Effortless Effervescence

Good Lord, it’s been three weeks since I last blogged. Considering that I used to average 3 posts a DAY at the height of my bloggeer,* a three-week hiatus when my computer is in working order and I’m not laying on the side of a mountain buried under mud and sticks is just… freakish. I’ve been wondering what this silence means. It certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to say - my mind is still crunching away on all matters blogellectual** - motherhood, theology, politics, what’s happening in Season Six of Grey’s. And it certainly doesn’t mean I don’t want to share these thoughts with others. Rather, I think it has something to do with a little voice inside my head saying, “Emily, nobody CARES.”***

Let me tell you about Emily the Blogger, circa 2005/06/07. I was a “pissa.” I used to say that some people loved me, and some people found me overwhelming - and it’s true! Although my writing was oftentimes irrelevant, boring, or downright offensive, it was just as often funny and touching and insightful and controversial. My blog was personal - in both topic and tone - and it didn’t hedge any bets. Of course I wanted positive feedback, in the form of glowingly complimentary comments and a growing readership, but I also wasn’t afraid to lose readers because I was honest. I was well aware that you can’t please everyone even part of the time, so I didn’t try. I just liked to write, and I believed in what I had to say.

Why is it, then, that as I’ve transitioned to blogging publicly, I’ve developed this peculiar performance anxiety? Perhaps it’s the loss of anonymity, and the pressure I’ve put on myself to be more than just-another-gal-with-a-blog. I mean, I have Big Dreams for my website; I hope to launch a freelance art/design/copywriting/editing business later this year, so I’m aware of how aware I need to be of my online image and “brand.” I know (most of) the rules for becoming a successful blogger. I’ve done lots of research (okay, I’ve skimmed a couple of online articles) on using one’s blog to create an online following and leveraging that following into the coveted Golden Carrot that almost every wannabewriter is chasing: The Mythical and Magical Will-Make-All-Your-Dreams-Come-True Book Deal. (Also chased and coveted, as a means to an end: The Mythical and Magical Will-Get-You-A-Book-Deal-And-Make-All-Your-Dreams-Come-True Agent.)

And maybe that’s the problem. In the same way that every attempt I make to finish my Great American Novel or my Brilliantly Poetic and Touching Memoir swiftly chokes to death on the noxious fumes of fear and self-doubt, perhaps approaching my bloggeer with these same High Hopes is setting me up for failure. I’m so much more timid than I used to be. In my blogging heyday, I didn’t issue disclaimers with every post; I said what I meant to say, and if I hurt someone’s feelings, I apologized and left it at that. Or, I DIDN’T apologize, if I thought that what I said was valid and not-TOO-terribly-bitchy. I didn’t try to be all things to all readers, and at the same time I let my focus wander. If I wanted to write about something that tickled my fancy, never did I consider whether it would tickle the fancy of my “target demographic.” I just wrote.

This messy, take-no-prisoners approach did not win me blogging awards or a cult following. (I really couldn’t, since my blog was friends-only… but still, it’s not like I had the whole internet beating my door down.) In fact, I managed to anger and alienate more than a few people I ran into - a handful of whom I considered actual friends. That hurt, as you might expect, and it’s likely the number-one reason I don’t approach blogging the way I used to, as a means of expressing myself and making new friends. I don’t like drama, and I’ve worked hard to eliminate it from my life; but in doing so, it seems, I’ve eliminated some of my life from my writing. That is a problem-with-a-capital-P.

One of my favorite bloggers is on a quest in 2010 to get her groove back, and I’m wondering if I need to embark on a similar journey. Folks, I’ve become tame - maybe not in person, ask my husband, but certainly in my net-persona - and that’s just a gosh darn shame. That’s not who I’m meant to be. I was created to be funny and fierce… and embarrassing and over-the-top and exhausting. Dangit, I might be a For Real Grown Up now (31 years old, married, preggo, homeowner - YIKES!) but that doesn’t mean I have to be boring. Quite the opposite.

* bloggeer - noun, blogging career
** blogellectual - adjective, of or pertaining to thoughtful bloggishness; noun, a person whose blog is thoughtful and/or thought-provoking
*** This voice is sometimes referred to as the “internal editor,” the most critical part of your personality, who delights at tearing apart your creations before they’ve even begun to take shap. I’m not saying all artists are sufferers of MPD, but we ARE a weird lot.

You may have already heard about Brielle Garrison, the baby born last October without eyes. I just heard about her last week from a friend at work* and I’ve been thinking about her ever since. One of the big to-dos about the story is that Brielle’s condition was unknown and undiagnosed prior to her birth. Her mom, Taylor, had adequate prenatal care, including at least one ultrasound, but this rare condition is almost never diagnosed in utero.

Frankly, I’m a little weirded out by the media’s focus on the “Oh my GOSH, can you believe the doctors missed this?” angle. Perhaps I’m reading a little too much between the headlines, but there seems to be a subtle implication: “If only the mother had known about this ahead of time, she could have had it taken care of.” Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.

I don’t know what choice Taylor Garrison would have made if she’d known about her daughter’s condition ahead of time. However, I am encouraged by one of her statements to the press, because it echoes my own feelings on the situation:

“A lot of worse things could have happened and thank god they didn’t,” Garrison said. “I see her just as any other baby. She does everything any other baby would.”

She’s right on. Some babies are born without hearts or brains. A child whose life ends just as it’s beginning is a profound tragedy. Blindness isn’t a tragedy - it’s a disability. And a disability is not the end of the world.**

I think those of us who are able-bodied tend to forget that not only is it possible to live without sight or hearing or the ability to walk or an Ivy-League I.Q., it is possible to have a GOOD life without those things. People do it every day, and have done it for as long as human beings have existed. Some of us have overwhelming physical or mental challenges, but those challenges cannot keep us from enjoying life unless we let them.

I have never had to make the incredibly difficult choice of whether or not to continue a pregnancy after learning that I’m carrying a special needs child or a baby with a fatal deformity. One of the reasons I’ve decided to forgo many of the common prenatal screenings is that I don’t want to be faced with that choice. You know the old saying that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission? Well, I think it would be better - not easier, but preferable - to deal with a problem at birth, when all that can be done about it is to love my child as best I can. At least, I think that’s what would be better for ME - many other mothers would want time to think, to grieve, to prepare themselves before welcoming a differently-abled child into their family. Some other women may decide that they don’t have anything close to enough strength or patience to care for a child whose needs may, at times, be overwhelming. Those moms need as much grace as Taylor Garrison does - perhaps more.

This is one of the issues that makes the sharply defined lines between pro-this and pro-that blurry and gray. Regardless of what we each believe to be true and right objectively, most of us can think of a scenario that would challenge us to make a choice we’re not proud of. I’m glad that Brielle has a mother who loves her, who is grateful to have a perfectly imperfect child. And I hope that I will love my own child in the same way - without condition, with complete abandon.

Also interesting and heartwarming: another family welcomed a baby girl with a similar condition last year. Her parents are blessed to have a church family that has supported them and their daughter Faith from day one. Follow their story online at Super Baby Faith.

* As a general rule, I’d recommend NOT telling a pregnant woman about babies with rare deformities, because many ladies would FREAK OUT about it. Thankfully, I was having a good week, and I was able to think about the story rationally (very rare condition, probably won’t happen to my baby, and even if it did we’d all be just fine) but there’s no telling what kind of hormonal mess I would’ve been on an off week.
** I recognize that it’s really easy for me to say that a disability isn’t the end of the world, since I’m not disabled and I’m not a caretaker for anyone who is. However, I’ve heard more than a few disabled persons (and caretakers) express this sentiment: Dude, don’t feel sorry for me - feel sorry for someone with REAL problems.

In the past few days, I’ve seen the following status update posted by a few of my Facebook friends:

America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment - yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations. If you feel the same, copy and repost this.

My initial response was, “Amen! Isn’t it a shame that it takes a huge disaster in another country (or in the case of Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, another state) to mobilize Americans to help their fellow man? Why aren’t we doing more every single day?” But then I began thinking (my husband would say OVER-thinking) this issue of international generosity and how it relates to the problems in our own backyard, and I got a little worked up.

Yes, America is a hot mess, but I don’t think it’s because we’re so damn busy making life easier for everyone else on the planet. I think the problem is that we’re painfully stingy with our fellow citizens, often because we feel that they “deserve” the misfortune they’re experiencing. Most of us don’t agree with Pat Robertson’s they-made-a-pact-with-the-devil theory, and in our minds, the folks in Haiti were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and we should help them because they didn’t do anything to bring this on themselves. The less fortunate in America, though, are just suffering the consequences of their own stupidity, so why should we feel obligated to help them?

For instance, the hungry and homeless should just get a damn job already! They shouldn’t have been so stupid with their money. They should have saved more, and spent less on frivolous things. (You know, the same things we tell ourselves we deserve to have because we work so hard for OUR money.) They shouldn’t be too proud to ask family or friends for help, and shame on those friends and family for not having their doors open wide. Never mind that some of us would rather see our siblings sleep on the floor at the Union Mission before asking them into our home; our family situations are different, of course. And our house is much too small to open up to a friend in need! Our bank accounts are stretched too thin as it is putting food on our own table, so when the annual food bank drive gears up at our workplace, we donate the dented cans and expired boxes from the back of our pantries instead of buying a few things from the store that we’d actually consider giving our own children. We are careful not to make eye contact with the homeless man who hangs out at the supermarket around the corner, or better yet, we ask the police officer who lives down the street to do something about him, because he freaks our kids out. We protect and insulate ourselves from the very things we think someone should do something about, because we assume that “someone” can’t possibly be us.

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that they’re tired of working hard so that their tax dollars could support some lazy good-for-nothing (because, after all, every person on welfare, unemployment or disability is actually a con artist working the system for a fixed income that’s well below poverty level), I would have… well, a lot of nickels. I am not saying that there isn’t such a thing as fraud, or that our government doesn’t need to reform many of our social assistance programs, or that I am exempt from the line of thinking I’ve described in this post. I’ve used the pronoun “we” because I’m guilty of this peculiar stinginess myself, of thinking that what separates me from those less fortunate than I is shrewdness, a good work ethic, or personal sacrifice. In reality, the only thing that makes me different from a woman sleeping in her car tonight is blind luck. Rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous, after all.

So yes, it is a shame that people in our country suffer every day, that they’re not getting the help they need. So what are we going to do about it, America?

What are you going to do about it, Emily?

So I was walking into work this morning, chatting with a colleague. Somehow we got on the subject of kids, and I asked him how old his daughter is now.

“She just turned 22.”

“And what does she do? Is she in school or does she work?”

“No, she just got out of jail.”

This guy and I often joke around, so at first I thought he was teasing me. “Really?”

He laughed. “Yeah, really!”

“Aw,” I said, semi-joking. “You must feel like you really messed up.”

“No, I don’t! You don’t blame Jeffrey Dahmer’s parents for what he did, do you?” [I'd like to interject that I find it rather disturbing that he compared his child to a serial killer who ATE HIS VICTIMS. Unless of course his daughter was also a serial killer who ate her victims, but I highly doubt that if she's out of jail now.]

“Actually, I do. Although in crimes of extreme depravity - like serial killers - there’s usually an element of off-the-charts madness, there’s also usually an element of abuse when the killer was a child.”

“I don’t agree,” he said. “And let me tell you a secret, mommy-to-be. Some kids are just bad.”

So what say you, gentle readers? Are parents without ANY responsibility in their child’s crimes? If YOU had a child that chose a life of crime instead of being a contributing member of society, wouldn’t you feel - even a LITTLE bit - that you did something wrong?

Personally, I think there are a great many factors that contribute to a person’s development. I don’t think you can blame nature or nurture 100% - and certainly, a child’s peer group has a lot to do with how he or she turns out! - but without a doubt, some parents do manage to screw up royally when raising their kids, and the rest of society bears the nasty consequences.

Get out your soapbox, tell me I’m way off base - or that I’m brilliant and Oh So Right On The Money - and debate amongst yourselves, but please keep it civil.

By the way, did you know that Dahmer later claimed to have become a born again Christian? If that doesn’t test your beliefs of God’s grace, I don’t know what will.

(Photo credit.)

There’s more quick takes over at Conversion Diary. Check ‘em out!

Earlier this week, Jen posted seven lessons she learned in 2009 (I guess she really likes the number 7) and got me thinking about all I’ve learned and done this year. Bethany Hudson invited us to share ten resolutions for 2010 and I started thinking about what I want to accomplish in the year ahead. So this week’s Seven Quick Takes is going to be a little different, and it’ll be a two-parter. Today I’ll talk about the past, and tomorrow I’ll talk about the future.

1: It’s okay to feel angry/hurt/disappointed/sad. I don’t know where it came from, but I used to feel guilty for being angry with a loved one. I used to try to talk myself out of it. “She didn’t mean to do that. She’s under a lot of stress. I could have handled the situation better myself. I shouldn’t hold a grudge.” This year I realized - actually, I think it was actually a revelation, if you believe in that Holy-Spirit-woo-woo stuff - that being upset doesn’t make me a bad person, and it doesn’t mean I think the other person is bad. I gave myself permission to step back from relationships when necessary and deal with my negative feelings honestly. I think this lesson was very important in helping me in learning a lesson I’ve been struggling with for years: setting and maintaining boundaries.

(Photo credit.)

2: Along the same lines, I also realized that it’s okay to be tired, and it’s okay to rest. Getting pregnant helped with this - or rather, forced me to accept the truth of it - because for a period of a few weeks, I wasn’t capable of being ZOMG!productive. I could barely get through the work day and do a couple of chores before and after. By 7:30 every evening, I became a TV-watching slug; sometimes I just went to bed. I often felt guilty for not multitasking or checking things off my mental to-do list, but I was literally unable to function! So I let myself read for pleasure. I watched lots of movies. I ignored the dirty dishes for a day or two. I napped. And it felt GOOD.

3: God’s not done with me yet. I began 2009 thinking of God and Jesus in a very abstract sense, and with a lot of residual anger toward a nameless, faceless horde of people that I labeled, “THOSE kind of Christians.” While I think I came into that anger honestly (being spiritually abused will do that to a person) I hadn’t realized I’d become so hateful until I hurt someone I really like and respect, who happens to be a Christian. Though I didn’t think of her as THAT kind of Christian, she pointed out to me that my negativity towards people who shared her beliefs still hurt her, and that it probably hurt God. She also challenged me to consider what it is I believe in, and what kind of believer I want to be. It’s not enough just to say, “Oh, I’m not one of THOSE Christians,” because that just begs the question, “Well, then what sort of Christian are you?”

That was over six months ago, and I’m still not sure what the answer is. However, spending these months studying theology, reconsidering the things I’d dismissed as useless dogma of human invention, praying, discussing, wondering, seeking… well, it’s been quite exciting and a little scary. I’m not sure where I will end up faith-and-religion-wise, but I believe that God is at work in my life, that He has things to teach me and ways he wants to use me. That’s very cool.

4: I’m ready to be a mom. For years I’ve waffled on this subject. Do I or don’t I want to have children? Am I too selfish, too busy, too screwed up? Reading Rebecca Walker’s book Baby Love let me know that I wasn’t alone in this agonizing indecision. And like Walker, after feeling uncertain and a tad bit schizophrenic on the issue of children, I finally decided that yes, I’m ready. I may be selfish and busy and screwed up, but that’s never stopped anyone from having kids before. I wouldn’t let fear of my neuroses keep me from having the family I longed for.

5: Then I met my husband’s son this summer and realized that I already AM a mother. C.J. was important to me from the moment Jon and I started dating. I was intensely concerned with his well-being and prayed for his mom and dad’s difficult (sometimes VERY difficult) relationship. After Jon and I got married, I made C.J. a priority in our financial plans, and delighted in sending him cards and gifts throughout the year.

But it wasn’t until we spent a week with him in July that I realized - to my surprise and delight - that I could love someone SO MUCH without being related to him by blood, without carrying him in my body or even knowing him very long. I knew I still I wanted to have all the things I’d missed out on with C.J. - the hormonal craziness of pregnancy, the late nights and exhausted days, diapers and potty training, first words and first steps. If that never happened, though, it was okay, because God had given me one incredible little person to love.

6: If you’re going to “trust God” with something you REALLY want, be prepared for some surprises. And be prepared to find out how difficult trusting can be! After many months of debating with my husband about whether we could afford another child, we decided to “pull the goalie” in mid-August. I firmly believed that putting off inviting a new little life into the world because of money was dumb. Would my retirement fund snuggle with me and ask me to read it another bedtime story? NO. And I reasoned that if God wanted us to have a baby, he’d provide for our needs.

Besides, it could take us years to get pregnant, right? I mean, I’d been on hormonal birth control for nearly half my life. We’d just wait and see what happened, and “trust God” with the outcome.

I’ll tell you want happened: I got pregnant less that two months later. And I found out that this trusting God thing is a lot easier to say than do! My daily prayer (kinda wild-eyed and desperate as I try to figure out how we’ll budget when the mini arrives) is, “Lord, you wouldn’t have given us this child if you weren’t going to provide for him or her. So it’s up to you God - take care of us!”

(Photo credit.)

7: It is possible to have too many pets. But we didn’t let that stop us from adopting two kittens and a puppy this year. Even though we’ve spent many millions thousands of dollars on food and treats and vet visits, even though our living room furniture is embarrassingly stained and torn, even though I’ve lost five pairs of shoes and three books to the destruction of puppy teeth, and even though I haven’t had a week go by in Idon’tknowhowlong that didn’t involve cleaning up some form of excrement… I still love our menagerie. Somehow, the snuggles and laughter makes it all worthwhile.

Pretty girl!

Napping with Randall and Milo.

So tell me: what did YOU learn in ‘09? If you don’t know where to start in your reflections, take a few minutes to visit Michael Hyatt’s blog and answer his Seven Questions. (There’s that number again…)

Read Part I here.

I love watching TV on DVD – I don’t have to wait until next week to see what happens in my favorite characters’ lives, and I don’t have to deal with annoying commercials. (Pet peeve: how the volume goes WAY UP as soon as the station cuts from TV show to commercial.) My latest obsession is Grey’s Anatomy, which is addictively awesome in all the ways I like a TV show to be awesome: very realistic characters, bruised and raw and sometimes unkind; epic storylines with plots of epic OMG!ness, and lots of very attractive, very talented actors who manage to make an environment I will NEVER work in seem incredibly familiar to me. In other words, Grey’s Anatomy has managed to nail the human condition right on the head.*

While working my way through season three a couple of weeks ago, I found myself moved to tears during nearly every single episode. This may have had something to do with the pregnancy hormones, but I’m not so sure. It really was an emotionally wrenching season for the show’s main character, Meredith Grey, and I found myself “feeling her pain” even more than I usually do. One episode in particular touched me deeply – in a good/bad way.

In case you’re not a fan of the show, let me give you some background. Meredith is an intern at Seattle Grace Hospital; the show follows her professional and personal life, as well as that of her coworkers and friends. Meredith is a real mess (one of the reasons that I can relate so well to her) but by season three, she’s finally found some peace and happiness. Meredith’s mother, Ellis, is also a doctor, and was a brilliant surgeon, revered in the medical community, until she had to retire due to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Meredith clearly had a difficult relationship with her mother, but we don’t realize how difficult until one day Ellis wakes up, completely lucid, and she and Meredith pick up where they’d left off five years before – spitting the worst insults they can think of at each other.

Ellis is horrified to find out that Meredith has been “distracted” by a love affair and isn’t working harder to make a name for herself in the medical field. At one point she growls, “I raised you to be an extraordinary person. So imagine my disappointment when I wake up five years later and find that you are no more than ordinary!”

Wait, wait, wait. I can’t do this scene justice. You just need to watch it for yourself:

One would think that having a child become a doctor would be enough to make most parents proud – but Ellis Grey isn’t most parents. To her, good enough isn’t good enough. Professional greatness – at the expense of goodness in every other area of life – is the only thing that will satisfy her. Her own romantic relationships died painful, strangling deaths and her relationship with her only child is suspiciously civil at best and downright antagonistic at worst, but she doesn’t seem to regret the fact that she is slowly dying alone and unloved, because she was an “extraordinary” surgeon. Meredith knows instinctively that her mother’s worship of professional greatness is nothing short of pathological, but she cannot help but feel that maybe she has failed at life, by failing to give up love and friendship for the sake of making a name for herself.

Ellis’s abusive rage reminded me all too well of the times my former pastor would scream at us for imagined slights and innocent mistakes. For five years, I lived for his approval, hoping to figure out what God wanted from me by decoding my mentor’s emotionally manipulative behavior. I can’t imagine being raised by a parent like that; I’m surprised poor Meredith is even capable of interacting with other human beings without dissolving into a puddle of anxious terror.

There was a time when I believed that everything must be sacrificed on the altar of “greatness,” but that time is long passed - something that was quite clear to me as I watched Ellis unleash her hateful insecurities on her daughter. “Boy, did she get it all wrong!” I thought. “What a sad, pathetic person.” Perhaps I’ve healed, learned and grown more than I realized. Perhaps I’ve been transformed by this brand new person whose physical, psychological and spiritual health depends largely on me getting the hell over myself. No matter the reason, I was horrified at the thought of letting my career or my “mission from God” get in the way of my relationship with my family and friends. I made that mistake before. I’m not doing it again, dammit.

So what if my life is ordinary? So what if I succeed in being a good and loving person, but no one outside of my small circle friends knows my name – is that so bad? I used to think so, but I can’t hold onto that foolishness any more. Where I used to recoil from the idea of living an unexceptional life, I now recoil from the idea of living an unloving life. I don’t want to reach the end of my days I regret how I treated my child, or my husband, or my friends, because love is what makes a difference, a real and lasting difference, in this life and the next.

It’s quite clear to me now what the difference is between good and great.









* Another favorite show is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which goes even further by taking a fantastic, unrealistic premise (fighting vampires and demons in SoCal) and making observations about friendship, identity, self-worth, interdependence and morality that are completely relevant to the real world. Joss Whedon, I HEART YOU.

I used to think – or, at least, hope – that I was destined for greatness.

I had fantasies as an adolescent of being a famous actress (not much of a stretch, had I actually worked hard to hone my dramatic talents and went through the painful and ego-crushing experience of attempting to make a career in film or on stage) or rock star (ironic and impossible because I’m not musically gifted AT ALL) or writer (I began writing imitative stories when I was in just fourth grade; at the age of eleven I read Gone with the Wind and was convinced I’d produce an equally paradigm-shaking work of art by the end of middle school) or famous-by-association because I dated someone very talented/rich/intelligent/respected/yougettheidea. I believed that someday, someone would notice me, notice how special I am (cue The Pretenders), and call for the attention of the whole world: “Check out this Emily gal! She is something else.”

Some would call me a raging narcissist. I prefer to think of myself as a very sensitive soul who dealt with standard childhood rejection by escaping into a world where everyone worshipped me. And I don’t feel all that bad about it, especially since I know that world doesn’t exist and I’m (usually) content to live in the real world, where more than enough people love and appreciate me.

Speaking of raging narcissists, my Evil Ex-Pastor used to tell his minions that we were destined to do “something great for God.” The person who should have taught me the value of humility and selfless giving instead preached and modeled an intense self-focus that did very little to cure me of my need to be “special.” The environment that should have fostered gratitude for God’s grace freely given – no matter how much or how little we have to offer Him – became an environment that made me think I had to measure up to some cosmic yardstick. “To whom much is given, much is required,” was a verse oft-quoted in our little cult – and never once did it occur to me that maybe Jesus wasn’t talking about working ourselves to exhaustion trying to earn something that cannot be bought or sold. Never once did it occur to me, when my pastor would go into one of his red-faced screaming rages about how we were pissing our life away and how God had created us to be spiritual giants and we were making choices that would lead us into sin and obscurity, that maybe my pastor – and I – had it all wrong. Maybe God hadn’t handed us a heavenly to-do list when we were born and shook his head with disappointment when we didn’t check off our daily allotment of assignments.

It never occurred to me that God’s idea of greatness might be different from ours.

After I was liberated from the cult, some of the things I was taught were easy to throw off – I rebelled against them openly, almost offensively. Other things I understood academically but struggled to feel their truth. Still others I didn’t realize were lies until years later – and I’m sure there are still some deeply embedded grains of deception that I’ll be discovering for years to come. That’s all right, because life is long and recovery is a process and I don’t think God ever meant for us to heal in an instant.

I had an inkling of what living a great life might really mean when my ex-husband’s father passed away in early 2004. He was a poor man, unlucky in love, unemployed and without any assets to speak of. He lived with my ex and I, and sometimes made remarks that indicated he considered himself a burden – the very last word either of us would have used to describe him. I’m sure he felt, at the end of his 54 years, disappointed with the way life had turned out, regret over the choices he’d made, and bitter toward those who’d abused him. I’m not sure he understood, though, what a wealth of love he had given to his son and me, and many of our friends. I only wish he’d known how much he meant to so many people, how fondly we remembered him and celebrated his life. Even today, as I write this, I find it difficult to keep my composure as I think of such a valuable person gone too soon from this world.

It was as I prepared to speak at his memorial service that I began to understand the truth of 1 Corinthians 13:13, “These three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” All we take with us into the next life are those intangible things we hide in our heart, not the material things we acquire or the accolades we collect. So what ought to be our focus in life?

As I said, I was just beginning to understand this. Post-cult life was difficult; I had to forge a new identity. Actually, it’d be more accurate to say that I needed to discover my true identity, but that’s not what I tried to do at first. I tried to make myself into the person I thought I wanted to be – someone special, extraordinary. I began to daydream again of making a name for myself as a writer or artist. I had fantasies of being a guest on the Oprah show and having her just gush over how wise beyond my years and fabulously gorgeous I am. I dated a lot – or rather, threw myself into the arms of a variety of totally inappropriate pseudo-boyfriends, trying to get them to recognize what a unique and special snowflake I am, dammit. (They did not cooperate, which now makes me breathe a sigh of relief.) As the years went by and I never finished my Great American Novel, as I plugged away in my safe and steady and not-at-all flashy job, as I entered and exited ill-advised “relationships,” I would sometimes, late at night, be consumed with the fear that maybe I was truly gifted, and meant for greatness – but I would never achieve it because I was too afraid, too lazy, too timid, too broken.

I was living a secular life, but I still felt bound by the fear I felt while eating, sleeping, breathing church – that I wouldn’t measure up. Good enough wasn’t good enough (that’s actually a line my pastor used!) – I had to be GREAT. And what if I wasn’t? Then perhaps my life had been wasted. How would I bear the regret of reaching the end of my days without accomplishing something of real value? Considering that my definition of “something of real value” was “something that made me rich and famous,” the chance that I would have to bear that regret was very high. This terrified me.

To Be Continued…

Photo credit.

Last night the temperature fell to 28F. Rarely do we see lows lower than that here in Virginia Beach, so I guess one could say that it was literally the lowest point of the year.

Yesterday was also the winter solstice, the day with the fewest daylight hours all year. So one could say that it was figuratively the lowest point of the year, as well.

I, like many others, find my mood deeply affected by these long winter nights. I’m usually okay up until New Year’s, but the long wait until spring, without the excitement of the holiday season to distract me, is hard. Some of my darkest periods of depression took place during the months of winter. My soul wants to crawl into a dry, warm hole in the ground and drop into a death-like sleep. It just wants to skip this time of year and get straight to the invigoration of spring: longer days, brighter hours, budding flowers.

Perhaps the experience is different for my friends in the southern hemisphere, where the “winter holidays” of Christmas and New Year’s are not winter holidays at all. But for those of us who are bundled up in the month of December, it’s a peculiar juxtaposition: the joy of the holidays (both manufactured and genuine - both are exhausting in their own way) occurring at a time when the sun has cut his workload to part-time hours and nature is closing up her doors and windows, getting stingy with the warmth and sustenance that she gave so freely just a few months ago. And for some people, the weather does nothing to help their already foul holiday moods. Christmas is difficult for some people - I’d venture to say, for MANY people - because of loved ones who have passed, families that can’t be civil, marital disappointments, distant teenagers, and this year more than ever, economic hardship.

Some churches hold services to mark the winter solstice, the long dark night of our earth’s soul. It’s an opportunity to gather with other people who are feeling lost in the gaiety of the season, who want to be able to admit that they’re sad and not feel like they’re ruining everyone else’s good time. I can’t help but think that this approach to dealing with grief could be improved upon - after all, who wants to feel like a leper that needs a “special” church service so as not to spoil the fun and excitement of the “real” Christmas service? Still, it’s good that Christians are allowing themselves and their fellow believers a chance to stop wearing the fake-Christmas-smile and be honest about their pain.

I take comfort in the fact that today will be a little longer than yesterday, and tomorrow a little longer than today. Our hemisphere is slowly moving closer to the sun, and soon I will see signs of rebirth all around me. Until then, I will remember that life is a dance of dark and light, good and bad, seasons of death and of growth. There’s no need to pretend that I’m whole when I’m not, and no need to despair of ever feeling whole again.

I will remember that the only way out is through - but at least there is a way out.

(Photo credit.)

I want to revisit the lessons learned in this post, mainly because I haven’t adequately learned them yet. I promised you guys I wasn’t going to go Thoreau on you, but now I’m starting to see the wisdom in dear old Henry David’s words. More than 150 years after its initial publication, Thoreau’s unassuming little memoir Walden, or Life in the Woods is considered a classic of American literature, but his call to “simplify, simplify, simplify” is largely unheeded by American citizens. Maybe we ignore Thoreau’s call because he was a really weird guy (according to Wikipedia, he encountered zombies while living at Walden pond, which proves something I’ve long believed: going without the company of other human beings for an extended period of time will make a fellow bloomin’ crazy). Maybe we think that Thoreau’s ideas were great for the mid-nineteenth century, but we believe that in today’s world we need all the conveniences of modern life. Or maybe we’re quite honest with ourselves and say, “I don’t need ‘em, but I sure do like ‘em, so you are NOT taking away my 42-inch plasma screen television, nyeh!”

I’ve often wondered why the idea of living without television or indoor plumbing sounds like absolute torture to me, but the people around the world who were born in such circumstances and die in the same don’t seem to mind. Certainly there are necessities that many of our planet’s citizens suffer without: clean water, nutritious and plentiful food, basic medical care. But beyond those things which keep us healthy and whole, what else do we really NEED? I referred to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in my earlier post, and I have to say that I really think Maslow hit the nail on the head when he identified our basic human needs - not just the biological ones, but the more “touchy-feely” ones, such as creativity and self-esteem.

The key to understanding ourselves and truly enjoying life (or so I believe - you’re welcome to disagree with me) is to figure out what we really need and recognize that the rest of it is all gravy. Countless articles have been written on the subject of whether or not money can buy happiness (my favorite is the one about how rich people have better sex), and so-called experts seem to be just as confused as most of us laypeople. Some say that because wealth offers us a multitude of choices, it ups our happiness quotient. We’re not “stuck” in a small house, or with a rusted, beat-up old car. We can choose to have modest posessions if we like, or we can choose to show of our good fortune. The delight is in the choosing.

Others say that once a family rises above the poverty line, they’re as happy as they’re gonna get - whether their income to expenses ratio continues to increase or not. The stress of being unable to pay bills for basic human needs - food, clothing, shelter - and being unable to occasionally indulge our higher, more cerebral needs - such as spontaneity - is what makes poor people unhappy. But once a person has a secure home, is adequately clothed and fed, has regular stimulation for the mind, he or she is just as happy as someone who has ten times as much material assets.

The problem here, folks - and this is a problem I know well, since I managed to sink myself into a deep hole of consumer debt after my first marriage ended - oh, and I should mention that I can’t blame my ex-husband or the divorce for that financial fluff-up; it was all my own doing - is that we make more financial stress for ourselves by living above our means and lusting for things out of our reach. It occurred to me this morning that I think God is trying extra-special-hard to teach me that I do NOT need all the things I have, and that if I would allow myself to think outside the proverbial box (in this case, it’s a digital cable box or a bag of brand-new clothes bought at ridiculously high retail prices), I would find a life that is infinitely more peaceful. The issue isn’t that I don’t have enough resources to meet my needs; it’s that I need to adjust my “needs” to meet my resources.

This is a drum I’ve beat for a long time - occasionally. I mean, every few months I’d become frustrated with my credit card statement and I’d pick up the drumsticks and started pounding out, “I - DON’T - NEED - STUFF - TO - MAKE - ME - HAPPY!” And then a day or so later I’d become quite put out when all my friends went out to dinner without me, or I realized that I was going into the summer with “only” two pairs of shorts, or I decided I was bored with the dozens (okay, hundreds) of books on my bookshelf, half (okay, three-quarters) of which I’ve never read. Being sorely afflicted by my terrible fate in life, I’d dust off the credit card and “treat myself” to an expensive dinner (that’s only slightly better, if at all, than anything I can make at home) or a whole new summer wardrobe (purchased at a department store, because combing through racks of pre-worn clothing at a thrift store for something that fits and flatters is just “too much work”) or an armful of brand-new books (bought full-price at the mall bookstore without bothering to check whether they’re available at my local library for FREE or online at a significant discount).

In other words - I think I figured this all out a long time ago, but as of yet I haven’t put my money where my mouth is. Or stopped putting my money where - er, no… Well, you get it.

At this point I realize that making a positive change in one’s life is a whole lot more than just a cerebral understanding of what’s wrong. Especially since the issue of money and possessions is quite an emotional one for most of us. I think that’s why, so far, God hasn’t opened up the sky to drop a garbage bag full of $100 bills on my head. Although it would be great to hit the reset button on my debt, and to start over with a clean slate - and though I say over and over, “I promise, God, if you fix this for me, I’ll NEVER get into this predicament again!” - I think God and I both know that I need to learn this lesson the hard way. I need to be willing to “suffer” a little bit, or at least put some effort into getting where I want to be.

Photo credit.

Also of interest: Without their money by Toban Black and Schedules and Hard Stops by Jennifer @ Conversion Diary.

(Normally Fridays are the day to share my Seven Quick Takes, but this week I have something on my mind that can’t be stuffed into a “quick take.” I do recommend that you take a look at the SQT posts featured on Conversion Diary today!)

Have you ever had the feeling that someone just doesn’t like you? I get that feeling a lot, partly because some people DON’T like me (it’s shocking, I know) and partly because I was kind of an outcast as a child, so I always assume that when a situation becomes a little awkward, I’m doing something wrong. (Which is rather self-centered and yes, I’m aware that if I would just stop obsessing about it I’d probably do just fine, but that’s like telling a tiny hairless dog to just stop shivering. It’s in our nature, okay?) My “effortlessly effervescent” personality can, in unfamiliar and stressful situations, become loud, abrasive and domineering, so it’s no surprise that sometimes when folks first meet me they’re a little put off. Usually once they get to know me (and I remind myself to dial it down, for Pete’s sake) we end up just adoring each other.

Then there are the folks whose personalities just don’t mesh with mine, or who, for one reason or another just don’t like me. Or I don’t like them. I know this is okay - we don’t have to be BFFs with everyone we meet - but it still unnerves me a little bit. I feel like I should get along with everybody, even when the getting along is a Herculean effort. And I know that many other people have been in this situation - actually, I’m sure we ALL have! - but I still often feel as though I’m the only socially awkward loser out there.

The reason I bring this up is that I was feeling as if the leader of my Bible study just didn’t like me. I mean, we could make small talk, but every once in awhile during the group discussions, she’d give me a look or say something that made me think, “Uh oh, I must be hogging the conversation.” or “Uh oh, that comment must have been really shallow/mean/prideful/stupid.” And I’d resolve to sit back quietly throughout the rest of the evening. But I don’t sit back quietly very well! And so I was starting to feel as if I was in the Wrong Place. What was I thinking joining this study group? I’m not ready to be hanging out with Real Christians yet!

Well, this past Wednesday, God arranged it so that the group was just me and the leader. The other three attendees had emergency doctor’s appointments or whatever. I have to admit that at first I PANICKED. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m stuck for two hours with someone who doesn’t like me. She thinks I’m a heretic, and a loud obnoxious one at that. She’s judging me. Oh my God, SAVE ME.” But under the panic was a small voice that said, “This is a God thing. You’re supposed to be alone together.”

So we settled in with our notebooks and coffee and cookies - and she let her dogs out of their room so they could curl up with us - and watched the DVD that goes along with our Bible study. When the DVD session was over, we began discussing the topics it covered… then wandered into related subjects… and started sharing very openly about our lives, our past mistakes, our fears for the future, what we’re currently struggling with. We found out that we have a whole lot more in common than we’d realized, and we encouraged each other without judgement. It was a holy time, beautifully set apart just so this woman and I could get to know each other beyond the facades we presented at church.

The small coincidence of our one-on-one evening is just one of many small coincidences that God has worked in my life. In these little God-incidences (as I’ve heard them called) I learn that things aren’t always what they seem, that God’s got a plan, and most of all, I am reminded again of how much God loves me.

I used to say, years ago, when I often counseled and prayed people who were hurting, that when someone poured out their heart to me, trusted me with the darkest parts of their soul or their brightest hopes and dreams, I felt as if they had just handed me a million dollars. I was always humbled and honored that anyone would feel safe enough with me to trust me with the treasures of their heart. And this week, for the first time in a very long time, I felt that way again.

Photo credit.