Makeover

May 18, 2013 By

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I love getting my hair done. It makes me feel fresh and pretty.  Well my BLOG just got a new fresh new look as well, and it also feels so wonderful.  I’m giddy about the new look, like fresh laundry brought in off the line and a clean kitchen that smells of Pine Sol.

However, due to some technical jargon I can’t understand (and never will – sigh), you should probably re-subscribe if you want to continue receiving my blog posts via email.  I would be so appreciate if you would – I’d hate to lose you.

Happy Weekend!

Peace and love,

Amanda

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

4 Comments

Odd and Curious Thoughts: Celebrity Edition

May 1, 2013 By

(1) Every time I look at a gossip magazine in the grocery store I see a column that reads “Stars are just like us!” with a picture of Jennifer Garner at the Farmer’s Market or Gwen Stefani buying her kid an ice cream. But I never see these people wearing ill-fitting workout gear accidentally running over their kid’s tricycle while yelling at their 2-year-old to stop eating old goldfish found in the crack of the car seat with allergy eyes wondering if they lost their credit card. So they aren’t like us.

(2) Some crazy lady was arrested for stalking Clay Aiken.  I think this is clearly a publicity stunt because tell me who would stalk Clay Aiken.  Tell me.

(3) I’m actually proud of Lindsay Lohan.  She’s re-invented herself and apparently has a new career out of showing up at court appearances looking haggard.  She’s doing great and we all need to support her in this new endeavor.

(4) Speaking of getting in trouble with the law, Reese Witherspoon got pulled over and was all “I deserve to stand on American soil” and “Do you know who I am?” She then issued a statement the next day about how much she loves law enforcement, Go America, boo to drinking, very sorry to disrespect the family, red-white-and-blue, just headin to the policeman’s ball, etc.  I’m so renting Legally Blond this weekend in tribute.  I’m also going to say “Do you know who I am?” more often.

(5) Ryan Lochte has his own television show.  Ain’t nobody cares what Ryan Lochte has to say about anything, but we will all tune in to see if he takes off his shirt.

(5) I also don’t care what Kim Kardashian wears during the course of her pregnancy.  Laws are being made, people are displaced in war, somewhere on an unknown channel Ryan Lochte is shirtless.  Priorities. 

(7) Kristen Stewart is a beautiful girl, so I’m confused as to why her hair always looks like she just got out of the pool.

(8) Who even is Amanda Bynes, and why is her mental deterioration anyone’s concern?  Let the woman cover her head, mutter about prunes, wander around, and get extensions in peace.  Have mercy.

(9) It has been formally revealed that Gwyneth Paltrow endures 2-hour workout sessions every single day, has an uber-serious carbohydrate ban, and maintains a “fashion essentials” list that totals more than the value of my house.  You lie, People Magazine.  Celebrities are not just like us.

(10) Robert Downey, Jr. just made $50 million on one film.  They are like us in the same way that I am like a person who dusts.

(11) I have a crush on Connie Britton’s hair.  It’s out there. I said it.

(12) I ain’t gonna lie. I knew more about the details of Justin Timberlake’s new album release than who was running for local office.  But at least I’m focused on real people. You know, people just like us.

Filed Under: Humor, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

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The Trouble I’ve Seen

April 24, 2013 By

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Eleven years ago today, a ruddy-faced doctor in a white coat took off his glasses and informed me that there was a raging tumor living inside my eyeball.  News so strange I had to ask for it to be repeated, the words cancer and melanoma all jumbling up inside my head with other strange words like success rate and surgery and I found myself sitting with my hands folded calmly asking for a tissue.

From there, I headed straight into a CT scan full of beeping red dots and IVs pumping toxins.  My wrap-around shirt landed with a soft thud on the floor while I bore my gown of misery like a soldier, trudging forward to get a mammogram before my thirties had even dawned.  My lungs and my liver and my brain and my breasts were all needled and raped, but it was all in the name of progress because melanoma’s a devil’s son.

A week later, my husband and I headed to the world-renowned expert in Philadelphia, eating cheese steak while hearing bullets zinging around in the distance.  We huddled together waiting to for what seemed like hours to see the doctor, in a room filled with foreign languages and travel-weary patients.  We earned ten precious minutes where I rapid-fired questions to the doctor that I had saved in a three-ring notebook.  Year after year we trekked back through sleet and blizzards and pouring rain, cobbling over stones and bricks toward the end of Walnut Street, crossing our fingers for the joyous refrain that life’s tentacles were still strong, holding us together in times such as these.

But radiation is a sniper that shoots to kill, taking down tissue and muscles and solid respectable youth.  I sat in the waiting room with the grey-haired diabetics waiting for lasers and four-inch needles and news that my retina was simply too weak to stand. It just needed a wheelchair like an old war hero with a slug in the shoulder, so they filled my eyeball up with oil like a slab of wood puddy in an empty, hollowed-out hole.  When I was pregnant with my son, I got a cataract so thick my eye almost exploded with pressure and I endured three hours of surgery without anesthesia, which I would never ever recommend to anyone in a million years of Sundays.  What we do for our children, and concurrently to save our own lives.  Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, I sang to the old people, and they nodded like honey child, I hear you.

I carry stress in my eye, drooping like Friday before lunch, weary of being held together with ribbons. I go back every year praying that a rogue cell won’t burst like a terrorist out of hiding, since it’s fatal and the success rates are hopeless and my oncologist tells me it’s useless for me to come see him anymore since a metastasis only buys me a year, maybe two.  He reminded me of that again today as I asked for another appointment.  What do they know, these doctors. No one wants to stare mortality down like a cobra wondering if it will strike or just slither off into the ether, and the difference between one year and two is hundreds of more days.  It matters, you doctors who count years like pebbles.

Those years, they are diamonds to me.

I think about all the happy times since then – babies and birthdays and laughter like bubbles floating large and fat over the driveway.  It’s been a lovely ride, hollowed-out and plugged, with one eye that’s crippled and propped up like the old man in Weekend at Bernie’s.  But despite it all, beauty abounds. Every day I stumble into God’s masterpiece with a depth perception so poor I can’t even thread a needle, and yet somehow I survive, and see, and have vision beyond my own present darkness.

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, I sing to our babies, rocking and shushing and rubbing their backs until their eyes droop.  But you see, Father.  God and son and spirit and healer, master of this worn-out veteran life.  You plug up this eye and this hollowed-out heart and you never have failed me.  All these years.  All this sorrow.  Nobody but you, Jesus.

Glory Halleluiah.   

—-

If you want to hear this song sung the way I like it sung, you need to hear it by Mahalia Jackson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdavA_2QA0c

—-

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/supersonicphotos/4312101907/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Health, Inspirational, My life, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

10 Comments

Wednesday Playlist

March 27, 2013 By

5771025070_bddb7e2ec6There are few mediums in art that invoke immediate emotion.  Pictures, whether painted in oil or shot through a lens, may or may not bring up feelings of peace, or nostalgia, or intrigue. Words can move mountains, but it takes a bit of work on behalf of the reader.  But music.  From the first moment you hear the fiddle, or the beat of the drums, or the tuning of the violins – it draws energy and sucks emotions and you’re left breathless at the end.  I honestly can’t imagine life without it, and if I were deaf I’d have to create imaginary songs in my head just to survive.  Blind I could do, but please Lord Jesus don’t take away my music.

This can cause problems for my household, since many instructions come out of my brain in song, and we often have impromptu dance parties.  And I can’t stand cheesy children’s songs, so instead of listening to Itsy Bitsy Spider we bust it down with Natasha Bedingfield.  I ain’t gonna lie.  I’ve got a pocket full of sunshine. I really do. And if I have to tolerate a Taylor Swift song now and again, who am I to pick and choose what music my daughter is attracted to?  After all, we love what we love.

Music combines harmony and rhythm and poetry, so in that sense I believe it’s the most brilliant of all the art mediums.  I love the fact that you can be transformed so instantly, like our bodies were designed to take it in.  Even if your limbs can’t dance your eyes will, and your fingers will twitch, and your feet will start tapping with the beat.  Because our lives are on one translucent string until death and music is what makes that string vibrate with ecstasy.  It’s brilliant and simple and classic all at the same time, and I thank God for all that joy wrapped up inside four minutes.

On that note, here is my most recent play list.

  • Red Hands, by Walk off the Earth
  • Stars, by Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
  • Merry Go Round, by Kacey Musgraves
  • 1957, by Milo Greene
  • 93 Million Miles, by Jason Mraz
  • Come on Get Higher, by Matt Nathanson
  • I Was Gonna Marry You, by Tristan Prettyman
  • Hero, by Family of the Year
  • It’s Time, by Imagine Dragons
  • Lego House, by Ed Sheeren
  • Sing Loud, by Alpha Rev
  • Mirrors, by Justin Timberlake
  • Battle Scars, by Lupe Fiasco & Guy Sebastian

What is your current favorite song that you repeat over and over and can’t get out of your head?

–

photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42931449@N07/5771025070/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Music, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

9 Comments

Pearls of death: a poem

March 24, 2013 By

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The plastic curves, they pant

in tulle and diamonds bright

For kitchens gleaming of soapstone

Buying and baking and wasting.

–

It’s a water-soaked culture

and fear is a droplet of oil

so blend and buy and lust and smile

sail on past the wrinkled lines.

–

Sleep is hard and mean and honest

It forces waking from dreams of white

Drug it where it bleeds clean

Back to fluff and saccharine.

–

Freedom’s not a pinning board

Where all is neat and robin blue

It’s standing under columns wide

with open, dripping hearts

where sprinklers click click back and forth

Soaking the stilettos.

–

We’re all equal, she and I

The one who can’t get off the lines

The one who says she’ll finally get clean

The one who prays to Jesus.

–

In the waiting room of the psyche ward

or in the house of all that’s holy

Money’s no good here, my friends

Ain’t nobody cares about expensive shoes

or breakfast at tiffany’s.

–

Be gone, ye life of privilege

You fool me with your opulence

The rusty tin of jewels

Choking my neck whilst nearest death,

 

Rip off the pearls

—

photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/megyarsh/2873940330/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

7 Comments

Freefall

March 17, 2013 By

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I had a dream a few months back that I was dangling on a roller coaster, my hands gripping the sides of a drop-off that went straight down into blackness.  I was in my car with my children, for heaven’s sakes.  I couldn’t risk their lives letting my clunky Chevy Tahoe loose on these metal tracks.  What kind of mother would let go? I couldn’t tell if my car was strapped in or if I would fly off into the cold air.  Where would I land?  Who would provide for them?  What would I do?  Help, Lord!

I shrieked in fear as I sat up straight in bed in a hot, panicked sweat. I have given my life in service for you, Lord, and this is the payback I get?  This is my reward for all those youth mission trips and church services and solos?  Is this really happening? It felt like I just got kicked in the gut, and yet when I curled over to seek some relief, the blows just kept coming.  All I could feel was hurt.  A deep and immense and crazy hurt that I’ve never before experienced.  Worse than cancer.  Worse than my abdominal infection. Worse than death itself. It was as if all the darkness in the world was hurling toward me at once, and it entered my bloodstream like a bad drug.  I was swept under at the sheer the weight of it and was so extremely uncomfortable that I wanted to peel off my own skin.  But I couldn’t, so I just curled up and clenched my teeth, and begged for mercy, and made no coherent sense for months.  And now I’m dangling off a cliff with white-knuckles and I’m a little pissed about it, if you want to know the truth, because I so don’t deserve this.

I’ve lived my whole life professing my faith in God, that he is the ruler and owner and molder of my soul.  I’ve nodded in response to picking up the cross and following Jesus and felt in all earnestness that I was a good believer.  Kind of like most people do on Sundays, before they go home and continue their natural and sinful natures.  And yet here I am, and now it’s happening, and I’m finally tested.   The stability on earth that I clung to with my bare hands shattered and I was dangling on the edge in fear, not trusting God would catch me.  And not only did I lack faith, but I had the audacity to challenge God’s plan, like I put my payments in the God vending machine all these years but all I got out was this crappy mess.  I was such a damn fool.  Or rather, I was blind to what God was really trying to show me.

Now I see more clearly.   What’s so beautiful is that this is precisely my payback for years of loving Him. A realization that I had it wrong, and I wasn’t fully submitting, and all I have on this earth is a cartoon mirage.   Jesus was holding out a hand in my personal crisis to say “Follow me. ”  I could have just said don’t-mind-if-I-do, or thanks, man, or even Cool. My life on this earth is one empty vessel of saggy skin that will rot into the earth, but my soul exists for Your glory, and this is a chance to live into it.  I could have said all sorts of lofty things, but I didn’t.  Instead, I screamed like a girl and asked God to somehow put my Tahoe in reverse.  I basically said to Jesus, “You’re a great teacher, and I’ll take what I think applies to me, but this total submission thing?  This fall-off-a-cliff dependence?  That’s a good one, dude.  Now let’s quit with all the crazy-talk.  I want my old life back.”

I see now what I could not before.  That my old life wasn’t life-giving.  It was full of decay, and stagnant water, and salt that had lost its flavor.  I was saying all the right words about faith and thinking I was in the right camp, like I could fit God within the walls of my upper-middle class lifestyle and would give God my budget surplus.  I liked to go to bible study and talk about Godly things and sit on the front row to be entertained, but the real lesson of Christ?  The die to self part?  Well I’d find time for that later, after dinner and bathtime and lunches and writing and friends and phone calls and facebook and photo sessions and, well, me.  I’d find time for that after me.

But God doesn’t do surplus. He won’t accept lukewarm, or dependence when it’s easy, or prayers only on Sundays.  He doesn’t believe all religions are created equal or we can just slide by unnoticed or half-ass our way to salvation by putting ourselves first.

We have to let it all go.  Not because our palms are sweaty and we just can’t hold on any longer, but because we want to.  And friends, there is joy in submission.  Joy that envelops fear, and pain, and deep, dark wounds.  Joy that frees us from the beating and torture and darkness that penetrates.  It’s in these moments where you have nothing else to hold onto but God himself, when you see His amazing grace mostly clearly. A smile starts to crack, and then it widens, and joy enters in.

So here I am, starting over.  It’s liberating, in a way, to see how God works.  To see how He uses people and circumstances and turns bad into good for the sake of His glory.  And the fact that I can be of some service in the great commission is fascinating and humbling and makes me want to fall down in reverence with tears streaming down these saggy human cheeks.

Lord, thank you for this pain.  With every fiber of my being I scream to the heavens a resounding and echoing thank you, for I have finally let go, and I trust you’ve got this, and I am finally free.   If my luck holds out, I won’t get bugs in my teeth on the way down.

—-

photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heypaul/1428910/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

14 Comments

Let them eat toast

March 5, 2013 By

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I’m always annoyed when the host of a cooking show tastes her food at the end of the episode, rolling her eyes back in ecstasy.  Not only does she magically create beef rolls, arugula salad, and a pear tart in under twenty minutes, but then she brags on herself.  “Oh my gosh,” she says into the camera.  “This is so good.  Seriously.”  Her hair is all blown out and she wears a size two but she takes a glorious bite of something with a face full of Chanel make-up.  Honestly, it does look amazing, and if she says it’s the best pizza ever it must be.  But I am at home at 4 pm staring into my refrigerator, wearing sweatpants and my daughter’s vanilla cupcake lip smackers with not a stitch of real adult make-up on.  I glance back at the television and see this beautiful person still standing, doing all kinds of lovely dicing and chopping, and I watch in a trance as her curls are still in place.  The cabinets are white and all the dishes are white and she never seems to run out of spoons.

But meanwhile, back in real life, dinner happens.  While I desire to produce homemade chicken stock on a Tuesday afternoon, or make stuffed peppers with a side of beet salad, serving it to grateful children who ask for a double helping of roasted squash, I end up making scrambled eggs with cheese. The little song I made up about it being breakfast for dinner! (it comes with a dance) is so overused and nobody likes wheat toast anyway.  So it’s milk with no chocolate, eggs before ice cream, and please sit down at the table because we aren’t wild animals eating our kill.  Which ends up in a rendition of accurate wolf howling and a discussion of how much we all hate eggs and me bemoaning the fact that I could only find two spoons.  My daughter shrugs like she is completely unaware that there is Lenox silverware hidden in the garden being used as tiny shovels for the dirt-fairy nymphs.

Where is my make-up artist? Where is my blow-out? Why are my children so resistant to toast, I’d just like to know?

One of these days, someone will create a real cooking show, where the chef runs out of time and keeps getting interrupted by a toddler trying to climb the cabinets to get into the shelf for old Valentine’s Candy.  You’ll see her start to sweat because she’s embarrassed about her child’s behavior and ends up using baking soda instead of cornstarch or throws in way too much salt.  Then at the end of the show, when she can’t quite make it to the pear tart because her son keeps trying to grab power bars from the pantry to curb his imminent starvation, she tries to cover for herself and says that you can just eat a whole piece of fruit for dessert like she planned it all along.  But no one believes her because come on.  No one wants a stupid pear.

At the end, she’s supposed to taste what she made. While she’s lifting the spoon to her mouth she slips on the dog’s water (who sloshed it all over the tile? I swear) and her daughter walks in and grabs a bruschetta from the presentation dish.  “Oh my gosh,” her daughter says into the camera.  “This is the nastiest thing I’ve ever had.  Seriously.  Don’t ever make this again.  I’m going to Shelly’s to eat macaroni and cheese.”  Then the poor little chef cries and gives her toddler an old piece of candy after all and we see her sneaking a beer in a red Dixie cup.

I’d be like YES!  I love this show!  I’m a huge fan!  You managed to make a crappy version of stir fry, sure.  But look at that salad! That’s good!  And you tried so hard, and you didn’t totally lose it with that dog water spillage thing, which is so impressive and shows how calm you were under pressure.  So what that your daughter didn’t like bruschetta?  She wears hot pink shirts and eats macaroni with powder sauce, so her credibility is nil.   It’s cool.  I’ll send you a recipe using a can of soup, some Ro-Tel, and some crumbled up chips and we can all feel like normal people.  Then I’ll go skipping off to the garden to find all my spoons and thank the stars that I’m not alone.

NBC, take note.   One of these days, just allow the chef to say what’s she’s actually thinking, which is “please don’t eat this.  I just tasted it, and honestly it tastes exactly like cardboard because it’s only pasta and peas with unsalted butter.  Next time I’ll find a sauce or a cream or something.  Really.  Trust me on this.”   I would.  I so totally would.

Let’s face it.  Despite our best intentions, you just sometimes have to eat toast.  Put butter and salt on it if you wish and call it garlic bread.  Add a song about how toast rhymes with roast and how the ghost gets the most.  Then forgive yourself for having breakfast for dinner, or the fact that you gave your kid candy, and that you have been wearing work-out gear for three days with no Chanel in sight.   Honestly, your kids don’t care.  They’re too busy eating to notice.

photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruocaled/6148667409/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Cooking, Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

19 Comments

Setbacks

March 3, 2013 By

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We are a culture of moving forward.  When tragedy strikes, you ask for prayers and nights out and oversized glasses of wine.  You sob and wail and girl, you let that mascara run.  But then, after the shockwave hits, you want to be that person who picks herself up and dusts herself off, bopping and smiling into the future.  You don’t want to be that number who shows up on caller ID and people think “Oh no.  There she goes again with the same sob story.  Move on, already.”

But you can’t.  You need to repeat the hurt and say the same lines over again and hear words of affirmation.  You are strong.  It will be okay.  This too shall pass. It may take months of re-living the same hurt over and over again just to purge it from your system.  It just takes as long as it takes, and not one day less.

The bottom line is that you are strong.  You are healing.  Your future is bright.  But all of a sudden out of freaking nowhere you catch yourself moving backwards, or spinning in circles, and dwelling on some stupid tiny detail over and over.  You just want to crawl in a hole and hide, or put on a good face and shut the hell up.   And yet deep down, you know you need to get the ugly out.

Get it out, friend.  Pick a few very close confidants and a therapist you trust and just keep repeating yourself.  It’s 2 steps forward, 1.75 steps back.  But you’re still moving forward.  It’s just slower than you expected.  Like the tortoise, one day you’ll cross that finish line and not have a clue how you made it so far.

Setbacks are discouraging.  You want to think you’re tough and all that pain is helping establish perseverance. And yet we all relapse.  We have moments that we need to vent and monopolize the conversation and suck the energy out of a phone call.  There are times we just need to relive the hurt and lock ourselves in our closets for three minutes for a best friend to tell us we are going to be okay.  I recently had such a conversation.  It went like this:

“Talk to me,” my friend said. We’re so over hellos these days, because when I call at dinner time there must be a problem.

“Oh man.  The kids’ show is almost over and they need to get in the bath and I’m such a wreck,” I say before inhaling a large anguish-filled breath.  “The pain, it just won’t stop.” I don’t wait for an answer, like respectful people do.  I just launch into a tirade and wait for words of affirmation to come out like a vending machine on the other end.  Which is completely selfish.  And so totally vain.  And yet I need it like a drug fix so I long ago quit apologizing.  Because if the tables were turned I would do the same for her.

“You are strong,” she says.  “And you will get through this.”  And she means it.  She tells me I deserve more than I actually do, and that I’m more incredible that I actually am, and that God’s got this, and I nod and wipe my face and smile through the tears when my son comes busting in the closet.  I sing a bath song and we hold hands and I somehow make it through the next three hours with a half-smile on my face.  It’s a victory when I walk into the kitchen after the kids are down.  I’m miraculously still alive.

Everyone has setbacks.  I’m told they are normal, albeit annoying as hell, but each time they are a tiny bit easier to get over and I can rebound a little faster.  And in the end, I think I am developing perseverance.  I think God is working in the silence.  But being refined by His fire is hot, and it sometimes hurts, and it’s never easy.

Stay in the heat.  Grit your teeth and read the Word and keep burning.  Talk to God when he doesn’t seem to be listening. Because someday the impurities will be gone, and God will restore, and you’ll find yourself thankful for the process. Like down-on-your knees-in-praise thankful. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

Setbacks happen.  Keep moving forward.

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akras/3548404006/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Inspirational, My life, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

12 Comments

Battle Scars

February 20, 2013 By

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I walked to the ring with a swagger, silk brushing against my skin as my ego staggered before me, a blur of crowd voices and cigarettes and the smell of sweat.  Before me fighters had come and gone, but this one was mine.

Let’s do this life thing because I am young and I am fierce.  

But I got sucker punched in the gut, and kicked in the face, and a string of a hits I didn’t expect.  I tried to remember all the training and practice rounds, and yet my coach’s words were grey and hazy.  All I could see coming was a left hook, a little too late it seems, and I found myself falling and slipping and heading for the mat with greasy sweat streaming from my pores. I lay face down while the crowds grew, my left eye swollen shut and my chest managing to heave in and out despite the blows.  I shut my eyes hard.

Please Lord, no.  I can’t bear to lose.

But the referee declared it, and the victor was announced, and all I could do was lay there in all that deafening noise.  The mouthpiece held my lips ajar and I could hear my own labored breaths.  I couldn’t break the pattern, for my body was surviving on oxygen alone.  I stared at the side of the ring for a long while, unable to move. My eyelids shut like curtains and I thought it was over.

I’d failed so miserably, and I’ll never be able to stand again.

But after a while I drew my legs close. I turned and raised up my back like a Halloween cat and hoisted myself to a knee.  I felt the drool and sweat and blood dripping, and when I raised my head I just saw the janitor in the stands, sweeping cigarette butts and popcorn kernels and picking up sticky beer cans.  We were alone, he and I, nothing but leftover smoke and spoils. I managed to stand on my shaky knees.  Fearful of the damage that had been caused.  Of the wounds that remained.

But somehow, miraculously, my legs found their footing.  I planted my feet apart and I raised my head.  I was alive and tall, and tears mixed with sweat as I raised my right arm above my head. The janitor stopped his sweeping and stared at the display, the loser standing in the middle of the ring, one arm raised, fist-pumping the sky with a crooked, bleeding smile.

I might have broken lips and battle scars.  I may nurse bruises and broken bones.  And yet I rose.  I stood.  I won.

It’s not the one who shows off for the crowds, or who drinks champagne at midnight, or who gets to display the trophy that counts.  It’s the one who rises, and regains footing, and manages to lift their head.  It’s the ability to make it out alive and fist-pump the dirty, rotten air.

This fight did not define me.  It did not break me.  And through the tears I walked off the rink, and past the janitor, who had laid down his broom.  He clapped, and I smiled, and I knew I wasn’t ruined.

Victory, as it turned out, was mine. 

—

http://www.flickr.com/photos/modomatic/2819582341/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Inspirational, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

14 Comments

Joy in suffering

February 10, 2013 By

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We were sitting there at the diner, she and I, with tortilla soup and migas and glasses of tea lodged between us. “I just lost faith,” she told me as her hands shook. “I can’t see a God in all this.” I shook my head in understanding, because I get it. There’s no judgment or trying to change hearts. There were no words left. All I could see was the soup spoon brought to my own lips by an unwilling arm, and her precious face before me. My dear friend who is suffering. My own heart that was breaking.

Everywhere I look these days, it’s heavy. Strokes and seizures and pain that never ends. Marriages suffering and children suffering and hearts suffering. I just want to say to God, enough already. It’s spinning out of control. Can’t we just wash it all away and see nothing but rainbows? Isn’t God bigger than darkness? But then the check came, and the heavy remained.

“Consider it pure joy. . . whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
James 1:2-12

I’m not real big on lumping trials and suffering in the same basket with joy, because it sounds pretty disingenuous to me. It’s not joyful when relationships rip apart and your heart aches until you throw up. You don’t jump up and down giggling when people disappoint and abandon you and your sleep is taken over by nightmares. There’s no giving thanks when the car breaks down and sex hurts and relationships rip open. You know what I want to say to those people who tell me things will work out and we’ll all be singing Alleluia in the end? That there’s joy in the suffering?

Shut up and get me some Advil.

So I’ve been thinking lately about perseverance. Adhering to a certain belief or purpose with an incredible persistence. In Psalm 22, the author pleads to God with a clinched fist. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, and hearing the words of my groaning? I cry by day, and you do not answer, and by night but I find no rest.

Yet you are Holy.

That sentence whispers and screams and crawls inside my head. It rings with persistence. And when I curl up in a puddle of tears, or I sit before friends who ache with no words of encouragement, I remember. Like a refrain that can’t be stopped. Like a bedrock that cannot be shaken. Through all the many, many trials. Sometimes all I can do is raise the soup spoon to my lips. I can’t fix it or control it or make someone see the world like I do. It’s all so taken over by hate, and our hearts are consumed. And so I sit with my hands folded, enveloped inside myself, and know that the light will someday come. That God is true.  Even when life is never, ever fair.

It is in these moments that I start to get it. Believing when it doesn’t makes sense to believe. Knowing God exists despite all the darkness. And I understand what James is saying about being tested, and being persistent, and how blessed that awareness can be.

Spiritual maturity comes from suffering. And in that growth we find joy after all.

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