astounding. The effort of his tiny fingers on tiny plastic pieces, matching colors, undoing and redoing until he's satisfied and content, until his masterpiece is just as it should be as he sees it. That's what he was doing, yet again, when I took off my coat and looked up, my heart hurting and my head pounding.

Daddy asked him, Oh are you rebuilding that?

He said, I'm not just rebuilding it, I'm renewing it.

And I thought, me too.

That is being done for me too, not by me. With even more careful care and determination than that of a child, and with a fierce love for a masterpiece creation. That's what I have to believe. That is what is being done here. Not just rebuilding, but renewing. And that will happen even if I'm still and cold like a small piece of plastic. And it will happen even if I'm just watching from the corner of the room, because that's all I can do right now. It will happen in this slow surrender.

The road from here is the place that I'll need that elusive courage from the dictionary. It is in the trip down from the web even after the drinking is done. Right now I can't muster the strength for that kind of courage. So I beg for it, courage me, and I know it will come. I will finish the descent from this web and join in, with time.

Riding the wind

Seven days ago, these glasses meant only one thing.

Wine.

Today they still mean wine.

But they also simply look like really cool empty glasses.
Shapes and colors.

These small shifts happen, they say, with time. Sooner or later these glasses will not trigger a craving. With time. One day at a time.

My feelings are shifting like wind, moment by moment some days, hour by hour other days.

I've never been good with waiting. I like to skip ahead, pass up the hard part, let's move along now. Stop feeling stop feeling stop feeling...

That just can't be the case this time. This is just too big.

So looking at those glasses today gave me hope, the way they were so kindly showing me that they look a little like something other than wine, even though they still mean wine, for now.

And strangely, yesterday's blustery wind also came bringing me hope. It was a completely nasty day, the kind of Minnesota day that causes most of us to duck indoors and stay there, looking out the window and muttering things like, why do I live here and, would you believe that wind....uff da.

The wind got me thinking about seven days ago, how I woke up in the night, sobbing. Because it was like a blustery wind coming in. I reached for my husband and spoke my secrets like gusts, catching his breath and mine. I did it like I had no control over it because I didn't, in that very moment, for no definable reason, I didn't.

It just happened and I felt like I was floating on the wind and watching, helpless.

I am so helpless right now, riding that wind. That's why I know I haven't done even one part of this whole quitting thing on my own. (Step 2, anyone? Step 2?)

The dark of winter was blasting through with that wind that night seven days ago, with those words spoken in the dark. It was pushing us toward Spring. It was there, with such a strength we couldn't help but be pushed toward light.

An email I got yesterday said, shame is like mold, it grows in the dark, but withers in the light.

That's what we were doing, we were moving the mold to the light.

I didn't plan it. I didn't even want it, but Spring came anyway. Before it could bring its light though, I had needed to feel that wind, to duck inside a while, shifting in the dark, tossing and turning and crying out.

We Minnesotans know full well we have no control over the weather, the shifting of seasons. We wait and we watch, we're surprised and we're not. We long for Spring. And it comes, it always comes, even when we least expect it.

Even when we don't reach out and ask for it or choose it. It comes.

Even when we've become comfortable in our misery, hunched over, backs aching and tight in the cold and the dark.

Even then, Spring always comes. And it leaves no other choice but to surrender to its beauty.

And then we begin to till the soil, and friends, that's hard work. Good, but hard.

Expecting the Absurd

Wednesday~December 23, 2009


It sounds absurd, believing in this spirit pregnancy and the coming of a Baby God to a small barn with the stench of cows. It can seem ridiculous to think that both the working poor and Very Important People alike came sandal-footed to see if it were true by starlight.

It sounds absurd.

I don't believe the absurd because religion tells me to (I brush my teeth religiously and still cavities work their way through my mouth every now and again). I don't even believe it only because the Bible tells me so (I have found a recent adoration for the Bible, but that was slow in coming, later than my belief in a stable born God coming to rewrite a story that would have had a very sad ending).

I believe it because I see the aftermath of this beautiful story. These eyes to see the never-ending string of holy are mine because of the absurd arrival of that Baby King. What I see is as miraculous as a spirit pregnancy. It is hope and joy in rubbled failure and regret. It is mercy.

My faith is a belief that there is a Source for the seeing of this.

If religion itself could keep away my decay and paint the world with hope that covers despair, I would consider myself religious. But religion can't do that. So I call myself a Believer of the Absurd rather than Religious or Conservative or Right. I am none of those things. I am just me with faith.

The seeds of my childhood beliefs burst through the soil and pulled toward the sun in the last ten years.

It became real and profound and good in a place as unlikely as a manger.

Church.

I hadn't liked church for a very long time and so I was there feeling nothing, waiting for things to start and expecting them to follow the usual routines of an empty kind of forced thing. And so I didn't expect what I got. I got what I'd never met and now expect.

What a stable child started was there despite my cynical attitude, my decidedly fed up with religion arrogance and the guilt-based teachings of many a past attempt at church.

I stood, arms crossed, waiting to be ashamed and frustrated. Expectant.

Then it hit me like cold air to the face, catching my breath and leaving me awestruck.

What is this? I don't know, I don't know, but this is how it should be, I thought. If only we humans could let it be this way all the time, there would be no escaping belief.

My soul welled up in response to it.

The music, the culture, the people and the very place were alive with it. The sanctuary was pregnant with it, this rush of love so thick and so real I could not escape its welcome suffocating. It was not forced or fake, it was simply life-giving and affirming and as real as the nose on my face. An unconditional and accepting nose.

It was absurd to a jaded girl like me, this feeling I can't explain, one that only comes from real love being acted out as it should be.

What started my tears was the children's choir, the way they swayed with culture, differences, voices high and low and off-key and on and yet they were all the same. They were joy. They were thankful. They were praise. It couldn't be contained, this deafening beautiful thing from small hearts.

One of them, she was maybe around twelve or thirteen, she stood on the end with the others, the younger ones of ten and five and six. She sang and her face lit up the place as she swayed with her own baby belly sticking out like sin for all to see. Right there, up front and center, here I am, I'm a pregnant child and I'm fully loved, accepted, singing praises because I can.

I couldn't take my eyes off her.

It was absurd, this radiance.

And the swaddled baby 2000 years before? He is our source for radiant faces. A source of mercy and grace. A source of love.

The source.
. . .

We all are, I thought that day back then. We all are loved, all pregnant with our mistakes but not slaves to them because of a stable baby. Like the careful work of wiping a newborn clean, He does it. We're God's prizes and daughters and sons and it's so good.

And now it's here in my home all the time, this seeing of it. This suffocating love I can't escape. Bigger and bigger like a round expectant belly because of the belief in it, growing and birthing forgiveness from my children after I throw up my arms and yell from my lungs. It is here in the praise from my heart for all the many things that are of my boys. It reconciles the broken pieces of marriage and redeems the ugliest of actions. It gives me hope in dark and hard things where I sometimes can feel so suffocated by being so stuck.

It is not of me or of religion or of church.

It is all because a Christ baby came in a strange way for the purpose of making it so.

It was the feeling that must have been there that cold night in Bethlehem, the new thing for always, softening hearts and eyes with grace.

It is Him. And He is the best kind of absurd.

. . .

MERRY CHRISTMAS! I'll see you after we move house. Peace.