Today, the coaster ride is smoother. Luke 1:37 helped. With God, all things are possible... and I am the handmaiden of the Lord and so be his will.
This is the last morning I will wake up to see my husband's face on the pillow next to mine. When you know it's going, it becomes a little sweeter. I prayed while he slept, and blessed his trip both overseas for work, and his leaving home journey.
As for me and my children we will be fine, eventually, by the grace of God, and through leaning in to difficult times rather than avoiding them, forgiveness, and unconditional love.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Anger
Obviously, I am on a rollercoaster of emotions these days. Yesterday was sadness, and forgiveness, and today I'm angry. Is it my way of reacting to a situation I do not want to be in? I intended to grow old with this man. I wanted us both to go together to our children's weddings. Why is he so blind?
He has a wife who loves and supports him, children who adore him, work that he really loves to do, opportunities to travel with his work. When he said yesterday that he didn't want to be on his deathbed and say where did my life go? I wanted to say better that than being on your deathbed and saying: what did I do? how could I have lost what I had?
He seems to think that if he takes the kids out for dinner and explain to them in rational ways how this will work, and how we'll all benefit from it (DUNH!) that all will be well.
I'm angry that the entire culture seems to think divorce is OKAY! That everyone will be fine as long as everyone plays nicely in the sandbox. My kids are plenty angry, and hurt. I'm angry and hurt. I feel abandoned.
Can I scream now????
He has a wife who loves and supports him, children who adore him, work that he really loves to do, opportunities to travel with his work. When he said yesterday that he didn't want to be on his deathbed and say where did my life go? I wanted to say better that than being on your deathbed and saying: what did I do? how could I have lost what I had?
He seems to think that if he takes the kids out for dinner and explain to them in rational ways how this will work, and how we'll all benefit from it (DUNH!) that all will be well.
I'm angry that the entire culture seems to think divorce is OKAY! That everyone will be fine as long as everyone plays nicely in the sandbox. My kids are plenty angry, and hurt. I'm angry and hurt. I feel abandoned.
Can I scream now????
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Forgiveness
These have been very heavy-hearted, trying days, as my husband prepares to leave our home -- 15 years in this house, and 8 years in the other. Our children have been raised here, and it's like tearing body from spirit. I cannot bear to tell some people for their reactions: it's not the end of the world, you'll get over it, you'll see that this was the best thing possible.
But it's not, especially for my children.
My nights are like Jacob's Ladder re-runs -- wrestling, crying (I take myself to the basement and try to sleep there). And in the midst of it all is my Lord and my God, faithful to the end as I work through this particular challenge. The book Love Dare (which accompanies the slightly cloying Christian movie Fireproof) is something else I'm working through. It's really quite excellent.
I have never been challenged to love unconditionally, although the Bible is full of examples and exhortations to do so. I am going through the exercises -- not to win back my husband because he won't return after trying for 10 or 20 years to leave -- but because it's good for me.
And guess what? A huge weight is being lifted off my shoulders. I feel free. I feel as though I am solid rock again (until tomorrow when something new will sideswipe me and knock me on my keester). It's the understanding that forgiveness is the act of letting God take over whatever work he needs to do with the person who hurt you. It's also understanding that many hurts that are inflicted are through sheer blindness. Remember Jesus on the Cross? If He could say, forgive them Father, they know not what they do, when his innocent blood has been shed, then why shouldn't I be able to?
But it's not, especially for my children.
My nights are like Jacob's Ladder re-runs -- wrestling, crying (I take myself to the basement and try to sleep there). And in the midst of it all is my Lord and my God, faithful to the end as I work through this particular challenge. The book Love Dare (which accompanies the slightly cloying Christian movie Fireproof) is something else I'm working through. It's really quite excellent.
I have never been challenged to love unconditionally, although the Bible is full of examples and exhortations to do so. I am going through the exercises -- not to win back my husband because he won't return after trying for 10 or 20 years to leave -- but because it's good for me.
And guess what? A huge weight is being lifted off my shoulders. I feel free. I feel as though I am solid rock again (until tomorrow when something new will sideswipe me and knock me on my keester). It's the understanding that forgiveness is the act of letting God take over whatever work he needs to do with the person who hurt you. It's also understanding that many hurts that are inflicted are through sheer blindness. Remember Jesus on the Cross? If He could say, forgive them Father, they know not what they do, when his innocent blood has been shed, then why shouldn't I be able to?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
communion
Every day the cqod (Christian quote of the day) comes into my mailbox, and it never ceases to amaze me how often it hits home for whatever I'm going through at the time.
Today it's the unbelievable claim that God hears whatever we ask according to His will. And knowing that he hears us, we are assured that we have what we asked! As George MacDonald explains, a child running home hungry actually has more need of his mother than of dinner. Likewise, when we go to God it is communion we seek, not the things that we ask for. MacDonald even suggests that God witholds things from us, so we will come and ask.
These days as I go through the extremely tough stuff of losing my marriage, and watching my children go through various stages of grief, mostly numbness right now, I can easily grow desperate and despairing. I tend to manage things and thus my prayers can veer into the "please fix this for me" arena. The despair leads me to think it's hopeless, the situation has gone on far too long, I've tried everything.
Like Martha who complains to Jesus, I am being told: sit still, and trust me. It is your life in mine that should concern you, and only that. You can pray for him, but you can't fix or change him, only I can do that.
Communion with God is what I need to focus on, and on the rare occasions I can keep from being distracted from it, there is a measure of peace. On the days I go careening off on my own, thinking up methods to shake things up, I am distraught.
I tend to be impatient, and thought that I was very patient the past ten years or so since this trouble has brewed. But I realize now I have just been enduring, and not being patient at all.
Today it's the unbelievable claim that God hears whatever we ask according to His will. And knowing that he hears us, we are assured that we have what we asked! As George MacDonald explains, a child running home hungry actually has more need of his mother than of dinner. Likewise, when we go to God it is communion we seek, not the things that we ask for. MacDonald even suggests that God witholds things from us, so we will come and ask.
These days as I go through the extremely tough stuff of losing my marriage, and watching my children go through various stages of grief, mostly numbness right now, I can easily grow desperate and despairing. I tend to manage things and thus my prayers can veer into the "please fix this for me" arena. The despair leads me to think it's hopeless, the situation has gone on far too long, I've tried everything.
Like Martha who complains to Jesus, I am being told: sit still, and trust me. It is your life in mine that should concern you, and only that. You can pray for him, but you can't fix or change him, only I can do that.
Communion with God is what I need to focus on, and on the rare occasions I can keep from being distracted from it, there is a measure of peace. On the days I go careening off on my own, thinking up methods to shake things up, I am distraught.
I tend to be impatient, and thought that I was very patient the past ten years or so since this trouble has brewed. But I realize now I have just been enduring, and not being patient at all.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Death of a Good Man
That 1960s song “what’s it all about?” plays in my mind occasionally as I think – endlessly, it seems – about this event, or series of events really.
It’s been a week since David Dewees, the Jarvis Collegiate teacher who committed suicide after being arrest on charges of luring, and invitation to touch. He was my son’s section head at Pioneer Camp this past summer.
Aidan, 16, revered David. Such a great guy, a good man, so much fun, the most amazing Bible study leader, a gifted teacher so inspiring that Aidan has started to consider that vocation -- the kudos seemed endless.
The whole affair has taken on huge moral proportions – great men sin (and women) – and where do we find God in it, and where do we find right judgment in it. I bring up the idea of moral dilemma in trying to find ways to discuss this tragic thing to Aidan. The truth must out and yet is the whole truth may be lost to us forever with David’s death. We must protect our children, yes. But what of the hundreds of children whose lives were touched, positively, and changed forever on account of his example? And what of those who will never benefit from his probing questions, his exuberance, his musical genius, his deep and abiding love of Christ? Is David’s life now completely discounted because of his suicide, and even more by what led to it?
We heard things that make for unclear judgments, moral ambiguities, which we aim to examine in both the stark light of God’s truth and the compassion of Christ’s grace. Aidan understands that one must judge another on how he presents himself to us, and not on what others may say. But he and his friends talk and some of them are deeply hurt: “I thought I knew him,” said one. “How could he do this,” cries another.
Aidan has thought about this, and concludes that he can forgive David for being something other than what he may have thought he was. Nobody is two-dimensional, we all have dark sides – witness great King David, who loved God mightily and yet arranged another man’s murder so he could steal his wife.
Aidan doesn’t really understand what made Yukon (Dewees’ camp name) take his own life, but I can imagine: despair, shame, humiliation and the weakness we all suffer from – disbelief that God could possibly bring any good out of this mess.
It’s been a week since David Dewees, the Jarvis Collegiate teacher who committed suicide after being arrest on charges of luring, and invitation to touch. He was my son’s section head at Pioneer Camp this past summer.
Aidan, 16, revered David. Such a great guy, a good man, so much fun, the most amazing Bible study leader, a gifted teacher so inspiring that Aidan has started to consider that vocation -- the kudos seemed endless.
The whole affair has taken on huge moral proportions – great men sin (and women) – and where do we find God in it, and where do we find right judgment in it. I bring up the idea of moral dilemma in trying to find ways to discuss this tragic thing to Aidan. The truth must out and yet is the whole truth may be lost to us forever with David’s death. We must protect our children, yes. But what of the hundreds of children whose lives were touched, positively, and changed forever on account of his example? And what of those who will never benefit from his probing questions, his exuberance, his musical genius, his deep and abiding love of Christ? Is David’s life now completely discounted because of his suicide, and even more by what led to it?
We heard things that make for unclear judgments, moral ambiguities, which we aim to examine in both the stark light of God’s truth and the compassion of Christ’s grace. Aidan understands that one must judge another on how he presents himself to us, and not on what others may say. But he and his friends talk and some of them are deeply hurt: “I thought I knew him,” said one. “How could he do this,” cries another.
Aidan has thought about this, and concludes that he can forgive David for being something other than what he may have thought he was. Nobody is two-dimensional, we all have dark sides – witness great King David, who loved God mightily and yet arranged another man’s murder so he could steal his wife.
Aidan doesn’t really understand what made Yukon (Dewees’ camp name) take his own life, but I can imagine: despair, shame, humiliation and the weakness we all suffer from – disbelief that God could possibly bring any good out of this mess.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Getting Up and Going On
I could make excuses, and some of them sound and legitimate, for not keeping up with this blog. The past several months have been extremely stressful for family reasons. The situation with access to my elderly father deteriorates, and there is nothing we can do legally -- my brother manages to keep just one inch above the law on this. The marriage teeters on the edge of nothingness and many days I just feel like giving up. Freelance work has come to a standstill and my income is half what it was last year, which wasn't any great shakes then.
Lo, the many times I've been lying awake at night feeling completely overwhelmed by the problems, and feeling I can't find a way out of this. I start dragging up things from childhood, and mistakes I made, and dwell in a constant whirlwind of self-doubt, self-recrimination, and sense of hopelessness.
Payer is the only thing that drags me out of it. And that usually prompts me toward thanksgiving: how my children thrive, with Aidan reaching new levels of relationship with God, and Anna dealing with anxiety and perfectionism; and also to view how blessed I am compared to about 97% of the population.
I try to remember what Harriet Tubman always said to herself: "Just keep on goin', Harriet, keep on goin'." And she did it with Christian love.
And then today's cqod (Christian quotation of the day) came to my inbox and knocked all that sheer determination on its head:
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do-- to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst--is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your
life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.
... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Sacred Journey, San
Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 46
Yes, we've been given a brain to think through things, a will to carry out what we think is right, and even a heart to temper it all with compassion. But this quote talks about obedience, I think -- that we must wait on the Lord and remain open for Him to do His work. I have failed to obey this in my quest to fix problems.
Lo, the many times I've been lying awake at night feeling completely overwhelmed by the problems, and feeling I can't find a way out of this. I start dragging up things from childhood, and mistakes I made, and dwell in a constant whirlwind of self-doubt, self-recrimination, and sense of hopelessness.
Payer is the only thing that drags me out of it. And that usually prompts me toward thanksgiving: how my children thrive, with Aidan reaching new levels of relationship with God, and Anna dealing with anxiety and perfectionism; and also to view how blessed I am compared to about 97% of the population.
I try to remember what Harriet Tubman always said to herself: "Just keep on goin', Harriet, keep on goin'." And she did it with Christian love.
And then today's cqod (Christian quotation of the day) came to my inbox and knocked all that sheer determination on its head:
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do-- to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst--is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your
life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.
... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Sacred Journey, San
Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 46
Yes, we've been given a brain to think through things, a will to carry out what we think is right, and even a heart to temper it all with compassion. But this quote talks about obedience, I think -- that we must wait on the Lord and remain open for Him to do His work. I have failed to obey this in my quest to fix problems.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Acedia & Me
Having not slept well last night, I took to my bed this morning as soon as Anna was out the door to school, and snuggled up with Kathleen Norris’s latest book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life.
In between fits of catnaps, I read it, and it struck a deep chord, echoing my own faith (or faithless) journey in her biography of churchgoing childhood, to adolescence and young womanhood of agnosticism, and eventually back to the church, to faith, and one hopes into the love of God. But no journey is so simple, especially one beset by the sin of acedia, sloth, lassitude, listlessness, despair, depression, or whatever you wish to call your own noonday demon.
It’s this acedia I have been suffering with the last several months, and possibly for much, much longer. I wish I could find something funny to say about it, but in some ways humour can be an effective shield against honesty, and losing faith, in yourself if not in God, requires no small amount of self-reflective honesty. And it’s not all that funny, either.
So far, about a quarter of the way into the book, it does seem as though Norris is suggesting that the antidote to acedia (for it is truly as poisonous as a serpent’s bite), is digging in deeper to commitments – to one’s self, to life, to your spouse, your friends, your vocation, your God. It seems to be a complete cessation of desire – which is a sickness of the will and consequently the heart – and in modern Dr Phil terms, the prescription is fake it til you make it.
Of course Norris is much more eloquent that Dr Phil, and one sentence in particular seemed to sum up what I have been feeling much of lately. Listlessness has a seductively soft sound, but at root, it means being unable to desire, which is a cause, and a symptom, of serious mental distress. What most of us do is delve deeper into distraction – the worst thing, Norris says – because it makes us “in danger of becoming immunized from feeling itself.”
In between fits of catnaps, I read it, and it struck a deep chord, echoing my own faith (or faithless) journey in her biography of churchgoing childhood, to adolescence and young womanhood of agnosticism, and eventually back to the church, to faith, and one hopes into the love of God. But no journey is so simple, especially one beset by the sin of acedia, sloth, lassitude, listlessness, despair, depression, or whatever you wish to call your own noonday demon.
It’s this acedia I have been suffering with the last several months, and possibly for much, much longer. I wish I could find something funny to say about it, but in some ways humour can be an effective shield against honesty, and losing faith, in yourself if not in God, requires no small amount of self-reflective honesty. And it’s not all that funny, either.
So far, about a quarter of the way into the book, it does seem as though Norris is suggesting that the antidote to acedia (for it is truly as poisonous as a serpent’s bite), is digging in deeper to commitments – to one’s self, to life, to your spouse, your friends, your vocation, your God. It seems to be a complete cessation of desire – which is a sickness of the will and consequently the heart – and in modern Dr Phil terms, the prescription is fake it til you make it.
Of course Norris is much more eloquent that Dr Phil, and one sentence in particular seemed to sum up what I have been feeling much of lately. Listlessness has a seductively soft sound, but at root, it means being unable to desire, which is a cause, and a symptom, of serious mental distress. What most of us do is delve deeper into distraction – the worst thing, Norris says – because it makes us “in danger of becoming immunized from feeling itself.”
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