decompress

I love Tuesdays. For about three hours in the morning, all of my children are at school/preschool. They are out of the house and in good care, and I have some time to get things done and just breathe. 

The scenario each Tuesday morning is pretty similar. I wake up around 6:15am, get some coffee in my system, get Tess up, dressed, fed, and out the door for kindergarten, pack lunches for the littles, unload the dishwasher, get dressed, get Ren and Lu up, get them fed, dressed, loaded into the car, and dropped off at preschool/Mom's Day Out. In the midst of all of this, there are multiple temper tantrums to diffuse and exhausting toddler power struggles to disengage from. It can feel like a volatile emotional obstacle course every morning. 

When I arrive back home it's around 9:30am and I feel as though I've been sprinting for three hours. I walk into the house. It is eerily silent and still. Texanna is at the door to greet me. She sits at my feet and stares at me, as if to say, "Is it my turn now?" I rub her ears and pet her head and tell her we can both just relax. I look around the kitchen. Dried, crusty yogurt remains on the kitchen counter from where the kids ate breakfast. Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink. Bits of last night's rice float around in the pots of cold dishwater. I start to wonder what I'll do with my precious window of time, whether I'll tend to the laundry, the dishes, the dinner that needs to be cooked, the errands that need to be run, the pooch that needs to be walked, the appointments that need to be scheduled, the emails to return, the floors to mop, etc.

Instead, I always find myself standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring blankly around, and the only thought on my mind is coffee. First things first. I measure out the coffee grinds, take a big, deep breathe, and as I exhale, the over stimulation of the morning starts to diffuse out of me. I can feel my spirit start to unwind and I begin to relax into the silence. It's time to decompress.

And that's what I'm doing now. In this moment, I'm here with my coffee in the big white chair in our sunroom. It's cold and sunny outside and I love the way the light pours into this room, especially in the morning hours. It's my favorite room of the house. This is sacred time. It is precious because I do not have it in abundance. Sometimes I just sit and sip and stare out the window. Sometimes I like to write in my journal or write a letter to a friend. Sometimes I like to paint or read. I will start into my "to-do" list later, but for now, I can just BE, and I am grateful.

How do you decompress? What does that precious window of time look like for you? What would you want it to look like? If you are a working mom, how do you find this time for yourself?

"Certain springs are tapped when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer to work out his thoughts; the musician to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships." --Anne Morrow Lindbergh

strength, redefined.

I was talking with a friend/mentor of mine about strength last week. She is a very intelligent, perceptive, and wise woman, and she was discussing the relationship between strength and rest...more specifically, that strength comes from rest. Like this:

REST ------>>> STRENGTH

There are all of these examples in scripture of this connection between strength and rest, like the way that Jesus went away to rest and seek solitude before he had to be strong before the multitudes. Anyhow, we talked about how much our culture twists this relationship between strength and rest. Our culture tells us that if we need rest, then we are weak. It tells us that activity, accomplishment, busyness, perfectionism, and stoicism equals and breeds strength. But really, all of this stuff depletes us. It makes us frazzled, fragmented, and exhausted.

I was thinking a lot about this today because of something that happened last night. I've mentioned before that I've been involved with a ministry called Celebrate Recovery over the past year. Last fall I started an intensive study that guided me and a group of other ladies through the twelve steps of recovery. It's been a season of breaking down the blinders of denial, doing an inventory of my relationship with God, with myself, and with others, and of learning how to surrender my life to God and to really, really trust Him. Anyhow, last night was our night to celebrate the progress we have made and to give Him praise for the victories we have experienced. We all sat around a big table and ate together and shared our stories.

I wrote over three-pages, single spaced, to share with our group, and about half-way into the first paragraph, I started to cry. I am a crier, a big crier, and once I start, it's hard for me to stop. I thought I was doomed when the tears started coming so early into my story. I'll never get through this, I thought.

But I did...eventually. I had to stop to blow my nose a few times and I felt horribly self-consious. I was a blubbering, shaking mess by the end, but I got every word out. I gave it all that I had; I held nothing back. I hoped that my words might touch the other women in my group and give praise to Jesus, the ultimate Author of it all. It was a powerful night and I felt pretty proud of how much our group has grown and learned over the past year.

This morning, however, something very typical happened. I woke up feeling horrible. The feeling is familiar...a tinge of nausea combined with a lurking sense of shame. I felt embarrassed and stupid about how emotional I had gotten. I wondered, why can't I be one of those women who can speak the words without my voice quivering, without tears blurring my vision, and without my hands shaking as I clench the words on the page? Why must I be so...so...emotional? (I'm slowly and stubbornly learning to accept that maybe God just made me this way and I need to stop comparing myself to people who can speak in public without losing total composure.)

Anyhow, I say all of this because I think I'm realizing that maybe my embarrassment over my vulnerable, emotional display last night is that our culture tells us that this type of behavior is weak. In the same way it tells us that rest is weak, it also tells us that tearful displays of emotion are weak. It tells us to stay locked up inside, to not show our hearts, to protect ourselves, and to keep it all together.

Over the years, I've learned that sharing our stories with one another takes courage. It takes courage to be vulnerable. It takes courage to struggle. It takes courage to fight against resistance, and it takes courage to open yourself up to change, to share your brokenness and neediness.

So, all of this is to say that our culture has got it all backwards. These hard, stoic images that we somehow get in our heads of what it means to be strong are false illusions. Practicing rest gives us strength. This is where we can refuel and listen to God and to ourselves. And then, from that rest, we can go out and struggle hard and boldly share our broken lives with one another--we can share our stories--we can share all that we've heard in our moments of rest.

Throughout my MFA program, this question is commonly asked:

What makes a piece of writing good?

The answer is usually unanimous:

A good piece of writing evokes an emotional response from the reader/hearer.

So, I guess I needed to write this for myself, to remind myself of what strength is, where it comes from, and that it usually doesn't show up in the way I think it should. Perhaps my level of emotion last night doesn't mean that I'm a weak, histrionic basket-case. Perhaps it means that God is writing a pretty incredible story for me as I yield my life to Him...and He is teaching me to share it...tears, quivers, shakes, and all.

Codependent No More

I've been thinking a lot lately about books that have impacted my life over the past few years and I'd love to spend some time talking about them over the next few weeks...

I'm not really one for self-help books, but this book by Melody Beattie is an exception. I've been reading it and re-reading it over the past year, and in conjunction with a lot of support from my recovery group, mentors, therapist, and friends, it has revolutionized the way I approach life and relationships. 

I think all humans struggle on some level with issues of codependency. If you struggle, like me, with perfectionism, control, seeking the approval of others, maintaining healthy boundaries, feeling guilty about being who you are, feeling responsible for other people's feelings and reactions, having a tendency to rescue and people-please, and/or struggle with addiction or love someone who struggles with addiction (to name a few), then you will probably like this book too.  

Some things I have learned over the past year...quotes worth sharing...from Codependent No More...

"We don't have to take things so seriously (ourselves, events, and other people). We blow things out of proportion--our feelings, thoughts, actions, and mistakes. We do the same thing with other people's feelings, thoughts, and actions. We tell ourselves things are awful, terrible, a tragedy, and the end of the world. Many things might be sad, too bad, and unpleasant--but the only thing that's the end of the world is the end of the world. Feelings are important, but they're only feelings. Thoughts are important, but they're only thoughts--and we all think a lot of different things, and our thoughts are subject to change. What we say and do is important, what others say and do is important, but the world doesn't hinge on any particular speech or action. And if it is particularly important that something gets done or said, don't worry: It'll happen. Lighten up. Give yourself and others room to move, to talk, to be who they are--to be human. Give life a chance to happen. Give yourself and opportunity to enjoy it."

***

"I believe...that our low self-worth or self-hatred is tied into all aspects of our codependency: martyrdom, refusal to enjoy life; workaholism, staying so busy we can't enjoy life; perfectionism, not allowing ourselves to enjoy or feel good about the things we do; procrastination, heaping piles of guilt and uncertainty on ourselves; and preventing intimacy with people such as running from relationships, avoiding commitment, staying in destructive relationships; initiating relationships with people who are not good for us, and avoiding people who are good for us...We can find endless means of torturing ourselves: overeating, neglecting our needs, comparing ourselves to others, competing with people, obsessing, dwelling on painful memories, or imagining future painful scenes...We scare ourselves, then wonder why we feel so frightened. We don't like ourselves, and we're not going to let ourselves get any of the good stuff because we believe we don't deserve it."

***

"We need to refuse to enter into an antagonistic relationship with ourselves. Quit blaming ourselves and being victimized, and take responsible steps to remove the victim. Put the screws to guilt. Shame and guilt serve no long-term purpose. They are only useful to momentarily indicate when we may have violated our own moral codes. Guilt and shame are not useful as a way of life. Stop the "shoulds." Become aware of when we're punishing and torturing ourselves and make a concerted effort to tell ourselves positive messages. If we should be doing something, do it. If we're torturing ourselves, stop it. It gets easier. We can laugh at ourselves, tell ourselves we won't be tricked, give ourselves a hug, then go about the business of living as we choose. If we have real guilt, deal with it. God will forgive us. We don't have to punish ourselves by feeling guilty to prove to God or anyone else how much we care."

***

"Codependents are oppressed, depressed, and repressed. Many of us can quickly tell what someone else is feeling, why that person is feeling that way, how long they've felt that way, and what that person is probably going to do because of that feeling. Many of us spend our lives fussing about other people's feelings. We try to fix people's feelings. We try to control other people's feelings. We don't want to hurt people, we don't want to upset them, and we don't want to offend them. We feel so responsible for other people's feelings. Yet, we don't know what we are feeling. If we do, we don't know what to do to fix ourselves. Many of us have abandoned or never taken responsibility for our emotional selves."

***

Anyhow, I'll stop here before I end up quoting the entire book. There are so many great truths throughout this book and Beattie writes with such an encouraging, honest, confidant, and firm tone. If any of these quotes resonate with you, I think this book would be worth reading.

Has anyone else read this book? If so, what were your thoughts on it?

my map

Where you come from is gone, 

where you thought you were going to never was there,

and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.

In yourself, right now is all the place you've got.

--Flannery O'Connor

I find myself again in that obscure place, approaching a major intersection of life, walking down one road that will soon diverge into another, preparing myself to part ways from those on this current path with me, reflective of past roads I've traveled before this one, all the while trying to make out the hazy horizon before me. It is familiar territory, a situation I sometimes wish I didn't know so intimately.

But I do. Hellos and goodbyes are deeply engrained in my story. Change is something that often feels more familiar to me than consistency and sameness, and I struggle between conflicting desires for both. I love a good adventure, newness, seeing new landscapes and meeting new people. And yet I hate this part of it...the gearing up to say goodbye, the wanting to detach from community as I watch people grow closer together while I prepare to part. For me, being "here and now" is difficult when so many preparations must be made for the future, when I feel like I have one foot in and one foot out.

As I drive around northern California, I look at the land, the hills that grow greener each day with the spring rain. I take note of my favorite stretches of I-80, my favorite bends of Hwy 29, and the daily drives that make me say I will miss this. As I drove to meet a dear friend for lunch in San Francisco several weeks ago, I took a photo of my favorite part of the drive, the hilly section of highway between Fairfield and Vallejo, right around American Canyon, where the pavement digs into the landscape and the view begins to open itself up to the bay.

And then there is that stretch between our home and Sacramento, where the hills subside into flat farmland. Vineyards become orchards and hills become plains, the cool marine air turns drier and warmer. I know this stretch of the road well, the part that's paved with memories of picking up and dropping off visitors at the Sacramento airport, especially during the long, hot summer of Chris's deployment. It is the route I drove to take our dossier to Sacramento, the day I put the final touches on the paperwork that would lead us to our son. It is also the stretch of road I drive to go to Dixon for therapy each week, a time when my thoughts and emotions are raw and accessible as I pass fields of sunflowers and corn, walnut orchards, and pegboards of trees meticulously planted and preened.

This is my map, the part of the earth where I have been planted, nourished, and pruned over the past three years. Parts of who I am reside in this land. Segments of my story will forever be tied to this place and the thought of leaving it feels as painful as losing an intimate part of myself. Fragments of my heart will be left here, just as they were in the many other places I have lived, and so I suppose it's no wonder that I can feel this way. Fractioned, pieced apart, a little less than whole.

My journey to this part of the country began nearly ten years ago. I have traveled and resided in all four time zones of the United States, one at a time, and this long and gradual trek of cross-country self-discovery will end here, the final destination, the opposite coast from where I came, which is ironically where I have felt most at home, most like myself. The West is full of open spaces and drier air, room to breathe and blossom into my own person. I have needed this space, and now, a decade later, I prepare myself to return, to venture back home, a far different woman than I was when I left.

So for now, I am soaking up the moments left with the people I love and the landscape I love. I want each day to celebrate with all of my senses the journey God has led me on over the past decade. This era is quickly coming to a close. Everything is about to change.

Here before me now...my map, of a place and therefore of myself, and much that can never be said adds to its reality...just as much of its reality is based on my own shadows, my own inventions.

Over the years I have taught myself, and have been taught, to be a stranger. A stranger usually has the normal five senses, perhaps especially so, ready to protect and nourish him.

--MFK Fisher, Map of Another Town

words, words, words...

How many words do we really need?

I find that Americans are excessive on almost every level, even the way we use language.

There is so much traffic and commotion on the internet.  Run-on blog posts, tweets, status updates, opinions. Words, words, words.  We have a lot of them. I realize the irony of this post, as I am merely adding to them.

But what are we really saying?

I know that in my own experience, it sometimes requires a lot of words and a lot of talking in order for me to pin down what I want to say--the heart of my message.  But once I get to the heart, can't I start to cut away the excess?

This is what a love about poetry--the condensed language--"the best words in their best order."

I'm wondering how this would translate to the way that I live--what would my life look like if I knew the heart of my message--the message that God wants to speak through me--and started to delete the rest of the clutter?

My favorite poet, Linda Pastan, says--

"I'd like to write long narrative poems. I'd like to write a novel. And any time I start anything long, I keep trying to take out anything extraneous, anything that doesn't belong, and I end up with a small lyric poem that just happens...But each poem of mine goes through something like 100 revisions...I want every word to have to be there. I want a certain kind of impact on the reader or on myself when I read it, the sort of condensed energy that can then go out."

Simple. Concise. Condensed. Powerful. The core, the meat, the good stuff. Nothing else.

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller writes about living a good story.

I'm wondering what it would look like to live poetry.

Jesus spoke in poetry. His parables were metaphors, and as Tony Hoagland says, "metaphor is the raw uranium of poetry." Those simple, short metaphors carried so much density, meaning, and mystery, that they eluded most people. They still elude us. Perhaps that is why they're so brilliant. We try to pin down their meaning, but despite all of our thick commentaries, we can't.

Jesus chose His words wisely and His words were few. He didn't need a lot of them.

He is the Word.

Word...as in singular.

I can find nothing superfluous, excessive, or wordy about Jesus or the way He communicates.

I am taking notes. The implications are profound.

Becoming

It's Friday night and Bon Iver calls.  This music has been playing from my computer in the kitchen for the past hour as I've been washing up the remains of Tess's birthday celebration.  It's funny, what music does to a person.  This album reminds me of last summer when I purchased it.  I listened to it non stop, in my car, in the shower, in my bed, or at my desk while writing and critiquing poems for class.  It's strange how different life felt back then.  It seemed we had all the time in the world.

I recently read that Bon Iver was nominated for something like four Grammies this year.  I was annoyed when I read the news because I assumed this would eventually bring the band instant fame, thereby ushering them away from Indie rock and into main-stream-manufactured-trash.  I feel possessive of bands I love, especially during that phase when they are still unknown by the masses.

I felt this way about Coldplay in the early days, with their first big album, Parachutes.  It was the summer of 2001, and that album was my summer soundtrack during train rides through Italy. It played as I sat in our Florence apartment, sipping cheap wine and painting still lifes of fruit for a watercolor class.  That album is steeped in memories from my sophomore and junior years of college.  But look at Coldplay now. They became a big deal, and now they are doing duets with Rihanna.

In Bon Iver's favor, I will say that they refused to do a sell-out musical performance at the Grammies.  They said they thought the awards show was ridiculous, and that everyone should just go home.  They've got guts. They know who they are. It made me love them even more.

This is the sign of a true artist...someone who is all about their work, about being who they are and expressing that to the world. They are willing to uphold their integrity at all costs, even if it means losing popularity. They are not about the accolades or the praise of it. They do it because they have to--it is knit into every fiber of their being, and they do it whether they are publicly acknowledged for it or not.  It's just about being who they are.

I read a quote the other day that struck me.  It relates to all of this.

"Now, with God's help, I shall become myself."  --Soren Kierkegaard

It's funny how one little sentence--eight simple words--can sum up the arduous journey of a person's soul.  I've been journeying through the terrain of my own heart and mind over the past several months, searching for that answer.  Who am I?  Who is "myself?"  Parts of her have gotten lost in some places along the way.  I've started traveling back to find those fragments that I disposed of, some of them as a child, some during my teenage years, some during adulthood and motherhood.  I've held some of them up to the light and invited them back into the whole.  The strange thing about this journey, though, is that the basis of it has been surrender, a letting go of my life into God's hands.  I have had to ask Him to show me who I am, who He made me to be, and to give me the courage to be it. As my friend Heather eloquently wrote yesterday, "I love the thought of surrendering ourselves to find ourselves."

A couple of weeks ago at church they showed a video of a woman making a beautiful clay bowl on a potter's wheel.  The clip was creatively done, and its purpose was to illustrate the process of transformation--mainly, the process of God transforming and molding us into something beautiful.  As our pastor later stated, God is an artist.

God is an artist.

That sentence resonated with me.  It still resonates with me.  I've heard it before, but sitting in church that morning, it really hit me.  For a long time, I've recognized myself as an artist.  I've been painting, drawing, or sketching for as long as I can remember.  Now it manifests itself in writing.  What I'm coming to acknowledge, though, is that it's deeply ingrained in me.  I was born this way. It is not just what I do.  It's how I see the world, how I experience life, how I experience God, what I'm passionate about, and how I engage with people. Perhaps it's also the way God intended me to reflect Him.  In the past, I've thought that the "artsy" part of me was something to put in the background--it was always so impractical, so I couldn't justify spending a lot of time developing it.  Now I am understanding how backwards this approach is. After all, how practical is God?  In my mind, if He was practical, He wouldn't be so concerned with relationships, and He certainly wouldn't have bothered creating us.  Love is perhaps the most impractical thing of all.

Over time, and with God's help, I am starting to name and accept who I am.  It might take the rest of my life, but every day, I peel back more layers of myself and settle into that deeper, rawer skin. I feel okay saying that I am an artist, a writer, a poet, regardless of whether I gain acknowledgement for these things or not.  I have received one rejection letter so far, and I expect to receive many more.

I wonder why it feels so foolish to name who we really are.  I wonder why it feels so scary to let other people see it.  (Even this post feels really scary to write.)

What would happen if we stopped covering up the unique person God created us to be?

wild geese

I went on a run at the duck pond on base this morning. I almost didn't go because it was so cold out, but I decided to bundle up and brave the bite in the air. The duck pond is one of my favorite places to run. It has many interesting attractions that a treadmill lacks--a long, winding trail, a gorgeous view of the Napa hills, and geese...lots of geese.  

A whole flock of them had taken up residence on one stretch of the jogging path, and as I tried to weave in and out of them, they waddled their plump white rumps out of the way...except for one. One of them wouldn't budge. His beady black eyes stared a whole through me, and as I jogged past, he opened his dark beak, cranked back his neck, and released a loud, angry hiss.

I jogged on and laughed a little. It was one of those moments that caught me off guard. When I thought about what the day would hold, I didn't envision being hissed at by a goose. It definitely got my attention.

***

In the process of writing a poem for school this week, I've been noticing how the emotional and spiritual seasons we go through in life are reflected in nature. Nature repeats itself. Most beauty is in this repetition. This morning as I ran, I noticed the naked, silver branches, the placid pond, the black birds scattering across the cloudless blue sky. These details are beautiful. They are significant. They are not random images God placed in creation. They tell us something about Him. They tell us something about how to live a meaningful life. They tell us how we might fit into all of that.

***

This evening I received an email from a friend.  He attached a poem for me to read by an incredible contemporary poet, Mary Oliver.  The poem...of all poems...is called "Wild Geese."

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

a trip that takes us

I'm sitting in bed with my laptop. I've been up since 4am, when Tess tapped my shoulder and said she'd wet her bed. After helping her get changed and tucked back in, I couldn't get back to sleep. By 5am I surrendered and started the coffee. It's actually been a nice morning, with extra time to journal, pray, and reflect.

Chris and I have been tired. Almost four days of pure excitement and adrenaline have worn off and we've felt the crash. I think I'm still feeling it.

what GOES UP...
MUST
COME
down.

Lately my mind has been on Lucy, who just turned two on Christmas Eve. I am already aware that this huge shift in our family dynamics will likely impact her the hardest. The momma-bear in me is rearing up on hind legs, wanting to fight against all the ways she will be forced out of her comfort zone. I want to make the transition as smooth as I can for her, and in the midst of all of this, I'm realizing that I might be projecting my emotions onto her...just a little bit.

Lucy is starting at a new school this week and her first day was yesterday. It's going to be an adjustment for her and I've been stressed out about how she will adapt to her new environment. Overall, Chris and I think this is the best thing for Lucy and our family, as I'm still in grad school and now gearing up to go to China this spring. Having Tess and Lu at the same school will also provide them with some structure and routine when we bring Ren home, and I think this will be a positive thing for them in the long run, while also giving Ren and I one on-one-time to attach.

I know that easing into this transition is going to take time, but yesterday I felt overwhelmed by a sense of sadness and loss. My baby Lu is not a baby anymore. I was resistant to moving her into a big girl bed over Christmas and I find myself wanting to hold onto the baby in her as long as possible. We will start potty training soon. Her naps are becoming more sporadic. She is the last bio child Chris and I will have, and I am starting to say goodbye to this phase of the journey, which despite many challenges, has been so sweet in so many ways. Within a matter of months, Ren will be the youngest, the baby, and this will be an entirely new experience for us all.

I know parenthood is full of changes. Just when you master one phase of development, it's already time to move on to the next one, whether you're ready for it or not. As parents, it seems that we are just along for the ride, without much control over what comes next. It reminds me of a quote by John Steinbeck that's painted on the wall of the Steinbeck museum, which we visited in Salinas this past October:

I'm realizing that this journey of parenthood and adoption, and more significantly, the journey guided by Christ, is not one that we take...

It is one that takes us.

I'll close with a video that Chris made of Lucy, commemorating her first two years of life...what sweet ones they were! Happy belated birthday to my big girl, Lu! We love you so much.