Birthing Adults

What a weird era of life.  Perhaps it is because I am currently taking a course on rites of passage, but as I drove over 3,000 miles last week, carting my two oldest children to a very official college visit and music scholarship audition at their school of choice that was once relatively close to home but is now incredibly far away, I kept thinking to myself, “I feel like I am pregnant all over again.”

Stay with me.  I understand how very bizarre that sounds.

There I was, in this closely confined space, when out of nowhere it suddenly felt like all of their hopes and dreams for the future that have been wrapped up inside of me were about to come spilling out in a graphic and violent manner.  I didn’t tell them this.  I was driving.  It would do none of us any good if I became a puddle of tears on the side of the road.  And that is pretty much par for the course on how this Mama does life.  I feel very deeply (uncharacteristically so of most humans), but I can stuff it (believe it or not).

I have given (literal) birth to five children.  Each one of their stories is different, and if you have read me for long, you are probably familiar with them.  I’m not going to take the time to give you the full versions here, today, but there are, indeed, some odd parallels to this new ‘birthing’ experience.  Let us start with ‘the boy.’

After 2 ½ years of trying, it was hard to believe he was coming into existence at all.  I waited a long time to tell anyone.  It was easier to grasp the reality of him when I began to feel him kick, and I knew he was OK when I could see him moving in my body.  There was a certain degree of panic that accompanied any span of time without movement.  It was a difficult pregnancy.  The boy came into the world with a security guard posted at my hospital room door.  You can’t make this stuff up.  It felt like an easy delivery, even though his little body ripped mine all the way through.  I couldn’t hold him for an hour, because there were so many stitches.  It took the medical staff some time to convince me that I could accept pain medication during that process, because I had been so adamant about not taking anything during delivery that I struggled to recognize he was now separated from me, and it would be OK to dull the pain of this after birth experience.  He was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen, and my fierce protection of him grew exponentially the moment I saw him, even though I had already been keeping him safe… sometimes at my own expense… for nine months.  Even though the cord was cut, it was as if I was still carrying him inside of me.  I didn’t realize it until last week, but eighteen years later I still feel this.  It’s hard to believe he is leaving home.  I haven’t made an announcement, because the acceptance process isn’t quite complete.  I had moments of panic over these days when I could not see his movement, but there was peace when I caught a glimpse of him across campus doing all the things an incoming college Freshman should be doing.  In some ways, it has been a difficult childhood, and in other ways it felt easy.  I still want to post a guard around this one.  I cannot bear the thought of him being hurt, and as I am typing these words, they are ripping my spirit… all the way through.  But I have kept him as safe as I could (spoiler alert: the world is not safe)… sometimes… still… at my own expense (I have a bit of a reputation for being a Mama bear, and I can be really ugly if you mess with my babies) for these eighteen years.  When I was pregnant with this first child of mine, I had a few months to think about what my life was going to look like when the baby arrived and changed everything.  Now I have a few months to think about what my life will look like when he leaves and changes everything again.  And I just hope he flies (even though I am now that aforementioned puddle of tears).

And then, there’s ‘the girl.’  In some ways, there is something cruel about having to launch two pieces of your heart at once, but I can’t slow her down.  I have never been able to.  She came to us completely unexpectedly.  No one plans for a little pink line with a four month old in their arms… but certainly not anyone who knows what it is to pee on those sticks month after month.   I have always called her “the best surprise of my life,” and she is.  Her entry into the world was frightening in its own right, because she was conceived while I was on medication that is not conducive to pregnancy but was necessary for dealing with the postpartum condition of my body.  Coumadin.  Category X.  The literature warned that this medication, when taken during pregnancy, may (although I think what I was told sounded much more like ‘should’… and ‘will’…) result in central nervous system defects, deformed limbs, and developmental retardation.  The girl was born singing.  It was really more of a low, guttural, mournful humming sound, and as medical staff and visiting friends and family expressed concern, I shut them out.  I was twenty-two years old.  Maybe I was exhausted because of the longer labor than the one before, or maybe I was preoccupied with the toddler in the pack-in-play, whom I would not allow to be taken home by his grandparents, or maybe I was trying to wrap my mind around why this baby really wasn’t as beautiful as the first and was going to need me in her corner.  Whatever the reason, my line over the next 24 hours became, “I think she just loves music.”  Cue the continued pitiful glances… and the failed hearing test… and walking out of the hospital the second they would let us go.  None of that really matters, because I was right, and she has been stickin’ it to the world ever since.  Most everyone had all but forgotten how her life began by the time she taught herself to read at age four… and was published in a magazine… and started winning essay contests and talent shows and quiz scholarships.  So please excuse me when I post indiscriminately about my girl with perfect pitch who is going to college for free to major in music composition!  As a baby, she was either crying or eating.  She had to be touching me to be happy.  This week I realized that I had to be touching her, too.  I spent most of the week following her around.  It is helpful that she has promised to always text me at the end of the day, so I know she is alive.  I received the first of these texts on Friday night.  It literally said, “I’m alive!”  And I laughed.  Cliché as it might be, I just hope she dances.

Even though I had worked in early childhood for years before having my own kids, there was something far more terrifying about keeping my own little person alive.  Even though I spent many years working with teenagers and their families as they transitioned to adulthood, there is something entirely different about experiencing this for myself.  But this is also exactly what parents are supposed to do.  It is our job to transform slimy, wrinkly, needy little things into loving, responsible people who will make their mark on the world.  Giving birth to adults is hard.  In some ways, I think it’s harder and more painful work than giving birth to babies (maybe I’m just far enough removed from this to have forgotten), because we’ve had them for a long time when we reach this stage, and we like them.  Their being is interconnected with ours, and even a gentle ripping away will leave some raw spaces.  And so… over the next few months, I prepare to push them out into the world, measured breathing all the way…

L.

Dysfunctional Rhythms

My intent for this post was to veer off a bit from proper sacraments and to seek to explore what it is to live sacramentally by establishing rhythms of life that lend themselves well to the practice of both sacraments and sacramentals.  Well, that’s a mouthful, and this is the part where I admit that the best I can do, today, is to speak to what rhythms might actually fall short of this goal.  It all started with the circus parade…

As it turns out, I write about the circus every four years, in July.  I had no idea this was a rhythm of mine until about three minutes ago.  I hope this is my last circus post, but I know how the cyclical nature of everything works.  In all likelihood, I will write about the circus in 2021, and that scares me a little bit, because I never would have guessed this would be a pattern.

We should be careful which things we allow to become habits in our lives.

Oh, bread and circuses, defined by dictionary.com as, “something, as extravagant entertainment, offered as an expedient means of pacifying discontent or diverting attention from a source of grievance.”  The struggle is real.  It’s always so tempting to reach for whatever feels good at the time, but it’s better to develop disciplines that are legitimately transformative instead.

My posts (or ghosts) of circus past lean toward letting go, transition, discomfort, and responsibility.  Oddly, these are all rhythms that may be beneficial or harmful depending on the context.   Interestingly, I’m right there in the middle of them again. 

And so, there’s a good deal of self-reflection happening here, today.  But if you’re interested in some throwbacks (or just some super cute pictures of toddler Miah, because I’m throwing it all the way back to the Mommy blogger days), you could check out the evolution of my circus theology here.

May all your days be meaningful…

L. 

εὐωδία Χριστοῦ: God Who Smells

When I started out with this plan to identify some of the ways in which God relates to us on a basic, sensory level; I have to admit I was thinking about very usual, reciprocal stuff.  God sees us.  God hears us.  We feel God’s touch.  We hear God’s voice.  But then I got all weird and truly sensory oriented, and I started to think about how important the olfactory system can be to memory.  It’s probably a processing phenomenon. Smell simply comes closer to the areas of the brain that handle memory and emotion than any other sense. 

So, I’m going to talk about noses, and you really, truly do not have to read this.  But I do have to write it.

My grandpa on my mom’s side—my “Paw”—had a huge nose.  Huge.

Of all the wonderful things that might have been passed down in the gene pool, I inherited his nose.  Four of my five children also have his nose.  My fifth child has a mix between his nose and another family nose.  It’s a dominant nose.  There’s nothing we can do about it (well…  OK… technically there probably is, but we’re not going to do anything about it).

I have a phenomenal sense of smell.  Sometimes this is a blessing, and sometimes it’s less than that.  I live with three sons.  On a bad day, I have been known to walk into rooms and immediately back out of them because of the universal scent of teenage boy.  On a good day, it’s like Axe body spray overload.  Even the people we love most kind of stink sometimes.

But then there are these moments when a scent that may or may not actually be there hits me, and I am transported back in time, often to a really good place where I am in the presence of happy memories of experiences or people or feelings.  This, of course, can go both ways, so if the scent is unpleasant; it is also overwhelming.  To smell is to remember.   

This all seems very human, and yet we have what I would consider to be a somewhat obscure passage in II Corinthians, a letter that I think Paul begins to write in the midst of grief and stress and struggle, perhaps even looking for a little bit of comfort himself.  His plans are shaken, he is missing his people, and he is tracking Titus like a dog.  Then boom!  Out of nowhere, Paul is describing how we smell.  This goes on for one paragraph, and then he returns to a more typical treatise.  It’s really too bad Paul didn’t live in an era during which he could have written a daily blog…

II Corinthians 2:14-17: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.  For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?  Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God” (NIV).

Paul uses two notable words:

εὐωδία (euōdia, fragrance) – This is used to describe Jesus.  A fragrance, it appears from other definitions, is a pleasant, sweet, delicate smell.  It is also generally a quality.

ὀσμὴ (osmē, aroma) – This is used to describe how we take on and exude that fragrance.  Interestingly, the definitions are very closely related, but an aroma is only almost always pleasant, and it is exhibits a stronger quality.

Both are used to depict undeniable attributes.  We can’t spray these on and wash them off.  We all smell.

I am somewhat astounded by the idea that Jesus has a scent… and we have a scent… and we can smell him… and people can smell us… and here’s the kicker—God is smelling us!  I hope I smell like life as I walk by, because this is lasting. 

We talk a lot about remembering God, and maybe especially about remembering Christ, but I’m not sure we speak too much to the subject of being remembered by God.  In a culture where it is often easier to be forgotten, may we recognize that God is not in that business.  God knows us intimately enough to follow our scent and to actually find us in all of our past and present… and to stay close as we move into our future.  God must have a fabulous nose.

L.

Surprise

For as long as I can remember, I have not liked surprises... even good ones... ever...  OK, once, but being so honest is really blowing my hyperbolic blogging...

It's not that surprises can't be really great.  It's not that they can't be turning point moments or important markers in our lives.  They certainly can, but I'm a planner.  It's not that the best laid plans don't ever end up as a pile of garbage at the end of the day.  Heaven knows this has happened to me over... and over... and over again.  But I guess I'm more like Effie than Han (don't worry, friends, more YA fiction references are coming your way all week long).  Go ahead and give me the odds.  That doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to make the choice with the smallest risk.  In fact it'll probably go the other way, because that's just who I am.  But at least I'll know what I'm up against... 

If you need a good example regarding my lack of love for the spontaneous, let me share a middle school story.  I was thirteen years old...  eighth grade... totally boy crazy... and I finally had a "boyfriend," which seems a little silly to me now, because in that era the verbiage was that we were "going out," but where do thirteen year olds really go? 

School hallways.  With lockers.  After dances in the cafeteria.  OK, fair enough.

After much contemplation about whether or not I was ready for my first kiss, I planned it.  Who does that?  It's rhetorical.  That poor boy.  I mean, we had to talk about it for a full week... on the phone... every day... before it could happen.  I am withholding his name, because the truth is we're Facebook friends, decades later, so this post will show up in his newsfeed, and it's bad enough that I'm subjecting my own family to this story.  I'm sure he neither wants nor needs this kind of Internet fame...

On a warm night in May, dressed in a pink and black flowered bodysuit (I'm trying to decide if it's more appropriate here to tell you that I kept that thing for almost forever or to ask why my mother let me wear what were essentially onesies for middle-schoolers), smelling like Teen Spirit (how I wish this was a clever nod to the song, but it's actually a reference to my deodorant of choice at that time), I experienced my first kiss backed up against my locker, just praying no adults would walk around the corner, because I was terrified I'd get in trouble!  It was exactly like I'd planned it, and today I can't decide if I remember every detail because first kisses are memorable or because I ran through the plan so many times, before the actual kiss, that I had it down to a science (much better science than that time my eighth grade science teacher brought in mercury for all of us to touch or that other time when we blew up the science lab ceiling).

When I started writing this, there was a point...

I like to have a good plan.  I like to know how things are going to turn out.  I like it so much that I will even sacrifice a pleasant, surprising, spontaneous moment for the sake of being prepared.  Every... single... time...

But there's a flipside, because even though some surprises could be nice, many of them just aren't.

The other day I posted a vaguebook status that read, "A year ago, if you had asked me what I thought I would be doing or how I would be feeling right now, this would not have even been on my radar..."  I posted this at 4:50am.  I did not expect it to be widely read.  And yet, there were comments.  The first one took me by surprise, but it shouldn't have.  The first comment was clearly made by someone who assumed that I was excited about this moment in life.  I mean, what else could I have possibly meant at this hour of the morning?  Everyone loves a good pre-5:00am departure time, right?  The comment was about how amazing God is, and please don't misunderstand, I completely agree.  God is amazing.  God is really, really amazing.  But it the midst of feeling super horrible about the surprising way my year ended up, I was not in any way willing to credit this awfulness to God.  Not to my God, anyway.  Not to the God who loves me and has been with me through every single moment that has sucked.  Not before the sun rose and I pulled out of the driveway to do the things I never dreamed I'd be doing, because they were not the things I wanted to be doing.  Not on that day.

Later in the day, I read a quote that said, "Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the street and then being hit by an airplane" (Purple Cover).  Well, that resonated deeply.  Too deeply.  Imagine, I couldn't stop laughing because it resonated so deeply...

But the best part was something my friend, Pat, said: "There are times that it isn't good to know. We would be overwhelmed!"  Oh.  Yes.  This.

The truth is, if I had every detail planned out, and if I knew... with certainty... that everything would always go as planned, I would probably never be able to do anything.  I would constantly be trying to find a way to make things better... more perfect...  just perfect.  If I always knew what I would be doing or how I would be feeling in the wake of every choice; it would be difficult to choose.  I would never be able to choose between good choices, that's for sure.

And I think that might be the crux of it for me.  What I'm doing right now is really, really good.  I can't run around feeling guilty, anymore, about the fact that I can only pour my life into a couple of places at a time.  I am the queen of stretching myself thin... or something...  I love deeply.  I love so deeply that it literally, physically hurts when I can't be where the people I love are, especially when they're hurting... especially when they have needs, and I can see how I could help, but I'm not there.  Especially because I'm not there, because I wasn't good enough to get there.    

But here's the thing...  If I was there, I would be crying and bleeding over the people who are here.  So whatever.  I guess it's gonna have to hurt (there's the song reference).  But that doesn't mean there isn't something incredibly good yet to be squeezed out of this.  I wonder if there's a plan...

L.