life

A Long Way from Home – Day 6: What Am I Waiting For?

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Highlights from my morning reading: 

Simply Tuesday, Chapter 5: “Success and Envy”, by Emily P. Freeman:

“True smallness is an invitation to live as I was meant to live, to accept my humanity, and to offer my ability and my inability, my sin and my success, my messes and my masterpieces into the hands of God.” – pg 94

“What is good for my inner health is often frustrating for my work [as a hard worker who is also a slow processor].” – pg 95

“The soul and the schedule don’t follow the same rules.” – pg 95

“I cannot wait for the world to stop to embrace my permission for slow.” – pg 96

“And here’s to not letting our slowness boss us. Embrace it and learn it, but don’t force perfection. Let slow do what slow does best: nourish, strengthen, and hold.” – pg 97

= = = =

When  I read the bolded statement above, I gave a little mental wince, as if I had been caught out. And I was in a way. This is what I have been doing, is it? Waiting for the world to stop, or to at least pause a little, so I can embrace slow for my soul and take some rest. Something this week is teaching me is that I cannot wait around for someone to offer to slow my world down for me, to give me a chance to rest and care for myself. I have to take the initiative, ask for the help, and slow down when I need to slow down.

My weariness is catching up with me. I can truly feel it today, the tiredness sitting heavily on me, urging me to just stay in bed and sleep, sleep, sleep. Unfortunately, that’s not entirely possible with a three-year-old child and grandparents with their own schedules and engagements to keep. So I have done my best today to occupy my daughter with her own self-activities in between play time and meals so that I can rest as much as I can. It’s been a good day.

The days are winding down and soon I will be home but I will do my best to make the best of these days, to slow and rest and to listen and come away when my heart and soul feel called.

A Long Way From Home – Day 5: Taking Care of Me

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Total honesty right now: the thought of this trip honestly terrified me for the better part of a month. Ten days away from home, sans my husband, my partner, my helpmeet? But, while I miss him deeply and dearly, I have made a discovery this week. Well, a re-discovery.

Self-care feels amazing! I am a better me when I do it, when I take care of me.

I have taken time every day so far this week to do something just for me. Something that I want or feel called to do. Whether it’s to take a walk, sing, sleep, write, read, script emails or letters, whatever. And it feels just grand! It has been a long while since I cared for myself, despite the many, many, MANY admonitions and insistences of loved ones. It is not for lack of support or help but usually out of a stubborn inner-thought that I need to handle this by myself, pull my weight, that I need to take care of everyone. This became starkly apparent to me when, on a Sunday morning, as I rushed through combing my hair for church as my husband was putting our daughter into her car seat for us to leave, I had a brutally honest thought:

I take care of myself the least.

It has reverberated back through my mind over the past few weeks. I’m not saying it to brag or to make it a point of pride. It’s the way I am, for the most part. The way I have always been. But this week is reminding me of the importance of self-care and the lessons that I have learned from such women as Jessica Turner (The Fringe Hours), Lysa TerKeurst (Unglued), and Emily P. Freeman (Simply Tuesday) about embracing the small moments and giving myself time to recoup and replenish. After all, you cannot pour from an empty cup.

Self-care not only refreshes me physically and helps to balance me emotionally and mentally, but I also find myself more spiritually attuned, more ready to sit and listen for and hear and see God in the everyday, in the small moments, and the fringe hours hidden within each day. That is just amazing and uplifting and challenging all at the same time. I am hoping that and working to make this a habit for when I return home, to my everyday Tuesdays. That I will continue to take time for self-care and soul refreshing/replenishment. It really does do wonders!

self-care-is-a-divine-responsibility

A Long Way From Home – Day 4: Makings of Mermaid

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Today was monumental. It was my girl’s first day at the beach! Well, technically not her “first” day. Of the three years that we have brought her to visit her grandparents and my side of the family, we have taken her to the beach for two of them. Both times, she was adamant that the water was NOT for her. This time, however, we could barely keep her from running headlong into the ocean. I managed to convince my little mermaid to go slowly, bit by bit. First, feet in the waves, then up to her waist with Grandpa holding her under her arms, and then I got her into her floaty vest and out into the water she went wth me and Grandpa.

All I could do was smile when my girl exclaimed, “This is so much fun!”

After she got out of the water for the second time, my beautiful little mermaid immediately ran over to a bunch of girls who were building sandcastles with spades and pails and sat right down with them and made herself welcome. They were kind girls and shared a pail and spade with her and taught her how to make sandcastles with it. The girls didn’t run her off, didn’t comment on how her mom should teach her to ask first. They just accepted my girl into their midst and taught her something new that she had longed to do for weeks. It did my heart tremendous good to see kindness curated in such a real and gentle way. Thank you, girls! I hope you have a great rest of your vacation.

To see my daughter enjoy such innocent and exuberant fun made my soul soar. It also gave me a chance to sit quietly and observe the beach that I had frequented in my childhood. It feels strange to start thinking in terms of “when I was a kid” or “when I was young” but the truth is that, in this coming month, I will be a full-grown hobbit. Today, people stretched up and down the beach as far as I could see. When I was a child, the occupancy of the beach was a fraction of that, even on a Saturday, so to see such a crowd on a Thursday was startling. There are also vendors everywhere: beach chairs, food, snorkel rentals, raft rides, etc. None of that was ever a part of beach going when I was a kid; if you couldn’t get a spot under one of the cabanas that were there, you set up your towels and such in the deepest shade you could find.The world I knew is the world I knew no longer. Not that that’s a bad thing, as it’s still a world that I can share with my daughter and my family.

Lessons from Rainbow Tails

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Have you ever had a balloon? A shiny prize that floats in the air and bounces on the end of its string, all weightless and buoyant and free?

That was my daughter’s joy yesterday: a bright orange balloon that she received from a server at Pizza Hut for eating most of her spaghetti lunch. It bounced and floated and played with her all the rest of the day and evening. This morning, however, my girl was in utter despair to find it wilted and lackadaisical on the floor of the kitchen. Then she discovered that, if she ran, the balloon would “fly” again, and so she spent the next fifteen minutes just running in a giant oval around the living room, through the kitchen, and back. Not too long after, she ventured outside onto her grandparents’ carport and made another amazing discovery: if she stood there and held on to her balloon, the wind would lift it up and fly it all around her, much to her delight.

Unfortunately, amazement led to heartbreak as she loosened the bobbing balloon from her wrist, a gust of wind ripped it from her small hand, and blew it down the street before lifting it up into a tree where none could reach. Her balloon, her treasure, her resurrected glory, was gone! My girl came inside in tears, insisting that I put on her shoes so that she could go in search of and rescue her stolen balloon. When I explained that no one could reach it and it was gone, she collapsed into hysterical tears, hiding herself under her img_0754favorite blanket and turning into a sobbing bundle on the floor while I patted her back.

Then, of course, Grandma and Grandpa came to the rescue. Grandpa blew up a brand-new blue balloon, bigger than the one she had lost, and Grandma pulled out her ribbon stash from her craft things to allow my girl her choice of ribbons. She picked four (pink, blue, orange, and yellow) so she “could have a rainbow” attached to her balloon, the most beautiful tail I have ever seen gifted to a balloon.

Have you ever had days like that orange balloon? Those days where you are flying high one day, life is good, and joy abounds. Then, the next day, the world seems to come crashing down around your ears and things sit on you and sap your light and energy and joy. The floor you’ve collapsed onto is cold and hard and sad. Those moments, big or small, can be so very hard, so deeply downcasting, and so incredibly lonely. I’ve been there, I know those feelings, those dark nights.

And then something happens. A word, a touch, a helping hand, time given, your words listened to, your heart heard, your pain seen. It’s like that fresh morning breeze that lifted that poor orange balloon up into the air and set it to flying again. That encouragement can save a heart, kinds words folding into our souls, and helping to peel away the layers we have hidden behind but that have failed to protect us. Those words and actions of love set themselves upon the cracks in us, soothing their pain, and, maybe, even starting their healing process. We are helped up to our feet, given strength or someone else’s to borrow and lean on for that difficult moment. Eventually, we may look back some day and find that something is different. It might be our circumstances, our path in life, or maybe it is us as a person. But something is lighter, brighter, different; and maybe, just maybe, you might find yourself with a brand-new rainbow tail trailing in your wake. Then you know what the fun part is? Rainbows are light, light spreads, and, soon, the world will turn round and you will have the chance to gift someone else with a rainbow tail, too.

A Long Way From Home – Day 2: Come Away

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After I woke this morning at seven-something to the rattling of a door handle and the insistent knocking by my toddler daughter, I felt this almost immediate compulsion to get up, get dressed, and go for a walk. It was like a record on repeat in my head: Get up, get dressed, go for a walk. I tried to reason it away. My devotional/Bible Study was waiting for me on the bedside table; I couldn’t go for a walk when I needed to spend time with God before the madness of the day began. (Yes, even my vacations have mad days, especially when I come back to visit my family.) And then I remembered my prayer from last night. I had specifically asked God to draw me away this week, to draw me away for moments with Him.

And it pinged in my heart that He was answering.

Come away.

So I got dressed, pulled on my sneakers, left my phone on the bed, told my parents and Bizzy I was going for a walk, and set off down the drive, out the gate, and down the road.

This is a road that I walked or rode every day for thirteen years of my life. The street my parents live on, that I lived on, has gotten very crowded. Houses now press close together on what used to be overgrown lots of land and a large playing field. The open space that I used to feel in my world has contracted, become constricted. Though maybe that’s just because I have grown? My feet were a little unsteady on the uneven ground of the roadside (there are no sidewalks around here) but it still felt familiar and I found my sea legs soon enough. I reminded myself of memories as I walked.

A cousin lived there.

Another cousin lives that way.

A friend lived there for a while.

The school is that way.

I passed the spot where I would get mobbed by nesting nightingales in the spring, even though the tree that was there is long gone now.

I walked myself out of my neighborhood and down the road, busy with cars and school buses headed to and fro, to the beach where the boats launch. I walked right up to the water, standing on the rocky shore to feel its cool morning air and hear its lap against the rocks, the dock, and the boat launch. I haven’t been that close to the ocean in at least two years. Eventually, I walked back up and sat on the wall the separated the boat launch from the sand and tidal pools. The bright-green mid-shallows and dark-blue deeps where the sandbar drops off just beyond were full of boats making ready to leave, a huge difference from my childhood and teenage years. Back then, this part of the beach was usually quiet, the water empty of anything but the occasional small fishing boat and sea-bathers. There was one boat at the dock taking on passengers for a morning snorkel tour. Scuba boats were loading on their air tanks. Street vendors were setting up their tents and wares in the parking lot for the day’s work, talking back and forth as they did. A man selling conch shells on the corner was cutting open water-full green coconuts, his machete beating out a steady rhythm until the tough nut’s top gave way.

Perhaps you think I have some grand spiritual revelation that I am working up to here, having been called away by God and all, but I don’t. All I have to show for my time there is an exercised body and slightly easier breathing. I just sat there, taking everything in, remembering what this corner of the world and what used to be my life is like. The morning was cool, the sun bright but not hot, and the breeze off the water was comforting. What I got out of this was a bit of calm, a bit of time to myself, some soft silent words exchanged with God, and the gentle reminder of peace in nature.  Perhaps what God was calling me away to this morning was rest. Rest that I and my empty cup and dwindling spoon drawer have so desperately needed recently. Rest and refreshment and refilling and revitalizing.

Perhaps what God was calling me away to this morning was rest. Rest that I and my empty cup and dwindling spoon drawer have so desperately needed recently. Rest and refreshment and refilling, even if just bit by bit.

Keep calling me away, God. I’m listening.

A Long Way from Home – Day 1: Bumping My Happy

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Back again in my childhood home. Haven’t even been here 24 hours and already someone in my family has commented that I look like I’ve gained weight. Not “You look nice” or “It’s good to see your face”. Heck, I would have even taken a “You look absolutely exhausted”  after twelve hours of traveling today. But, no, I get “But it looks like you’ve put on some weight.” Thanks. Really, thanks a lot. Sufficed it to say, coming back to my childhood home is almost never good for my self-esteem and, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s ever going to change. It’s always been this way. It doesn’t make it kind or right but it’s been happening for as long as I can remember. People who really have no business  commenting on others’ bodies (and often no leg to stand on) make snide comments that are really expected to be taken as a joke when, at best, they are assuming and dismissive and, at worst, can be emotionally devastating.

I have told the story of how a favorite dress (a gorgeous maroon and black cheongsam) was left to fade away into obscurity in my closet because someone thought it was their place and job to thoughtlessly inform me that I looked fat in it. What I will never forget is how confused he seemed when I told him not to speak to me anymore and to go away. As if he just couldn’t grasp why I was so upset. I know I spoke to that young man briefly at least one other time after that, when I was in grad school. This time, he expressed his surprise that I had a boyfriend but wouldn’t explain just why it was surprising. I will admit that I most definitely unfriended, deleted, and/or blocked him on all levels and platforms after that. That was an energy and presence that I just didn’t need.
Energy. I hadn’t thought of it that way but it’s an almost perfect example. It’s very, very hard when you expend such energy on your life, on doing what’s good for your family, for your child, for your friends, and for yourself, only to have the only thing remarked on to be your physical weight. Your particular form’s relationships with gravity. Just as you pour your energy out, others pour their energy into you, and deciding what to do with it–to use it to make bricks to add to my path or to sit in it and let it suck me down further–is really hard sometimes. The struggle is so very real when my happy-with-myself gets bumped. I do my best to either reply nicely or not reply at all. This seems like a prime opportunity to practice grace, as well as salting my words and reminding myself of my glorious.

Grieving for Reality

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Tonight, as I turned off “Mr. Selfridge”, I felt tears burn hot at the backs of my eyes and I fought a brief battle that I finally allowed myself to lose. I covered my face with my hands and just sobbed for a minute or two. But I wasn’t just crying. I was weeping. I was grieving.

I must note that what I am about to describe has definite trigger warnings attached to it.

The end of the episode depicted Kitty Edwards, head of the beauty department at Selfridge’s, heading home after work. As she did, she passed a few ex-soldiers returned from WWI, one of whom asked for a penny. She shook her head and didn’t stop walking. Then he called her a bitch, which stopped her in her tracks. He accused her of spending her money on fripperies and yet couldn’t spare a penny for a man who had fought for King and country. She informed him that she hadn’t been shopping, she’d been working. He told her that he’d seen plenty of “working girls” during the war making good money “lying flat on their backs”. She spat back that she was head of department, that she sold lip color and rouge, had just worked a fourteen-hour day, and it was no wonder that he and his lot couldn’t find jobs. Several of the men converged on her and the one speaking to her grabbed for her. She fought back and hit him. Enraged, he struck her so hard that her face bounced off the wall of a nearby building. He then instructed one of the men to “keep watch” while he proceeded to cover Kitty’s mouth and assault her. Thankfully, Harry Selfridge was just leaving the building, heard her muffled screams, and ran over, shoving the men away and shouting for the police before the man could rape her.

Perhaps I had a surge of hormones, perhaps I am getting more emotional in my deepening thirties, or maybe it’s because, deep down, there is a visceral fear, a despicable truth, and terrifying reality attached to this depiction.

I have been extremely fortunate in my life to have never been verbally or physically assaulted. However, I have had friends who were. I have had extended family members to have been assaulters and, thankfully, gotten the punishment they deserved for it. The truth of rape/assault culture and its prevalence is not hidden from me. And scenes like this hit me hard with that reminder.

I wasn’t allowed to walk home from youth group as a teenager, on the same street that I had grown up on, because it was considered too dangerous for me to be out alone at night.

I remember a year in college when my guy friends wouldn’t let me or any of my girlfriends walk anywhere on campus alone after sunset after we had four safety alerts for assaults posted in four weeks. I remember resenting it. Not my friends’ insistence on escorting us but that my freedom to walk our beautiful campus was curtailed and we were given reason to fear and worry.

There have been events that probably would have been great fun but that I declined because it would have meant that I would have been walking back to my car late at night in unfamiliar territory.

For years, I refused to buy a winter coat with a hood because a hood meant that I couldn’t use my peripheral vision to see who was coming up behind me.

My doors have always had and will always have the deadbolt shot.

My keys are always in my hand when I move through a parking lot alone at night, and I immediately lock the doors again the minute I’m in the car.

I don’t get catcalled much anymore but, the times that I did, I would ignore it and increase my walking pace. I’m a small woman so slipping through and losing myself in a crowd was a well-honed talent.

I hate that I have had to do this. I hate that I will teach my daughter to do this as well. I hate that her father and I will worry about her when she’s away from home and regard strangers with at least a modicum of suspicion at first.

All of this, including my tears at a television show, is because I acknowledge the reality of rape/assault culture and the deep wounds that it has inflicted and continues to cut into our society every day. I weep for it, I grieve it. Like all women, however, I continue to live it every day. When, in order to be true to life, even art must depict it, how can you deny the reality of its truth?

In the Letting Go

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Letting go. People talk about letting go all the time, its need and necessity to mental and emotional health. It is a definite truth for me that I sometimes fight so hard for relationships/friendships because, to me, letting go feels suspiciously like giving up. And I don’t like to give up. Giving up is being defeated. Giving up is having failed. I don’t like to give up.

I believe that human beings are built for relationship as part of growth and maturation and support through life. Relationships, friendships, these are important, with meaning and ties and implications. Growing apart is one thing that does happen, yes. But, in my mind, giving up is an entirely different thing and not something that is strong in my repertoire. However, I am learning an important lesson (I say “learning” because I am still very much in process). Letting go is not about giving up. Letting go can mean a myriad of things. A few of those could be:

This is not good for me/my soul.

This is not good for them/their soul.

I need to make a choice.

I need to let them make their choice.

I need to live in the present and not the past.

This is my life, not theirs.

It is their life, not mine.

I need to live my life, not theirs.

This list is by no means exhaustive, of course, but it represents what I have run across and considered in my own processing and experience. Sometimes letting go is a quick cut, an immediate severing brought on by extreme situations and circumstances. I’ve been there. Sometimes letting go is a slow process, the last step and sometimes the absolute hardest one. I’ve been there, too. Letting go is moving past (even if just past) the hurt, the anger, and the bitterness and acknowledging that you still have a life. You still have family, friends, and loved ones, hobbies and talents, happinesses and joys, growth and change and renewal, a hope and a future.

And so do they.

It still doesn’t mean that letting go is easy. As I said, it can be the last and hardest step in a process.

We have recently been introduced to the concept of toxic relationships and people. Toxic as in “not abusive per say, but [that is] in some form or another bad for us. Limiting. Unhealthy – even if that lack of health is innocent (Priebe)”. There are times when, despite effort from one or even both sides, relationships or friendships do not work, no matter how badly we would like the contrary to be true.

One of the hardest lessons we may ever have to learn is that sometimes, the best way to love someone we love is from a distance. That no matter how much we want them to thrive and expand and be happy, we will never be the people who facilitate that expansion.

And that’s okay. (Heidi Priebe)

This quote is both striking (intellectually and emotionally) and incredibly apt. I think that we have often come to equate a separation, a need to let go and move on, with a lack of love or care. It really couldn’t be further from the truth at times. It is entirely possible to love someone deeply, want every good and happiness for them, but know that your active presence in their life doesn’t serve that wish, or theirs in your life serve it for you.

We [may] prioritize things as X, Y, Z, not realizing that our friends or our partners or our loved ones prioritize them as Y, Z, X. And our relationship spirals into toxic territory without us even realizing it. […] The truth is, you can love someone with 100% of your whole heart and still be toxic to them. You can care for them and still be toxic. You can want what’s best for them so badly that it tears you apart, and still have a negative impact on their life for the sole purpose of your two elements combine to form an inexplicably toxic reaction. Neither of you are to blame. But the result is what it is (Priebe).

When the realization does come, it does not necessarily make it any less difficult emotionally but it really is a healthy realization. Sometimes, there can middle ground found, communication made, rifts repaired, and toxicity dissipated. Sometimes not. Sometimes, the best thing is to let go, to walk away. Not stomp, or rage, or huff, or fire shots across the bow as we do. But step back, wish them all the good, and walk away.

Life does not end in the walking away. Let me say that again. Life does not end in the walking away. In the letting go.

You can still wish them every good and happiness. You can still care deeply, even beyond your own understanding. But you can let go. And you can move on. Your life will continue.

And it will be okay. No, it will be better than okay. It will be good.

 

Endnotes:

Priebe, Heidi.   http://thoughtcatalog.com/heidi-priebe/2015/12/547554/, 1/3/2016.

Missing the Walk

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Today is a day for missing. As I walked out, in mid-February, into a day that is bright and sunny and breezy warm, warm enough to eventually shed my light hoodie, I found myself just walking around the playground while my toddler played. The sun warmed cheeks, neck, and arms, and I found my heart yearning and longing, deeply nostalgic. I texted to a friend, “Today would be a great day to walk. I am missing that today: just walking and talking with friends.” And I am. I am missing it terribly.

I miss the days walking through the neighborhoods just north (I think) of my apartment on UofE’s campus, my friend Leah and I just pouring out hearts and minds because we knew the other would listen, hear, love, and pray.

I miss walking through campus of an evening, sitting out on the Circle, laughing with my friends and listening to our echoes.

I miss quiet Sunday mornings walking through campus to church at BSU, the world still sleepy, quiet, and expectant of the day.

I miss nights being walked back to my graduate dorm by my husband-then-boyfriend, only to find out that he had left his car on the absolute opposite side of campus and neglected to tell me so he could spend that last bit of time with me.

I miss those first days of spring, those days when you can’t help but be outside. Walking barefoot and talking with friends about anything and everything, spectating ultimate frisbee games, napping on stone benches. Eating in little cafes, walking around malls, visiting comic and game stores, sitting outside at the coffee shop.

I miss being able to call up a friend to ask, “Want to walk?” and usually finding at least one person who would.

Oh, the miles that I must have trekked, the states’ worth of distance covered in those walks. But the distance didn’t matter. It was the time. Time I got to spend with people, being challenged and sharpened by them, gaining insight with them, learning them, learning to love them, and letting them see me more and more. The honesty, the vulnerability, the truth that I found myself sharing with people in those moments; that is precious to me. The spontaneous games of tag and footraces. The laughs that broke from me when I was caught and, usually, hoisted over a shoulder or grabbed up in a hug.

I feel like Rapunzel sometimes. You know, living far away from anywhere and anyone? I miss an arm around my shoulder or an elbow linked through mine as we go along. I always knew I could reach out and find support. Find a friend.

I still know that, and I still reach, even if the walks have lessened and the distance has widened. But I am just missing the walks today.

The Weight of Glorious

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A little over a year ago, I wrote about a day when I lost that glorious feeling. When the judgements and body shaming of others felt as if it had been directed at me personally. I folded in on myself, wanted to make myself small and to hide. My sense of glorious faded like so much morning mist and I felt like all I wanted was to feel nothing, be no one. It happens and it’s hard.

But then there’s also the opposite of that. When the weight of glorious crowns your head and sits on your being and you feel like you could conquer the world, that you could change the course of history with one strong foot set upon its pages. Those mornings where I wake with a profound sense of my own beauty; those evenings when I step from the shower and find that woman in the mirror positively breathtaking. Those days when I heard the beauty thrum in my voice and I open up my throat and sing with abandon.

That weight of glorious can be utterly breath-stealing. Like “how-did-I-get-here-and-who-gave-me-the-makeover-I-look-damn-wonderful” breath-stealing. I’ve had the weight of glorious knock the air out of my lungs and cause me to stare at my reflection as if it were a person I had never seen before in my life but had instantly fallen head over heels for.

Believe me. It does happen. It happens, and it’s awesome! The weight of your glorious is not a burden; it’s there to be enjoyed, reveled in, and channeled. Pay attention to the next time you feel that weight settle on your spirit. That sense of being glorious. When you look in the mirror and admit you’re stunning, when you finish that project and you know it’s excellent work, when you belt out that tune and feel your joy rise up with it, when someone just stops and stares at you like they have never seen before in their life but have instantly fallen head over heels for you. That moment when all you can do is catch your reflection and smile, even if you’re not entirely sure why, that’s it: that’s your glorious.