Expectations and Resistance

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted any kind of real update here. Seems like today, quarantine day 40 of the coronavirus pandemic here on the central coast of California, is as good a time as any.

I have four toddler grandchildren. Well, one of them is almost toddling and one them has almost aged out of toddling into full-blown boyhood, but let’s go with calling them quadruplets for now for the sake of simplicity and so that we can get a mental picture of what it’s like when all four of them are at my house. Four times the craziness, four times the cuteness, four times the trouble and four million times the love.

Here are the two who are closest in age (cousins, not siblings).

Here’s the baby.

And here’s the big boy.

Anyway, one thing everyone knows about toddlers is that they like to say no a lot. But here’s the thing… there is nothing like the utter delight when they are excited enough about something to say “YEAH!” Their faces light up, their arms wave about wildly while their bodies start to run toward whatever it is they’re excited about and their joy is contagious as you can’t help but experience the world the way they are seeing it. 

One thing that I’ve noticed about me lately is that I like to say no a lot. In fact I spent the first fourteen or so years of my life steadfastly resisting everything. I was a quiet resistor, but a fierce one. And then something happened when I turned fourteen. I began to realize that life was much more fun if I went along with my mom than it was when I fought her. I don’t know that I had ever thought about the concept of fun before but once I discovered it, I realized I liked it. I liked everyone around me better and I liked myself better when I was having fun. And it didn’t take much to have fun. All you had to do was be agreeable. 

It’s like the first rule of comedy, the whole “Yes, and…” response to things (even preposterous things) is not only funny, but FUN. 

I spent my high school years pretty happy. At this point, I feel like I need to explain that when I say happy, it’s with the understanding that I still only liked sad songs, sad movies, contemplating the deep issues of the heart and seeing the futility of life for what it was, crying as much as possible in order to cleanse all my heart-wounds, with the occasional bouts of deep, deep depression when a boyfriend broke up with me or a friend disappointed me… but just go with me here. For me, I was happy and confident, free and driven, blissfully making my way to adulthood and owning all of my craziness, which helped to shape me while going along to get along.

After that came marriage, ministry, babies, hardships, loss, change, grief, growth.

And now I find myself here on Day 40 of self-reflection on steroids and I’ve discovered something new that in all my years of self-reflection (which trust me, I have done to an unhealthy extent) I was never really able to put my finger on until now. 

It hasn’t been so much that I am about saying no. It’s been that I am about noticing what everybody’s expectations are, and there are a lot of expectations out there. So many expectations in fact, that there is not enough of me to even begin to meet those expectations. For this reason, I have spent my life withdrawing into myself, but I have never stopped observing and taking all of it in and FEELING it. While I have never really had a problem saying no to expectations that I know I can’t or don’t want to meet, I have also never had a problem going above and beyond meeting expectations that I can and do want to meet. You might say that I am an expert at knowing what is expected of me and of others.

But something’s been lost somewhere in there and this is what I’ve discovered: I don’t know what my own expectations are. In fact, if I have expectations at all, I don’t know if they are okay to have and I haven’t been brave enough to quiet my mind long enough to examine them. Now that I’ve noticed this, I can no longer resist it. And believe me, I am good at resisting. It’s gotten me this far, after all. But what I really want to do is to be like my grandchildren and have my face light up and my arms wave about wildly while I run headlong into whatever this is while screaming “YEAH!”

Last week, the weather was amazing and there was not a cloud in the sky and so my stir-crazy 20 year old daughter and I went down to the beach to watch the sunset. The sunset was beautiful but the crazy was even more beautiful. 40 days of only each other for company can do that to a mother and daughter. She asked if she could sit on my shoulders and I said yes because why not at this point?

Solitude

This gift that I have been given, this gift of loneliness…I have received this gift before. I received it less than a year ago, when I lost my balance and I hit my head on a rocky trail.

~ I lost my memory.
~ I lost the power of speech.
~ I lost my ability to think and to reason.

It was a gift, but it didn’t feel like a gift. It felt scary and hard and extremely unproductive. I couldn’t remember the past and I couldn’t imagine the future. All I could do was sit with myself and in the process I discovered things about myself that I had never noticed before; things that make up the me that I call myself. Things that came about in complicated ways along the path I have walked, because of others who have walked that path with me, because of inner demons that I have been blind to, and because of love so great that all else pales in comparison.

And now I find myself here again in this forced turning-inward-time. It’s scary and it’s hard and it’s extremely unproductive. The past is hard to remember and I can’t imagine the future. I don’t know what to think or what to do or how to be.

All I can do is be with myself and myself feels very lost right now… and I know that so many other selves are feeling that loss as well. I don’t know much, and I am prone to losing my balance, but I have discovered a few things on this current rocky trail:

~ I have others who are walking this path with me.
~ I have demons that need to be faced.
~ I have known love in such great abundance that all else pales in comparison.

I HAVE KNOWN LOVE IN SUCH GREAT ABUNDANCE.

I can love through this fear.
I can love through this loneliness.
I am loved and I can love.

Keeping The Night Hours

(My submission to our church’s Advent Calendar Project for Day 13)

READINGS

Psalm 146:5-10 / Ruth 4:13-17 / 2 Peter 3:11-18

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“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith for ever;
    who executes justice for the oppressed,
    who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
    the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the sojourners;
    he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
The Lord will reign for ever,
    your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the Lord!”

Psalm 146:5-10

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by Leslie Linebarger

These days are long, and the nights are even longer. This year has been a year of pain, of set-backs, of loneliness, and of longing. In August, I received a mild brain injury, brought on when I fell and hit my head, which forced me to slow down and to recognize my limitations. In theory, I knew all along that I had limitations, but in August, they became a painfully embarrassing reality for someone like me, who likes to think that what defines me is my competence, my diligence, my efficiency. Suddenly, I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t remember words, I couldn’t remember events, I couldn’t keep up with relationships and all I wanted to do was sleep. Perhaps the most cruel side effect of concussion is the longing for sleep while not being able to sleep. For three months straight, I had a throbbing head, which woke me at all hours of the night and I would lay there, awake, thinking about the work I couldn’t get done, the bills I needed to pay, the shopping I needed to do in order to care for my family and provide a lovely home, the relationships that weighed on my heart, all my family members living so far away, the aching all over my aging, breaking body, and the children and grandchildren that have so many needs and dreams of their own, that break my heart into five million pieces every time I so much as breathe their names.

And now I find myself in Advent.

I wait in the dark where I long for sleep but sleep eludes me.

I breathe.

I breathe God’s name.

Emmanuel.

God with us.

I breathe God’s name. The breath fills me. The breath releases. God fills me. God releases me.

The beauty of this thought breaks my heart into five million pieces. This Light, this God With Us, fills me, is in me, is around me, has gone before me, is going out into the world, is touching every living thing with breath and life and beauty. This God With Us compels me to rest in my inadequacies, to love others in their inadequacies, to keep faith in times of doubt, to open my eyes to beauty that surrounds me and to lift up my head and wait with expectant joy even when the night seems neverending. A light has appeared in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. He has come, He is here, He is coming again.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Come a Little Bit Closer

I went for a walk on the beach today after work. We are now in full summer mode, here in my little beach town. The fog of June Gloom has burned off and the beaches are full of eager sun bathers, castle builders, shell seekers, book readers sitting in the shade of their umbrellas, and toddlers experiencing the thrill and the terror of the mighty Pacific Ocean for the very first time under brilliant blue skies and soft, warm sand, stretching from one horizon to the other. 

As I put my headphones in and walked down toward the water to walk my favorite stretch of beach, I noticed a few large seagulls circling together, just up ahead by the water’s edge. Their wingspan was magnificent and they glided, easily and gracefully, in perfect unison, around and around, in a perfectly choreographed dance that beckoned me to come closer. As I approached the site where they were circling, I noticed a few more seagulls, congregating on the sand just below them, at the point where the waves stopped their landward journey and turned back again to the sea. And as I got even closer, I noticed that those on the ground were feasting on the rotted-out carcass of a stingray, that had been even more majestic than they when it had been alive. It was easily the size of twenty seagulls, washed up on the shore, guts spilling onto the beach, right there in the midst of the summer break families seeking peace and relaxation.  The seagulls had no grace in tearing apart whatever flesh they could claim as their own from the body of the newly dead sting ray. 

Lately I’ve been facing my fears. I am a fearful person, and I have spent much of my life working hard to avoid circumstances that provoke anxiety. Most of these circumstances for me involve social norms and expectations in relationships and culture. But this last year of my life has found me approaching my fears, and not only have I not been turning away, many times I’ve actually stood there, facing them down and then even barging right on through. It may have started unconsciously but I am now trying to consciously notice my discomfort when something makes me uncomfortable. Then I’ve been looking at it, and trying to be curious about it. I do my best to ask myself honest questions about why I am uncomfortable and once I am able to assess most things as not as dangerous as I once thought, I step right on into it and try to make it through to the other side.

It’s exhausting. Sometimes there are dead and rotting carcasses that I have to walk past.

It’s also freeing. Sometimes I find breath-taking beauty just on the other side of the unknown.

The other day, I pulled into my driveway and noticed my front yard, which looked like this as I walked through it into the house:

Kinda normal, right? Pretty, yes, but nothing special. Some dead grass mixed in with some surviving greenery. But then something caught my eye as I walked up the walkway… maybe it was a slight rustle from the breeze, or maybe it was a lizard skittering by. Whatever it was, it made me stop and lean in a little closer. And that’s when I noticed that this is what that same ground looked like when I got very, very close:

There, in between every single blade of grass (both the green grass and the dead grass) were hundreds upon hundreds of perfectly formed, almost microscopic, orange and purple flowers, beckoning me closer.

And to think, I almost missed it.

The Waking

I recently heard a definition of the hermeneutic circle:

“The interpretation and analysis of a phenomena or an experience happens by moving between the parts and the whole. We see a part of something and then it shapes our story of the whole… and as we expand our understanding of the whole, it changes how we see the parts.”

Hillary McBride – The Liturgists podcast

Three days ago, I became a grandmother for the 4th time. It was by far the fastest and most intense labor and delivery experience that I’ve ever been a part of and I’m finding myself in need of processing all of the parts of the last few days so that I can come into a deeper understanding of the whole.

Wednesday morning, I was sitting at my desk, working. I had been talking with Chris that morning about him maybe needing to go to Urgent Care as he had been having some increasing abdominal pain over the last week or so that was beginning to reach a severe level. I had also been having conversations with Grace because the transmission in her car had gone out a few weeks earlier which meant that we were down to one working vehicle between the three of us living in our home. Knowing that Sadie was near her due date, and knowing that her first baby had come much faster than the average first baby, I was unwilling to be left home alone without a car for too long. And so the three of us were having a conversation about Grace taking her dad to Urgent Care, when my phone rang. It was Sadie, saying something to the effect of “I think I might be in labor. I’m not really having contractions, but something feels really different. I mean, maybe it’s contractions? I might have just had one… it’s really low and there’s a lot of pressure but it doesn’t really hurt. I just wanted to let you know. Nothing’s happening yet, but I’ll call if I want you to come.”

It was 10:15am.

Here’s a screenshot of the texts that happened next:

In the meantime, we decided that Grace SHOULD take Chris to Urgent Care as he was in really bad shape. We figured he could always call someone else to get a ride home but at least that way, he would be taken care of, which he really needed. Grace called and told her work she couldn’t come in due to multiple family emergencies happening, took Chris to the clinic five minutes from our house, dropped him off, and came back for me, while I hurriedly finished up all that needed to be done at my job and we rushed out the door. 

About halfway to Sadie’s, at 11:39am, she called again. “Where are you?”  I could definitely feel a sense of urgency behind her calm voice and I was glad at that moment that we hadn’t taken the time to get food as we had briefly discussed, even though we were both very hungry. I assured her we were five minutes away. We pulled into her driveway at the same time as her mother and sisters-in-law and walked in the house to the birth tub being filled in the living room and Elisha applying counter-pressure to her back. Jude was still in his pajamas, happily sucking his thumb and observing. When the contraction was over, my very calm daughter asked if the tub was full enough for her to get in. We determined that it was and she climbed in, allowing the warm water to soothe her aching body. Callie pulled in the driveway next. She had somehow managed to find someone to watch her own two babies on very short notice so that she could be there for her sister. Now we had everyone except for the midwife. As Sadie endured one more contraction while in the warm water, she very quietly said, “I feel like pushing.” 

The roomful of women exchanged eyes at that point and an entire universe of thoughts and emotions passed among us in that holy space that is the transition between darkness and light, pain and joy, sleeping and waking… death and life.

I texted Megan, the midwife, “she feels like pushing,” who immediately called me and kept me on the phone as she sped through the final minutes of her drive to Sadie’s house in the back hills off the California coast, trying to make it in time. She gave instructions and we all did what we came there to do. Some of us readied towels and hot water, some of us coached Sadie on how to breathe through that urge to push, some of us held the sweet, thumb-sucking Jude, some of us applied pressure to wherever Sadie needed it most on her back, her hips, her legs as that baby made it’s VERY rapid descent through the entirety of the only world he had ever known, which was my precious daughter’s very body.

The next many parts are a blur. Megan arrived, we helped her get in and set everything up, I snapped some pictures, Sadie pushed once and we saw a head, and many things were happening as she pushed again, including the midwife’s assistant walking through the door right as someone was saying “the baby’s out!” At which point Sadie reached down and lifted her baby out of the water and held him close and smiled as his lungs filled with air and he let out a wail.

It was 12:28pm.

Welcome to this world, Alyosha Jasper Brigham. This whole, big, beautiful world is yours, baby boy, every last bit of it. You are a welcome rearrangement to the parts that make up my ever-widening world. You, little guy, have helped me understand my wholeness more deeply these past few days, which now allows me to see all the parts in a new light. You, who I watched come through the water and into life, out of the depths of your mother who once grew within me, along with her sisters, as we all participated in welcoming you with love. You have come to join us here with a thousand other brilliant, beautiful creatures, through a thousand particles of light, by way of a thousand different parts. You, who are created and loved by the creator of the universe, who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and will love you for a thousand generations.

May you have the same heart for this world that Dostoyevsky’s similarly named creation had:

“In his heart there is the secret of renewal for all, the power that will finally establish the truth on earth, and all will be holy and will love one another, and there will be neither rich nor poor, neither exalted nor humiliated, but all will be the like the children of God, and the true kingdom of Christ will come.’ That was the dream in Alyosha’s heart.”

The Brothers Karamazov

P.S. Chris did not end up needing an emergency appendectomy, which was my fear that day. We still do not know for sure what is causing his pain, but he has been receiving care from multiple specialists and seems to be slowly getting better.