The Way

"See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me." -How far I'll go
(Song by Lin-Manuel Miranda, from the film Moana)

There I was, face down on the carpet.  They say that when your heart breaks, it shatters into a million pieces and that’s the start of grief.

I say it feels more like drowning.  Held down by a force where you can’t get up but you can move.  Submerged with the weight of feeling.  Your mind will fragment and each piece, big or small, creates a new surface area for the aching to press in and swallow you whole. 

It also feels like fire.  Every nerve of your skin ablaze, and while the parts of you that broke are still inside, you want more than anything to unzip your body and step out.  To get away from the intensity and steal the oxygen back from the torch that is now your soul.

See, if you are fragile, like any human is, even if they don’t know it.  Falling apart means you can put things back together.  You might have to hunt around for a few shards, or you could call it good and mend with some gaps, wounds for safekeeping. 

Fire and water give no options.  Ashes don’t reassemble and liquid never fully leaves the lungs.

There’s a drop, a sensation of falling, but would that I knew the mercy of ruins.  Instead of all my strength and substance suffocated and disintegrated.

That’s what grief is like to me.  It is a guest that stays too long and leaves only when it has worn you down.  Allowing you to live petrified of its unexpected return.  It doesn’t respect boundaries and thanks will never make it stop.

I remember every fiber of that carpet on my bedroom floor.  The moments after a message sparked by a question I was curious enough to ask.  The letters told me I was unwanted, unworthy, and marked rejection on my back. 

As I sit here, I actually can’t remember how many years ago it was.  Because that’s what grief does.  All of a sudden there is no longer a before and after.  Every memory suffices as confirmation or mockery of reality.  You will wake up countless mornings praying it was just a bad dream, only to get up and face the heat fully aware that it will win by crushing your heart a little bit more, again.

There are so many forms of pathways created by the sorrow we bear.  Sometimes I feel ashamed of voicing my pain.  It is of a different kind.  I have not known death of a loved one, loss of a baby, or physical sickness.  But all of our heart breakings connect us to each other, and while some may be deeper and fiercer than any we have seen, each loss informs the shape of a peace we are looking for.  This is the way.  I call it: The Empath.  And even if restoration awaits me within the span of this life, I will not leave.  I interpret it as calling to stay.  I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

I’ve been imagining a road as I wander and try to find my way home.  In all the shapes grief may take, we seek the care of a thoroughfare; but the way is so narrow and for some, the journey will last until eternity. 

In the story of the prodigal, the elder brother stays home and the younger one leaves.  When the wanderer decides to return, his father runs to meet him.  It sticks in my throat when I try to say I’m lost and need a welcome because in my identifiers, the father is not good, my older efforts were not enough and the youngest was cast out in their pursuit of life, desire, adventure, beyond.  This will get you into trouble and death will have its way.

Until Sunday, and Advent changes course.

I hear words from a mother of faith with a brilliant imagination. 

She invites me into the role of the father. The one by the road, watching, waiting.  I go home and still mourn the lonely prodigal on a very long route alone, how can it be good father when the lost are out there?  Even if I choose to stay.

I wait.  Sister comes the next day.  We know many different griefs together.  At least I won’t walk alone this week.

We go see the latest Disney film, Moana.  There is a magic deeper still and I remember the beginning of my story.

The empath is not a road.  It is the ocean.  Where the breakers push you out past isolated foundations and margins of grief the inhabitants are afraid to recall.  There is the drowning and fire, but then you surface in a world without borders made of sun and water.  Darkness comes but the flames within you are flung across the night sky.  A spangled record of the wonders of your heart to show you where you have come from and guide you to where you wish to be.  With only naming for craft you walk on the waves and know this brokenness is more than enough of a vessel to carry you home.  The daughter becomes what the father could not.  When she is the rescuer and not the rescued, evil is not destroyed; it is brought to peace.  She is restorer of hearts and healer of worlds.  In this wild, where waters collide with the presence of the sun, you know your way only by dead reckoning.  Following a horizon that speaks to the freedom your insatiable heart longs for; life without boundaries, desire without shame, love without fear.   

This is the empath.  You know it.  You must trust your deaths to pregnant stars to find it.

Oceans don’t have roads.

"We know the way" (Song by Lin-Manuel Miranda, from the film Moana)

Advent

The first candle symbolizes the light of the hope of the prophets.

Advent is finally here, and I know this year will be significant but not yet in what way.  As I contemplate another foray into hope I name the longings of my heart alongside my fear of disappointment. 

I’ve got big and beautiful plans that need to start in small and subtle ways.  I’m content with waiting for the momentum to build.  Or so I think.

I’m unafraid of evil.  But naïve to my terror of good.

We go to get our Christmas tree earlier this year than any other year.  We decorated the house before Thanksgiving, realizing too late that all the contents of our boxes were filled with savage memories.  I could not deck the halls with this. 

We put most things away, shifted others, and bought (for the first time) decorations that reflected our place in life.  The kids chose items and after the new was raised in place of the old I noticed that it was white instead of red.  Isaiah 1:18 becomes more playful than admonitory.

The outline of the mountains takes my breath away, as ever.  We witness it for half a mile before turning to the farm where we will find our tree.  Winter is so beautiful here.  I love that I live in a place where the harshest, darkest season of the year will stun you with awe.  The advent is palpable.  When will it snow, where will it spring?

The tree we find is noble and the deepest hue of green.  We drive away into darkness and I feel droplets falling hot on my hand and cold strands on my cheeks.  I will weep this advent season.  I have decided to welcome it.  There is nothing lukewarm in my world.  This is our second Christmas here following the three hardest years of our lives.  The inkling of hope returns and I feel the haunt of peace creep onto my shoulders.  Despite my best intentions not to be fooled by goodness again, it permeates the stress and I am defenseless.  To conceive by the Holy Spirit demands an awareness that is terrible to beheld.

            full of grace,

What I long for more than ever this advent is incarnation.  Would that my mind and spirit would inhabit my body.  So far hope has only signified the awareness of the disconnect.  The powerlessness of my desire feels more reality than falsehood and I’m tired of waiting for my own arrival.

What faith does it take for word to become flesh and spirit to enter body?  This candle will burn out before the others are lit.

            pray for us sinners,

Sometimes I think I’ve given up.  Trinkets and remnants of broken company I kept in my closet as tokens of hope were removed.  Several necklaces, a blanket, books, and dishes.  Carefully I place them in a box to give away.  Loss upon loss.  Foolish enough to think I could sanctify talismans of rejection.

Advent has to surprise me.

            Hail Mary,

Friend, knowing and unaware, made a rosary and hands it to me next day.  “I know what it is to know God and not prayer.  May this be your road out of the wilderness.” 

So I climb beads searching for home.  Surprised that letting go of hope brought recompense.

            Jesus.

I decide to learn the joyful mysteries first.  I think I’ll be here awhile.  The series of Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s have given my orphaned soul, parents; my exiled heart, companions.

            Holy Mary, Mother of God.

We bring the tree home and set it up with only lights.  They dim and fade in cadence with the newfangled gadget husband found.  Could there be more magic?

            Blessed art thou among women,

The four children snuggle close.  We decide it is time.  There is a song on an album reserved for Christmas eve, but the moment is now.

            and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,

The familiar and sacred carol fills the room.  Yet I am startled.  The lyrics are that of the only prayer I have offered in a year over the past weeks.  It is the Ave where I am learning to walk the lonely journey both as mother and child.

Our Lord is with thee.

I close my eyes and the twinkling form of the tree seals itself for a moment inside the dark of my lids.  The sound of only voices crescendo in the melody that I have yet to determine is the manifestation of a sunrise or set; were we to hear instead of see.

            now and at the hour of our death.

My baby squirms in my lap.  Hot and cold mingle together on my face again and I look to her standing, eyes level.  The chorus has mounted to utter the last word and I surrender to its ascent.  Littlest sees me with knowing and leans in.  She waits.  Kissing my lips on the final Amen.

Who knew resurrection would begin with the caress of tears?

Hail Mary, full of grace.  Our Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.

Fly

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

My son is a prophet.

The stories and emotions other women share about being a first time mother, were, honestly, something I have never felt access too.  When I was 19, I got married.  And having being taught that the use of birth control was a sin and that time alone with your spouse in early marriage only served to develop selfishness, my equally young husband and I, with not yet fully developed frontal lobes, trusted the words of church elders and betters and arrived back from our honeymoon with a baby on the way.

There is both blessing and grief.  I know he is the son of my naiveté and youth, and that he is the strength of my life.  I know this choice of mine began to make a road in the wilderness out of the bondage of legalism.  Yet, I still mourn for his loss as well as mine.  So tiny and small, my body bled from outside in and I will bear the countless scars of carrying him until I die.  The loss of a naked beauty I will never know, with a change in life that came too quickly.   And he, the first baby of a baby, did not receive space for his own emotion: sleep trained, stay on the blanket, be quiet, two-hour long church services, and expectations of spanking.  Voiceless both, we have suffered, alone.

When I was pregnant, I attended a party intended for peers, but as the only one wed and with child did not know how to fit.  I covered myself with self deprecating humor; surviving a game of leapfrog by bemoaning my nascent form.  I attempted to claim advantage in play for effort.  The next day, at church, this hostess took me aside to correct my attempts with phrases like, “flaunting your pregnancy”, “demanding attention”, and “have no thought for the emotions of others.”  Granted, the community had experienced a stillbirth months prior (and I then with a small bump had already struggled with how to hold a child, and another’s grief), but apparently I was also responsible for a twelve year old who, “had awoken crying from a dream that she was not yet married and having a baby.”  Thus I was “insensitive to what I had that others wanted.”  My uncontrolled pregnancy apparently implied control over much I was unaware was mine to bear. 

I went home.

And sobbed for hours.  Husband held me as best he could.

Something inside me broke.  Is still broken.

I don’t blame.  I used to, but trauma has been passed on and on and on, everywhere.  I can only own what parts are mine and leave others who don’t, to be.

But I did lose.  Evil won, and using the consistency of the reproof prescribed by ‘God-given’ authorities in my life it didn’t miss the opportunity to impart.

To my young mind that was constantly told I never knew better than older women or elder men, this is what I learned:  I was wrong to delight in myself or child.  I was not worth being delighted in.  I was not worthy of being rejoiced with.  I was wrong to speak of my body.  I was shamed for having its form. I was responsible for the emotions of others.  I was to blame for their triggers.  I was a lost cause who couldn’t see the effect of her presence in a room.  I was too much on the outside and not enough on the inside.

I wanted the grief to swallow me whole that day and the next and the next and the next; I felt like it would.  I couldn’t carry the weight of my own existence, much less the creation of another life.

It’s no wonder to me that I labored a week for him with sleepless nights of contractions that made my stretch marks bleed climaxing in 90 minutes of transition then transported to a hospital with tearing that needed so many stitches they stopped being counted.

That’s a brief accounting of the story of my first baby.  He’s now seven, going on eight.  The number that signifies endings giving way to the number of new beginnings.  He trails our anniversary year by nine months.  It has been a time of great and heartbreaking endings, but I’ve still been waiting for the new to begin.

Tonight.  My first baby is reading: Babe.  He has space and voice now, like his momma.  He has grief and anger now, like his momma.  It’s hard to give space, to see the heart of someone in the moments of frustration or glum—to see it without eating it, to just be present.  Sometimes I say no, sometimes I don’t, sometimes he responds, and sometimes he doesn’t.  I accept.  He doesn’t smile a whole lot, but then again, neither do I.  Life has been hard, and that’s okay for our faces to show.

He’s now outside the inside of my body.  His outside is a wonder my insides were not allowed to enjoy.  I still wrestle to heal that broken heart of a young girl who has to fight for the right to delight in her son.  I still do not understand this part of my story.

But tonight, the boy comes over with his story and climbs into my lap.  Brave enough to take space to ‘interrupt’ my conversation.  We both know this is important.

“Do you know what I’m reading?’ He asks.

“Yeah.  Babe.” I reply

“It’s so funny.  He’s just told everyone he’s a sheep-pig.”

“That is funny.  And brave, don’t you think?”  I add.

He nods.

“What do you think about how it feels to be something that it looks like you’re not, especially when other people say what you are?”  The question spills out of me and I realize I do not know the answer.

“People are like one thing on the outside and everything on the inside.”  He replies after a moment.  I’m in awe.

He continues on, referring to my favorite animal as knowing part of my insides, and we laugh at the revelation as he shares he has discovered his.

When at last he arrives at what he intended to tell me—I am caught, again, off guard.

“You’re like Fly.”

I don’t know what to say and we sit together in the sacred quiet.  In the story of Babe, Babe is a pig and Fly is sheep-dog.  It is she who first sees and believes in Babe’s abilities and dreams to become a sheep herding pig (a sheep-pig).  She fights for his place to become who he was made to be.  Even though the farmer has sold all her puppies, she takes Babe under her care and lets him call her mom.  Fly knows who she is, and sees past the politics of the farm animals, the jealousy of her own kind, and the unbelief of the master; enduring, believing, and delighting in Babe’s dream.

“Do you feel like I believe in your insides and not what your outsides say?” I offer with caution to this boy of mine that rarely smiles.

“Yeah.”

Then, just like that he hops down to finish the chapter.  And just like that, we both have new names that we love from this boy who sees the inside.  And just like that a piece of the broken place that made us both something we were not, from the space we took up together outside, is restored within.  There’s more to his story and mine, now, to write. 

And, just for this moment, the weight of grief lifts enough that my oh-so-weary, girl-of-a-momma’s heart feels like it could, well…

FLY

“But they that wait…”

Isaiah 40:31