ribbons

March 20, 2012 By

I have articles from the Department of Justice sitting all around my ankles, sprayed out like a fan in neat little piles.  I haven’t strayed far from the computer for hours and a babysitter is attending to my daughter.  A half-started and half-witted attempt to summarize the laws of Medicare fraud lies unattended on the screen in front of me as deadlines await.  Deadlines that amount to paychecks, that amount to more gardening supplies and summer sundresses and art camps.  I will finish it on time.  I will somehow find the energy.  God let me finish.

It’s not that words are hard to come by.  I live in words. I both admire and abhor them.  I want to stomp on them like ripe grapes and feel the juice squirting out between my toes. The problem with words is that I simply can’t escape them.  I am drawn to words that make me laugh or cry or feel something different.  Legal writing doesn’t invoke that same emotion, which is why I drift into my daydreams.   Dreams of stories and beauty and adjective-filled rooms filled with light.

When I lie in bed at night, with dishpan hands and a tired back, my fingers tap away at some imaginary keyboard in the sky.  I can hear the repetitive sound of my hands striking the letters like summer storms on a metal roof.  Rapping and pelting and beating down while I’m trying to sleep or pray or just lie there in peace.  I try to shake them from my head, but like the ringing in one’s ears, it’s a fool’s game.

So I keep driving to the grocery store, or to the bank drive-through. I drop off my husband’s dry cleaning and help my daughter cut out caterpillars out of yellow construction paper. But sentences keep forming like ribbons out of my brain, some constant output I can’t seem to shut off.   My daily life is so busy I don’t often do  anything with them.  They are just mental litter, thrown away like discarded trash. There are times I just want words to leave me be.  To allow me to sit silently without thinking, or hearing that incessant tapping of the keys, or the phrasing of sentences.  I want to scream at them to shut up already.  Sometimes, I just want to sit and not think of all those stupid, stupid words.

But we all have our gifts, whether we are paid for them or not.  We all carry with us some unyielding urge to create, albeit in different forms.  I firmly believe that God chose to give each of us the gifts that we were meant to have, and there’s little way around it.  According to Exodus, the Lord told Moses that he chose Bezalel, son of Uri, to oversee the task of building the tabernacle. “I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts — to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship.”  Exodus 31:3.  Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 12 that all the gifts we have been given “are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one just as he determines.”

I may, or may not, ever get paid for my words.  The novel that took me years to finish, with nights of sobbing and mornings of great exaltations, might never be read by the New York Times or by a single woman in the suburbs of Chicago.  The words that plague my sleep and dominate my fingers might be small to most.  But they are ultimately from God.  They need to be used and cultivated so that when they spring forth from my head, they are as tulips rather than dandelions.

I thank God for words, even though sometimes they feel like a burden.  But when the burden is for a higher good, and the purpose so great, can one really complain?

Lord, please let my words and the aching of my heart be acceptable to you, in your sight, and in your most perfect glory.  Thank you for these ribbons that flow from my thoughts.  Help me piece and string them all together as jewelry fit for a king.   

Filed Under: Religion, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

new beginnings

March 8, 2012 By

I quit my job.

Well, that’s a bit of a lie.  I walked out of my job as General Counsel for a large and wonderful company to stay home more.  To bake and volunteer and write.  And take the occasional calls from my former company that might crop up that they find useful to ask a lawyer.  But working from home in an oversized t-shirt billing by the hour, taking occasional phone calls from doctors that have questions, isn’t the same as really working.  I’ve always worked.  I went to law school to earn a great salary and feed my brain and wear heels.  I love heels.

But finally, I admitted to myself that I couldn’t keep up. There were select toilets in our home that even our dog wouldn’t drink from.  I was forgetting to pay bills and couldn’t seem to pack lunches and was always screaming at my daughter to get her shoes on.  I almost cried when I tried to bake homemade bread one weekend and the dough wouldn’t even rise.  My life was starting to spin out of control.  With two small children and a brain that never shuts off and writing that was finished inside my head but not yet recorded on paper, something had to give.  I was tired of running.  I was tired of yelling.  I was just flat-out tired.

So I stopped.

It’s been exactly four days since my newfound freedom.  I sent my son to day care every single day, which perhaps I should feel guilty about.  But I don’t.  I did heaps of laundry and sent off thank-you notes and made some tea.  I read some articles I’d been meaning to read and unpacked boxes of law books I schlepped home from my office.   I took a nap and read to my daughter and opened my eyes to what I’d been missing all this time.   Peace, really.  And clean toilets.

So here I sit.  I can feel a dozen years of legal experience begin the slow process of atrophy.  I can see that hanging on to my old world will not last forever, although billing by the hour is nice.  I feel God tugging on my sweater and tapping me on the shoulder, like something is just around the corner – up ahead.  I just can’t quite make it out with all the fog around me.  I’m defogging.  And praying.  And trying to learn how to bake bread.  For real.  Someone needs to send me a better recipe.

It’s a huge leap to quit a career.  It’s easy to tell people it’s for the kids.  So you can be a better mother.  But I didn’t think I was a horrible mother before.  I think it’s more about finding your footing.  Making sure the place that you stand is the place you really want to be.  Right now, in this moment, I know I’m heading in the right direction.  That’s something.  Even though it might not involve heels.

So here’s to freedom, wherever it takes me.  Probably to the grocery store.  And the bathroom, to clean more toilets.

Filed Under: Career, Motherhood, Religion, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

blog envy

February 27, 2012 By

Let’s talk about blogs.  Some are snarky and edgy.  Some are serious and make you darn happy you don’t have a seeing-eye-dog.  But most are just fun and pretty, with creative names like “farm-girl-flower-power-cookie-pants” that make you want to stop by and visit, like you’re an old friend popping over for tea.  Except with handmade sugar cubes and madelines and hostess gifts wrapped in brown paper and twine.

If you search for half a second, you’ll find some beautiful blogger who lives on a farm and dedicates her life to building joyful memories for her children.  She bakes heart-shaped cinnamon rolls and wheat germ chicken nuggets.  She dreams up craft projects that instill character and creativity in a three-mile radius. She collects odd and beautiful things like wooden spoons or pewter vases or antique hats.   Who in the world collects antique hats?  And in case a picture is worth a thousand words, she captures the process of making buttermilk pancakes with her Nikon, the finished product displayed on a vintage china platter with little turrets of syrup running down like an afterthought.

I hate this perfect person, sipping with glee on chilled raspberry lemonade.  There’s no way I can hold in my stomach or put makeup on or get all my laundry done, much less make paper lanterns.  I tell my children to find something else to do that doesn’t involve screaming or coloring on the floor tiles while I scrub the dried baby food off the chairs or fold bath towels.  Never once do I sit down and make a wreath of dried flowers. Or have a discussion at the dinner table that’s worthy of blogging about.  Our dinner topics usually center around how many bites of a given vegetable are required before an excused exit.

“Eat your asparagus.”

“But I hate asparagus,” my five-year-old moans.

“You don’t hate it.  You might hate things like monsters and evil and rotten fish.  But this is asparagus!  It’s yummy and grilled!  It’s dusted with sea salt!”  She just stares at me like monsters and asparagus are on the same exact level.

So when I’m trying to conquer unrelated piles of old bills and insurance paperwork, mixed with children’s artwork and coupons, I feel like an utter failure.  Why am I not tying a towel around my childrens’ necks and snapping pictures of them jumping off the coach like superheroes?  Why are we not eating frittatas with arugula, or making a may pole?  Those pretty, cooking, farm-loving, crafty bloggers make me feel all inadequate and un-motherly.  And to top it all off, they make me laugh one moment and tear up like a Hallmark commercial the next.  One has a rare blood disorder and adopted three children from Vietnam.  How can I possibly hate that?

It says in Ecclesiastes that all the toil that comes from envying one’s neighbor is pure vanity and is just striving after the wind.  4:4.   So if I dropped what I was doing and made a fabulous batch of cinnamon scones, does that mean it’s all for not?  I think it depends on who I’m trying to impress.  And what recipe I used.

Hate, after all, is reserved for monsters and evil and rotten fish.

Women bloggers are lovely strangers, blessed with wildflowers that bloom every spring, with great recipes for chicken pot pie and peanut butter bars.  They are just mothers, like me, who have moments of brilliance and beauty and joy amidst the unfortunate discovery of shriveled-up hot dogs found under bedcovers.  I am glad they are raising up such strong and spirited children that make the world a better place. They are trying to live simply, and have the guts to write about it. We should all strive to reach that balance, and to plant this world with the same rich heritage seeds.

Thank God for these writers, and discovers, and healthy recipe hunters, who give us ideas and motivation and encouragement.  One rainy Tuesday, when I think of a craft project out of the blue for our two edgy children, I’ll thank them.   Our daughter will beg to watch television and our son would rather eat more applesauce or stick his hands in the dog’s water bowl.  I’ll be the one left sitting at the table gluing shards of paper onto coffee filters, and dinner will consist of scrambled eggs and toast. But still. Thanks all the same.

There’s always tomorrow, when we will have lemon buttermilk pancakes with sugared walnuts.   Too bad my camera battery’s dead and no one will ever know.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Religion, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

scatter

February 22, 2012 By

Our children are spoiled rotten.  Not spoiled in the sense that they have a pony and get to eat graham crackers every morning for breakfast and win arguments by failing around their arms and screaming.  They’re spoiled because they get to live in a home with their own bedroom, packed with soft blankets and stuffed animals and books. They never have to feel hunger pains shooting from their stomachs, drink sugar water for sustenance, or live in bombed-out basements and see their father bleeding to death on pile of rubble.  My daughter skips around in peaceful oblivion, thinking of ballet and scavenger hunts and Miss Piggle Wiggle’s magic cures.  My son is learning his A-B-C’s and likes to eat peanut butter bars. How sheltered they are.

When I read about what’s happening in Syria, how families are torn apart and blown up for crossing the street or hunting for a piece of bread, it makes my heart ache.  It seems so far-off and foreign, like a movie that’s covered in mist and gunfire and the music of symphonies.  Like I can somehow shut the pages of the New York Times and it will all go fading off into the distance, credits slowly rolling.

But there’s nothing beautiful in this tragedy.  Some of those children will likely survive, which seems the worst of it.  I can only hope their mind locks down the memories, although they will surface someday in dreams, etched like a third-degree burn onto their heart.  The welling up of tears will be gone and only a hollowed-out black hole will remain, their soul empty and waiting to die.

The last few weeks, I’ve been inordinately stressed about my daughter’s educational experience, of all the silly things.  I’ve been wringing my hands about how little fun she’s having these days, learning math and handwriting and all those repetitive sound tests.  I call my mother and my good friends and say things like “Shouldn’t Kindergarten be more fun?” and “those classrooms need more color, I tell you what.”

I complain about how the discipline and structure of private school seems to tug at my daughter’s natural buoyancy, and I don’t want anyone to break her creative and independent spirit.  She might not always follow the rules and complain about having to walk too far.  She might gripe about picking up her toys or having to eat her broccoli, but isn’t that just what children do?  Let’s allow them to be young and have fun.  Why should we make life so hard for them?   Wimps, I tell you.  Spoiled rotten wimps.

Jesus, the great teacher, said that “behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.  Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.  I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.  In the world, you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:32-33.

My children are spoiled because we spoil them.  We worry about trivial things and place great emphasis on what matters very little.  We allow them to complain and whine and worry about making their lives comfortable and entertaining.  As if their lives aren’t comfortable enough.  Perhaps we should be worrying less about how fun their lives are and about how better to equip them for their own spiritual battles to come.

My thoughts drift back to the Syrians, cramped in basements and locked away from the sun or their grandmothers or a decent day’s food.  I weep for you, sweet children.  I tear my clothes and fall to my knees in angst for your innocence.

This world is a fallen, scornful place.  That is true. Your world is ugly and empty and smoldering.  In a sense we live in that same world, albeit on the opposite side of the globe, and the ugliness not so obvious.  We, too, are busy scattering like cockroaches into our own basements, except we don’t have the luxury of having nothing left to rely on.  We have BFFs and soft down comforters and bottles of wine and cheerful husbands to console us. We don’t see the reality of war.

Jesus taught us of peace.  Of taking comfort in things unseen.  Of complete surrender.  Despite the smoke and blood pouring down city streets, He has overcome this world.  My dear children, I hope you will someday feel this truth.  It makes all the difference.

Filed Under: Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

no regrets

January 23, 2012 By

I’ve been thinking of the concept of fairness.   About how we human beings have a certain timeline in our heads about what is right and just.

You are born.  You struggle and climb and claw your way out of, well, something.  You find the perfect mate with good teeth.  You have children, who you set up little college accounts for.   They grow up going to church and wearing plaid jumpers.  They study and play monopoly.  You clasp your hands over your mouth when they make the deans list. Someday, they take you out to brunch and thank you for all your hard work over a chai tea latte and scones.  They get married, all white and blushing and beautiful. Then, you’ll start babysitting chubby little grandchildren while your offspring jet off to their medical practices or CPA offices.  Satisfied, you and the better half drive off into the sunset on an RV retirement adventure.  You slowly grow old and can’t remember to turn off the toaster. Finally, you die.  Everyone grieves and brings casseroles.  It’s cool. You lived a full life.  Death happens.

This, my friends, is fairness.  It’s the natural order of things. Anything less is not open to discussion.  And yet despite this view of life, unfair things happen all the time.  A young mother dies of cancer leaving two small children confused and broken.  Her husband prayed.  Her mother prayed.  But survival was not to be.  She was just fine one day, and then she wasn’t.  What about the plan?  She was only 32 years old.  What about the brunch and the scones and the chubby grandchildren?  What if your spouse died and left only a pile of dirty laundry behind? There is no love letter or made-for-television novel or some grand exit.  He was just there, and then he wasn’t.  Where is God? Why did this happen?  How will the children make it? Your fairness timetable is all screwed up.

So in order to protect ourselves, and not end up heavily medicated, we ignore reality.  We draw a circle around us and stay in close.   Like if we are home on a Saturday afternoon doing laundry, ill fate will not befall us.  Like we can somehow escape death.  After all, we aren’t those people.  We aren’t that family.  The end will come to us at a more appropriate time.  Like when our children are all grown or our minds start to fade.  We’ll bite the dust watching reruns in housedresses and slippers, screaming into the phone while our kids tell us to turn up our hearing aids.

“The race is not to the swift. . .” the Bible says, “nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.”  Ecclesiastes 9:11.  This explains why the Kardashian sisters are walking around in nine-hundred-dollar shoes while children are starving in Africa.  Or why Hugh Hefner is still bouncing around the Playboy mansion with a fake tan.  Because life, my friends, is not at all fair.  It doesn’t follow our rules. “For man does not know his time.  Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.”  Ecclesiastes 9:12.

I hate it when people say “it was his time” or “it was all God’s plan” when someone dies.  Really? A seven-year-old chose to die? God planned for a young mother to come down with cancer, leaving two kids behind?  I hope that’s not the case.  I think we just get caught in snares, and can’t weave our way out.

So you wake up tomorrow.  Victory! It’s true that you still must scrub toilets and go to work and suffer from headaches.  You still get annoyed when your kids scream, and sometimes you pour cereal only to realize you are out of milk.  Those stupid allergies make you crazy and you feel overwhelmed at work.  You go out to eat and get fat and don’t have any energy and are the only one who unloads the dishwasher.

Stop complaining.

Re-evaluate your life to see what really matters.  Be thankful you have children to raise and friends to talk to.  Get your head out of the television and start seeing what’s around you. You have the unique perspective that others don’t.  You actually have some element of control over your decisions and the words you speak and what do you with the hours in your day. This weekend, I started to watch an online movie preview of some stupid movie I knew I wouldn’t like.  I thought to myself – that’s three minutes of time on this earth wasted.

Think of your days as numbered, and your hours having value. You just might start to change some habits.  And then, you’ll really start living with no regrets.

Filed Under: Health, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

lessons in carols

December 30, 2011 By

I love to sing.  I sing in the kitchen and in the car.  I sing as I mop and as I dress.  I dictate instructions to my children in song – sometimes changing the key midstream to see if anyone’s paying attention.  You don’t want me all up-in-your-business singing “you came from my womb, now clean up your room, I’ll fill you with doom if you refuse me,” and don’t think my daughter can’t whip out some do-re-me action on a dime.  That’s hard-core training, people.   I can’t wait until my daughter is in junior high so she can fill up her little journal about how her mother is a total lunatic and is so totally unaware of how annoying she is.  Oh I know, sweetheart.  It’s all part of my master plan of totally family domination.  Breaking down spirits with excessive vibrato.

 

Given my natural affinity for song, however, I was naturally pumped to sing a solo at Christmas eve service. I wore black and had a wonderful pianist and stood in front of my church congregation, candles-a-ready, and began.  I was a bit worried about my lip gloss.  Priorities, you know.  But it all started out fine.  It was calm and serene, and after a moment, people started to smile and close their eyes.  It was a story told long ago, about a child born of Mary. A song of peace and new birth.   About pure hearts and renewed spirits.  A song of –

 

Uh oh.

 

Out of nowhere, I hear a bellowing cry from the back of the church. A man is practically falling over himself to escape from the aisle with a child in his arms.  A child who happens to be my son.  After getting a glimpse of his mother at the front of the church, standing alone with a spotlight on her face, he decides to declare to the people sitting around, and the old-folks home next door, and to the Burger King down the street, that his mother is there. In case they didn’t notice.

 

“Ma MAAAAAAAAA!” he shrieks with delight.  “Hi Mama!  Hi Mama!” He is fervently waving with both hands in the air.  He must think I can’t hear him, although the room is silent except for my voice and you can literally hear fabric rub together when someone crosses their legs.  He bumps the volume up a bit.  “Mamaaa!  Mama SINGGGGG!”  He is thrilled at my existence, even though I just saw him five minutes ago. I can see my husband apologize to someone as he barrels past knees and blazers and candles on his way out the door.

 

I try to remain calm.  If Oleta Adams sang this song in front of thousands, I can surely keep it together as my husband takes my screaming son into the foyer. Where, as it turns out, he sees me again on the video screens and starts with a renewed round of heartfelt hellos and fervent waving.

 

All of a sudden, out of embarrassment or distraction, I lost my place.  I was in the middle of a stanza about finding inner peace when I had a panic attack.  I drew out the note, ran through a mental checklist of oh crap, where’s the coda and I freaking sang that part already and I’m screwed, and my kind accompanist just slowed things down like the whole thing was planned.  I smiled and turned the page, which made no sense since it was the wrong page to begin with.  I’m pretty sure I did some sort of corny hand gesture. Awesome.  My husband will never let me live that one down.

 

I had exactly four beats to make a decision, so I just picked right back up, singing the exact same thing I did before, making up additional words when necessary. My daughter, now parent free, is standing in her beautiful Christmas dress at the back of the church just waving at me.  She is beaming with pride.  She doesn’t know I’m sweating and hoping no one noticed I repeated the entire second verse and praying for the song to end.  It finally did, and I sat down with a solemn heart.  What a waste, I thought.

 

But my family was so proud, and my husband laughed so hard, and when it was all said and done I felt that this is what the Christmas story is all about, anyway.  It’s not calm and morose and black and perfect.  Birth isn’t filled with candles and sweet syrupy lyrics and everyone sitting around in navy blazers.

 

Birth is crying and screaming and pushing and sweating.  It’s seeing a part of God come out in human form in front of you.  Your heart is bursting like a water balloon and you feel surrounded and sustained by pure, unaltered, unabashed joy.  Joy at living.  Joy at this child you created.  Joy at seeing someone you love in front of you, not caring how your reaction looks to the world around you.  Thank God for our son, who reminded me of this. Thank God for Jesus, born screaming out the love of God and not caring who heard it.  And thank God for Mary, who probably thought she was screwing it all up.  But she wasn’t.

And that’s the best lesson of them all.


Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Music, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

lucky one

October 10, 2011 By

I remember the marble being such a pretty color, peachy with ribbons of coral running through it.  It was everywhere.  Marble tub.  Marble sink.  Marble floor. “That’s a lot of stinkin marble,” I thought to myself as I was lying there, half-naked, face-down on the floor with a nose that might be broken. I was only sixteen.  When it happened– the familiar burning and surging and cramping in my abdomen– I’d carry pillows with me to the toilet.  I figured that if I passed out, they would break the fall.   It never worked, and I never learned.

Once, after waking up on the floor in a public stall, I simply wiped my face off and headed back to Chemistry class.  My friends in college all freaked out in that dramatic, ohmygodshe’stotallygoingtodie way, as supportive as newly formed friends who share a common dormitory can possibly be.  The doctors never figured out why the pain caused me to pass out.  The neurologist ruled out epilepsy, although according to some probe-strapping test, something was definitely a “bit off” with my brainwaves.  That explains a lot.  But one day, I had a beautiful little girl and I never passed out again.

My life doesn’t exactly follow the odds.  I guess you could say I’m lucky.

▪               Ten years ago, an oncologist told me I had a chunk of melanoma living in my eye socket.  Eye cancer is very rare, as it turns out.  One in a million.  Who knew I’d get to travel to Philadelphia and have surgery in one of America’s oldest cities?  As it turns out, I love cheesesteak and Thomas Jefferson.

▪               When I was in the hospital after the birth of my daughter, first a week and extending to three and then four, undergoing multiple surgeries and stabbing myself with blood-thinner injections, I was told it wasn’t exactly normal.  I tried to put on lipstick to make it all better, but with a four-week-old child at home I’d barely begun to hold, Chanel can only do so much.  Don’t get me wrong – it can do a lot. But there are limits.

▪               Most people don’t pass out after having their wisdom teeth extracted and have CPR performed in the oral surgeon’s office lobby because they had some extreme reaction to Demerol. Lucky for me, they had some sort of anti-Demorol agent locked away someplace they stuck in my arm.  I remember getting to drink juice when I woke up. But then again, I’ve woken up from loads of surgeries, so I might be getting them all confused.

▪               Before the birth of my son, right after the spinal tap was placed and the medicine was slowly crawling through my veins toward the arteries of my heart, it stopped. The monitor would just so naturally flatline, because that’s what luck I have.   But like I arose from the marble floor, so too would my heart begin to beat.  After, of course, the chest compressions, the stabbing of epinephrine, and some other medication that apparently gives you dry mouth.

So it wasn’t all that surprising that our house was struck by lightning.  And instead of killing us or burning our house to the ground, it instead wiped out all our plumbing.  “That’s very rare,” the fireman said.   Yeah.  Welcome to my life.  Things happen to me.  Things that don’t happen to normal people.

I can’t help but think God has some grand scheme behind all of this, like there is some grand point to be made.  In response, I’m actively searching for what that is.  What role I need to play in the universe in return for my good fortune.  I’m open, as they say, to change.

I am truly grateful for the moments in which we are tested.  To see what’s most important.  I am grateful for a faith, true and honest, despite all reason to the contrary.  I am grateful for this body, as battered and broken as my insides might be.  I am grateful that I’m not married to some boring widget of a man, but a man bursting at the seams with heart.  I’m grateful for my children, deep in character and beauty.  I’m grateful that we are living in a rental, with Goodwill furniture and mice in the garage, because we are together. And laughing.  Last night, I fell asleep holding my husband’s hand.  And today, my daughter told me she’d give me hugs and kisses even when love got so sweet it turned rotten.   I’m a lucky, lucky girl.

I think I’m going to buy a lottery ticket.  I’d probably lose.  Just my luck.

Filed Under: Eye, Health, Humor, Religion Tagged With: , , ,

Devotional for the screw-ups

August 19, 2011 By

Let’s just be honest.  I would NOT be perfectly happy living in a double-wide trailer, trying to decipher smudged expiration dates on ground beef packages in a Wal-mart somewhere in Oklahoma. Not in the land of opportunity.  Not in a country filled with air conditioning and sugar soda and live musicals.  I don’t need much.  I can take or leave Neiman’s.  But I’d work two jobs and struggle and save and find a way to move into an apartment with fake granite countertops and at least wear fancy dresses from Target.  This might mean I’m a horrible example to humanity.  Perhaps I treasure material goods over all else.  Well at 6 am, people, the only thing on my mind is a grande pike roast coffee with two raw sugars.  It’s just human nature, for goodness sakes.

 

Someone asked me recently how I professed to be a follower of Christ’s teachings when I am so ambitious and competitive.  “Those are goals of the world,” this person said, “as opposed to the teachings of Christ, which is to serve others over self.”  I was caught off guard.  I never really thought of the two as mutually exclusive, like to follow Christ you should just chill on the bottom rung of the ladder, eating peanut brittle and snickering, watching those other poor saps climb to the top.  If I had only known, I’d have never graduated college or gone to law school, clawing and scratching my way to wonderful, fulfilling jobs.  I could have gone to work at Wendy’s and saved me all that trouble.

 

I think there is a fine line between living the life God called you to live – using the talents and strengths you were born with to their fullest potential – and crossing the line toward an unyielding race for power and wealth.  As painful as it can be, I think it’s good for folks to question your faith and call you out in public once in a while.  It makes you actually wonder if you are living out the life God wants you to live.  And maybe, you’re not.

 

I like to be reminded of what’s most important in a way that’s real and honest.  A devotional for the screw-ups.  I want a mirror to constantly reflect my own life back in my face to make sure I’m using my talents for God’s glory and not my own.  But for goodness sakes people, don’t reflect life directly into your eyes.  You’ll see a long history of acid-washed jeans and huge bangs and pants that were intentionally baggy at the hips and tight at the ankles.  This might cause permanent blindness and defeat the whole point of the exercise.   Aim it at your cheek or something.  

 

I walked into a Christian bookstore to find such a book. Daily devotions for “real women.” I thought I’d just know it when I saw it, like there would be a woman on the cover with a red wine stain on her shirt and her hair pulled back in a greasy pony tail, attempting to make Chicken-with-40-Cloves-of-Garlic while her kids are in the background drawing on each other with markers. But as I would unfold the stories, day by day, I would unearth a person who was genuinely happy with her life.  Who had found her true calling. I’d be drawn to her and feel we were kindred spirits, reading with interest how she found time to worship when she needed to make peanut butter sandwiches. She would remind me in daily increments that I’ll totally make it, even if I did slip up and say a creative slew of curse words to my boss in a fit of anger about a budget report.  She would gently remind me that such behavior is not becoming to the person God calls me to be, and I’d agree, realizing that such words defame God and are icky and crass like the shoes that I refuse to give up to Goodwill. Do it! she’d say. Put them in a paper sack in your garage and haul them off!

 

Most of all, she would tell me that it will be okay.  That I didn’t have a choice to be ambitious.  After all, we all must answer to the call God gives us the best way we know how.  And just maybe, she’ll tell me about her own momma, sweet thing, who scrapped and saved in their double wide outside Tulsa to buy everyone Taco Bell.  Just to make sure I’m really getting the point.  Jesus spoke in parables too, but he used classy stuff like wine and wheat stalks instead of double cheese burritos.

 

So I looked for this book to tell me I was okay, most of the time. But all I saw staring back at me on the shelves were pictures of teacups, fake steam gently rising to the top, all calm and pink and reflective, sitting in pretty little displays. Women with great teeth and well-combed hair reflected in great detail how busy they are vacuuming and praying at soccer games.  They are probably kind and lovely women, I’m absolutely and/or possibly sure of it, but where were the milk stains and reading glasses?  Where were the unmade beds and dirty dishes?  What about the burritos? They didn’t chastise me for not praying every morning and tell me there is no valid excuse (none!) unless I’m in the hospital undergoing surgery for an abdominal infection.  Then, maybe I get a pass.  They just kept being nice and respectful.  They keep flashing that unrelenting, pasty smile. I need honestly, people. I need that gut-wrenching kick in the pants.

 

So I sighed and kept walking through the store.  Past the school supplies with “I Heart Jesus” scrolled in bubbly letters.  I strolled past the scripture mints and the bible covers and the ceramic plates that proclaimed the goodness of all things biblical.  They had complimentary coffee, but the house blend was empty.  Figures. I pondered for a moment whether my life would be exponentially better if I just owned a tea kettle emblazed with a quote from Psalms.

 

As it turns out, there isn’t a book geared for overworked moms who are intimidated by all those perfect teeth.  Maybe I’ll write it.  I’ll encourage these women to keep going, despite the fact that they drank one glass of wine too many and let their kids watch cartoons the following morning for three solid hours.  Despite the sippy cup that used to contain milk but somehow got stuck in-between the minivan seats and turned into curds and whey.  Despite missed life lessons and botched biblical opportunities and tangled tongues.  We can remind each other that tomorrow’s a new day.  There are more battles to overcome and morals to teach.  Keep praying!  Keep trying!  Refrain from insulting Oklahoma!

 

There goes that ambition again, wild and out of control. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to sit through a tornado on the high plains, scared and shaking, wearing a cheap Wal-mart dress and hugging my knees.  I’ll hear God’s voice as clear as an arrow and realize that this world is but a wind that will pass.  That his love is forever.

 

It’s possible I might hear God where I am, through the limestone rock that encases my house, amidst the hum of the air conditioner, beneath the sound of my surround-sound stereo, over the laughter of my children, and despite the jangling of my Tiffany bracelet.  But I really have to listen. That’s what a devotional should really be about, anyway.  To drown out the nonsense and keep your ear to the ground.

 

Keep listening.  It’s easy in Oklahoma.  Not so much everywhere else.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

scratching and hatching

August 3, 2011 By

As it turns out, a scratch on one’s eye does feel like salty glass being scraped across an open wound.  I bet they teach in torture school.  Scratch their eyeballs.  That’ll get ‘em talkin.  Maybe I was just hormonal, using pain, blindness, and random arm-flailing (in order to find light switches) as a feeble excuse for solitude.  Anything is possible, especially since I did spend days in the dark, shunning light like a vampire.

It all started early on a Monday.  I got a call from the day care, informing me that my daughter had head lice.  She needs to be picked up immediately, the teacher said in her best sing-songy voice.  I always interpret that phrase loosely, like “pick her up before the world ends” or “really whenever is convenient in-between your 3 o’clock meeting and nightfall.”  They might not mean it just that way, but I figure the school has band-aids and gauze and are trained to pull out bee stingers.  They can administer Tylenol.  Give ice packs.  Perform CPR.   When you really think about it, they’re way better qualified to handle emergencies than I am.  After all – what else are they going to do with my daughter who is allegedly infested with head lice but stick her in a quarantined colony to play with paper dolls?  That sounds fun.  So I called my husband and said he was on lice duty since I was off to a meeting to train two hundred doctors.  “Is it something you can cancel?” he asks.  Not a chance.  Two words, buddy.  Nit comb.  Embrace it.

Later that night, I was standing next to the bathroom mirror inspecting my own hair.  What if I got it too?  What if I had to treat it, making my hair all nasty and greasy?   What if I didn’t get them all and they start hatching in the middle of a deposition?  We’d have to go off the record while I sprint to the restroom and start smashing the little buggers between my fingers.  I was in the middle of my daydream about hatching lice and freaked-out court reporters when I suddenly feel something in my eye.  My right eye.  The only eye not destroyed by cancer-killing superpower radiation that’s usable for actual vision.  I begin to peel my top eyelid over my bottom eyelid in a frantic effort to remove the foreign body that was apparently boring a hole in my eyeball with a jackhammer.  I tried to tell my husband, but he just ignored me.  I think he was still bitter about the nit comb.

“Oh my gosh, I have something in my eye,” I said.

“Hmph.”

“No really.  It feels like there are little elves dancing on my eyeball and stabbing me with little daggers.  Fiery poisonous daggers.”

“Dude,” he says.  He flips over in bed and puts the pillow over his head.  “You are so dramatic. Just rinse it with water or something.”

But showering, eye dropping, squeezing, and simply not blinking were all wholly ineffective.  There was a vague sensation of placing my eye directly in the pathway of shredded scrap metal. Finally, at 3 am, I tap gently on my husband’s arm to inform him that perhaps he might want to clear his schedule – senate hearing be damned – since it appears he would be taking me to the eye doctor at dawn. He’s used to me, so he just nods in his sleep like this is completely normal.

The next morning, the doctor tells me it’s nothing to worry about.  Just a scratched cornea.  Better in a few days!  I had a burning desire to let him know about the lice.  To tell him that some little disgusting bug with lots of legs had landed in my eye and buried itself down into my eye-goo to have babies.  Lots and lots of babies. But I didn’t have the nerve.  After all, he was wearing designer jeans under his white coat.   I didn’t figure his kids ever got head lice, so he couldn’t relate.

The next day, I sat around helpless and blind, my eye completely useless.  I could slightly open my gimp good eye and could look only to the right, but every blink still felt like sandpaper.  But I crab-walked around the house while organizing linens and making large labels that said DIAPERS and WIPES like everyone else in the house was also blind and could only read letters the size of sandwiches.  I vacuumed and mopped and did all sorts of really exciting things that could be done while staring aimlessly and vaguely over my right shoulder.

By Friday, I was sick of being home.  I didn’t have lice, which was the highlight of the week, and to this day we wonder if our daughter did either.  I schlepped around in t-shirts, not being able to read cereal boxes or watch television.  I needed to get out.  I needed for my friends to be available for long talks and send me books on tape.  I needed ice cream.  Finally, on Saturday morning, I’d had enough.  I called the emergency line and demanded the retina doctor see me regardless of it being Saturday and regardless of the fact that he was probably at Nordstrom buying more of those jeans.  He obliged.

As it turns out, whatever (icky, disgusting lice bug) was in my eye had promptly caused a massive scab under my eyelid.  Which isn’t that big of a deal unless it’s, say, scraping up and down upon a scratched cornea, making healing impossible and re-injuring the scratch with every.  single.  blink.  “No wonder it isn’t better,” said the doctor.  Note to self.  Don’t go to doctors that wear designer jeans.  Choose those with grey hair and nerdy shoes.  He whips out some scraping device, gets out the scab, and informs that it now actually might heal, which of course is great news.

It does heal, thank the Lord.  I’d be a horrible vampire.

So I had some time to think as I lay around wondering if I needed a seeing-eye dog.  I thought of how close I was to blind.  I thought of how a little tiny scratch can put one, who is normally incredibly active, totally out of commission.  I thought of how I take my eye for granted, like a good friend you just assume is always going to be around when you need them.  I thought of how life-changing it would be to not see my children grow up, or not see the dresses at the Oscars, or miss that sideways glance from my husband at a party that says man, I love you.  I’m so glad you’re mine. 

I felt a little lost, really, like the time I was lying on my back in the hospital after my daughter was born.  After the massive infection that made me so sick I thought I’d die. Or the time I flat-lined on the table after my son’s birth or when I lost consciousness in the oral surgeon’s office.  Or when I heard those dreaded words – you’ve got cancer.  All of those times, I felt I was losing.  All I’d worked for in this life could so easily vanish.   I wanted to win.  To be successful.  And yet at every turn, I was rendered blind so suddenly, I didn’t expect it.

Sometimes, I think of God in human form.  Beaten.  Taunted.  Rendered blind and bleeding, with nails and thorns tearing through his flesh and his body hanging on a ruff-hewn cross.  I’m just a wretch that didn’t deserve saving, with my un-plucked eyebrows and arrogant laugh and one barely-working eye.  But he did save me, and he constantly does, and I’m forever grateful for it.  Maybe I needed to be blind to actually see.  Perhaps God’s grace really is that amazing.

Now, I’m all shiny and happy again.  And I can see, which helps with driving and simmering onions.  But I’m so thankful for the moment in time when I couldn’t.  A moment to realize that all we do individually is really quite worthless, but in God, and through his love, all things truly are possible.

When I look back, I don’t think a lice bug can actually survive in a human eye, although secretly, now that I have a little boy, I was hoping so in order to have a good story to tell my son when he got older.  Oh – your mom has diabetes?  That’s nothing.  My mom was blinded by hatching lice eggs in her eyeball. 

 

Try topping that one.  I dare you.

Filed Under: Health, Humor, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

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