Category: At-Home

Yes, I am at home. I have learned to be a good cook over the years, tho’ I specialize in soups (my husband says) and pies (so say my friends.) I drive my children to and fro, dealing with the complexities of having them. I write. I do small photography gigs. I volunteer in the community.

On Motherhood, On Children

I’ll be the first to admit it.  I fight daily with the little devil on my shoulder.  That being tells me lies.

I feel it so vividly – the tensions of being a stay at home mom, a lack of validation in the culture at large for motherhood or stay at home parents, and the voice inside me telling me almost every day “It’s not enough! Do more, be significant, something special.”  A lot of my poetry recently has come out of that place.

God has reminded me, for some reason, of the truth that we never know whose mother we are — in that we don’t know who our children will become. If we knew that our sons or daughters, nieces or nephews, would grow up to be the next Barack Obama, or Madeleine L’Engle, Joan Chittister, or Scot McKnight, or Michelangelo, whomever, would we look at parenting, at mothering, differently?

They all had mothers.

Fathers.  Aunties and Uncles.

Your role in the life of a child is a role that only you can fulfill even though most days you likely consider it insignificant.

This post was inspired in some part by reading this.

Logic & Imagination

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a huge battle. — Phylo of Alexandria

I am still processing time I spent today, alongside my mother and a lot of mostly grey haired women, at the Holy Wisdom monastery. And my ten-year old turns eleven tomorrow, so life will be a little full over the next twenty-four hours with ice-cream cake and video games,  rides here and there, and the flow of life as a mother of four.

While I mull on what I have learned, I thought you might enjoy seeing the list of the top ten articles on my blog this month.  A few are recent work, but I was surprised to see that several are oldies but goodies like What’s a Woman of Leisure?, On Parenting Deeply and Well, and the ebb and flow.

Title Views
Home page 400
If you Read Nothing Else from me. Read this. ((On healing)) 72
What’s a Woman of Leisure? (Not that you asked) 69
Can I “forget” that I’m a Woman while at Church? Forgetting and Forgiving 55
On Parenting Deeply and Well 46
Perfect Practice (A poem about Lent) 45
My Sobriety and My Sin 44
To Lent or not to Lent, that is the Question 42
the ebb and flow 39
Faith Transforms Me, Sometimes. 37
Uncluttered, Exposed and Present: Touching the Unknown (a poem) 36

It is an incredible honor to know that you all are reading and walking with me.

On Motherhood: Searching for Meaningful Metanarrative

I keep crying out that I want a bigger purpose for my life.  

The universe cries back, your purpose is right in front of you.

I cry back– it’s not enough.  It’s not enough.  This is not enough!

I cannot pretend. I’ve been up and down, sometimes miserable lately. And I’m ashamed of myself. Why is it that I just cannot figure out how to be happy? I had an interaction with E yesterday that spun me into these gloomy thoughts.   We were talking about cheerful people – you know the kind.  The people whose voices go up when they talk to you and they always smile and they are mostly cheerful and helpful!!  They seem to have an inner glow.

It’s just not me, I am mellow, solidly so, but she really likes those sorts of people! (Even though, or perhaps because, she isn’t one.)

I don’t like them, necessarily.  I doubt people’s sincerity, strangers, when they behave like that. I find them hard to trust.  People that I know in my real life, who are like that, I take with a grain of salt. But it is hard for me to accept that they are always UP even as I try to believe people like that are sincere, not putting me on.  But I have to admit they can grate on me.

But I realized yesterday that I long to be that sort of Mother. Oh, I encourage, I hug, I kiss, I affirm like crazy – but I don’t slather on love or exude joy.  I’m not all over my kids, thrilled that they simply exist and I’m just lucky to be their mom!  (Though I am, very fortunate to have them.)  And I don’t serve pink Valentine’s Day meals or even give valentines to my kids.

But my daughter wouldn’t let me even try yesterday – pushing me away when I smothered her with kisses and smiles.  “It’s just not real, Mom.”  Saying that I was making fun of her, which I definitely wasn’t.   That got me really in the dumps yesterday.

I woke today with gloomy, anxious thoughts.  My body physically hurts from my heart racing so much.  I even thought I was getting sick, so I laid down yesterday.  Just as I dropped off to sleep – probably ten times – a jolt of adrenaline woke me.  I know this, it is anxiety.  (And I start to wonder if I should return to my shrink.  Damn it, I haven’t seen him in a good long while and somehow returning solidifies my failure.  Failure to stay calm and maintain my mood. )

Even as God did a beautiful thing just last week or was it the week before?  And he brought me out of the depression that clung to me from November to January.  It seems that I cannot maintain any peace in my heart. 

Reading through the Bible with my church.  We’re in the book of Numbers.  And I am struck by the Israelites inability to trust God.  Even as they had miracles – Clouds leading them, and manna provided for them and plagues cursing them … and I think to myself, if God spoke to me like that, I’d have more faith that he’s got a plan for my life.  (Um, maybe.)

Perhaps it really is simply that I don’t trust God with my days – with my future.

I think, I just need to be struck with some horrible punishment like Miriam when she challenged things (Nu 12) and then I’d believe.  Then I’d stop complaining. Or would I?

And every time the people do something stupid, Moses and Aaron’s response was to fall face down on the ground.  Hm…..

Is that what I’m doing?  Am I just complaining when I say I just want to be happy.  I find the days I am living — the sweeping up endless dirt, cooking and washing up, washing and folding, the damn whiny dog, the endless homework, and children who really don’t want to achieve, trying to be helpful and failing,

endless, same, same, same…

Being at home is about giving up my rights, serving. But perhaps I am not principled enough to get meaning out of any of it.  Not much anyway.  

Phooey, I can’t stand myself right now.

A friend keeps telling me to read the Bible for the metanarrative.  I think to myself.  I cannot even live life in the big narrative. 

I’m sweeping up dust bunnies and resenting every minute. 

I’ll regret this grumpy post.  I always do. Definitely not living in the light!   But I need to be truthful, even if it’s not cheerful!  Some days that is all I’m holding on to — being a person that is straight and honest.   Some days.

You Changed? For Now.

So I’m not sure about the new theme; I’m trying something new as I embrace abundance and being healed and living in now.  I’m sure it doesn’t matter all that much and won’t likely last, as you can’t easily find old material.  (No Sidebars. No Search.  No email sign-up.)

But for now it is simple and clean.

MH

P.S. One of my babies turned thirteen.  Here’s a few images of his new teen self.

Faith Transforms Me, Sometimes.

My motto these days is to do the next thing — what’s straight ahead of me.  In life, in faith, in parenting.

The next home task, the next creative project, the next scriptural study challenge — I choose to do this because I don’t know what else to do.  So I do the next thing.  I say yes to requests and a chance to help those in my immediate life.  I want to be useful.  This is tale about something l learned while trying to be helpful to a friend and be a good mom.

I should know to welcome an imminent challenge  when I write about parenting.  And I should also know by now that when I get intentional about any aspect of life, experiences come up that cause my “great” ideas to suddenly seem anemic held up to the light of day, real life.

One of my kids came home today particularly ornery.

Nothing I said was good enough. Or correct. Or useful.  Finally when I had had enough I stormed off angry saying: “I don’t know why I bother to say anything around here.” (I know who’s the kid, right?) The more I thought about it, the madder I got.  I was steaming, white hot mad and before I knew it, even slamming doors.

Fuming I went downstairs to fold their laundry.  I decided if that’s the way she wants it fine.  What if I simply refused to talk to her anymore? …. for a while, for a good long while.  I’m thinking, yeah, I will pass information along via her brothers.  That way I could make my point (which was that she doesn’t listen to my sage advice) and still get things accomplished.

Before long she came creeping downstairs.  Still seething in my plans for my “cold-war” campaign, even though I knew that my plan would never work.  Beyond the plain immaturity of the idea, it just wasn’t kind.  And if anything, I try to always be kind.

“I’m sorry I don’t believe in Jesus” she says inaudibly. “Not right now.”

“What?” I asked breaking my short-lived resolve.  In this moment, when a child says something like that, at least a thousand thoughts run chaotically through your head within the space of milliseconds. You’re dizzy from the swirl of emotion.  Still, in these kinds of parenting moments, my main thought is stay calm.

I remind myself: Do not say anything you cannot take back!   You cannot let on that you’re freaking out … no!  It is not like the whole world is sinking.

How she even knows what she accepts as true is decidedly up for consideration.  She is just a child. Stay calm.

She came home saying she didn’t want to go to church anymore.  What was the point? Then, as well as now in this moment, I mostly listened.  I said something vaguely like: “We just want you to continue going, so that you know what you’re choosing.”

I’m kicking myself.  The last time we had this conversation I totally choked.  Later, as I was telling Tom it was all so clear to him what he would have said.  And with hindsight it was clearer to me as well.  I should have been ready for this one, but instead of that I’m hyperventilating inside about MY BABY is rejecting my faith!  (Perhaps only mothers know what I’m talking about here.)  Yes, I’ve talked about this before, but I just can’t believe that at fourteen she’s already rejecting the Church, and by that I mean big C church.  “I already know everything I need to know” she had said.  And I think that was somewhere in the vicinity of when I stormed out of the room earlier.

“I’m sorry that I don’t believe in Jesus” she repeats.  “Not right now.” And I looked her square in the eyes. And shrugged.  Obviously I’m no Billy Graham.  There will be no coercing from me.  No broad explanations or great appeals for faith.  I know that I understood less than nothing about spiritual things when I was her age, not really.  I really couldn’t grasp the concept of substitutionary atonement at all. If someone had tried to convince me of it, I would have written them off completely.

I believe that one comes to an understanding of the truth of scriptures slowly, and a huge part of that is seeing others whose lives are utterly transformed by Jesus Christ.  This is one reason I had so much trouble with my personal faith for more than two decades—I didn’t see people around me transformed.  (Blame the Methodists and Presbyterians?)

So, I looked her straight in the eye. And shrugged, as I turned back to folding.

Later, I decided that I wanted her to come with me as I delivered soup to some sick friends.   This is it!  (I’m thinking I’m pretty brilliant.)  She will see the feet of faith—the good deed, out of my love of my friends that makes me want to do kind things for others.  This is it!

So with her  mumbling loudly and her iPod blaring, with great drama and complaining, she got into my car as I put the Tupperware of soup on the floor between her feet.

After several questionings about why she had to come, we arrive.  I reached toward her. She reached to hand me the soup, grabbing the handles of a grocery bag – and bam!  Soup splattered everywhere.  “Fuck! ” (Yes, that’s an exact quote)I yell: ” How could this have happened?!!”  I fumed loudly glancing up at the house.  Stomping around the end of the car, I see that there is soup top to bottom in my beautiful (if dirty) Honda—with a large portion of the soup on the floor, irretrievable.  It was a colossal mess!

Again, we find me furious.

Ironically what I had intended to be an example of my benevolence turned into me a fuming and cussing, even accusing her, in my mortification!

Then a light bulb went off. 

This isn’t about the “good deed” or about the soup spilling all over my car and daughter.  And though I was tempted to blame her for the spill, it wasn’t even her fault.

This is about how  I choose to handle it, right now.  This is about me being transformed by Jesus.

Self-conscious about the half empty Tupperware, dripping with soup, I sheepishly rang the doorbell and delivered my soup.  Then I went to the car and calmly drove home.  At home, after collecting my thoughts, I told her “You don’t need to feel badly about this because it wasn’t your fault!”  If anything, I should have warned her that it might be messy or risky to pick up.

So we cleaned up the car together, which was a lot like cleaning up vomit we both agreed, only it smelled really yummy.  It was good soup.  And we had another little disagreement.  This time about whether “Drinking until you vomit” was the same as just social drinking.  (Do I know a thing or two about that?) Still, she walked away from me into the house, sheeshing me about acting like an expert and saying that I was “wrong that I didn’t trust her ideas.”  And I, once again, I was left alone fuming and wondering.

Now if she can just make the connection.  If only I can too, more often be transformed.

Yes, faith transforms me, sometimes.

MH

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Cor 3:18

On Parenting Deeply and Well

Parenting is undoubtedly the most difficult job I’ve ever done. Can I admit it here — it’s not instinctive for me? It’s not intuitive. Though Tom will argue voraciously with me on this, and has, the fact remains that I do not feel like a good mother. Many times I wonder what I was thinking becoming a parent. But that’s me being negative and fearful, not living in abundance.

How does one become a good parent?

We look back at how we were raised. We observe others, although this can quickly turn into bad comparison for me. We work on our own s***. We pray a lot! (I know my father prayed for me every day. I felt that loss when he died.) And we hope that the days will s t r e t c h, time will slow down, much like a sci-fi movie. I mean who doesn’t need more time to improve upon themselves? Now, when life is moving quickly and my children are dashing into their teen years I want to press the slow motion effect. If only.

If the Bible were a parenting manual (which it is not) I think perhaps it would say work on your character and the fruits of your spirit and the LORD will add to these things, but there are no guarantees. The more you try to control the outcome the less likely you’ll get it .

So what’s a person to do?

Today I was thinking and wondering this.  How do we teach our children that they are unconditionally loved – that no matter what they ever do our love is irreversible. This superpower, called “unconditional love,” was modeled for us by Jesus Christ. I lay down my life, regularly.  Or,  is it more like giving up my rights?  My power. My control. Oh, we’re back to that again. Yeah, I was mightily controlled growing up so that’s one of my issues.

And I vacillate with my kids. Oh, how I hated feeling controlled as a child, and yet without boundaries children (and adults) flounder. So I regularly pray for a good measure of strength to apply appropriate boundaries with consequences without being perceived as or wanting to be controlling.

There’s a strange characteristic in kids — they believe in the live and let live, totally. Yes, even mom and dad.

If you loved me you’d just let me … stay up and talk to my friends on the computer. Leave my stuff all over the house. Lose my cell phone with no consequences. Not work that hard in school, I mean lighten up, Mom. It’s only grades. Not live up to my potential, I mean if it were important to me I’d do it.

Yup, true. But I definitely regret that I wasn’t pushed more when I was a child. I was left to flounder. So, I have to admit, I’m a bit befuddled.

What’s the best book on parenting you’ve read?

What’s the best advice you’ve been given about parenting?

What did your parents do that was really right?  

Do you have any advice for a young mom like myself?

If you Read Nothing Else from me. Read this. ((On healing))

English: The healing of the paralytic : wall p...
Image via Wikipedia

So much to read, so little time. I know that.  If you read nothing else from me in a long while, I hope you’ll read this post.  It will not be long. (500+ words, a record.)

I have been writing (and living) out of a place of brokenness for so long that my story has become cliché and not honest – not dishonest exactly, but lacking the truth of my healing ….  A fractured painful childhood, a tenuous if bullheaded short-lived career, accidental stay-at-home motherhood, and loss, depression and loneliness, even alcoholism.  (And the biggest monster under my bed: being a feminist woman in the evangelical church.)

And now, this season that I cannot label because I am still living it.

Perhaps a place of abundance and healing, if only I would open my eyes and see. 

When you are in pain, you tie experiences together to find truth and your story all too easily becomes stuck.  I know this.  Today.  Living the life of Jesus is one of constant transformation.  Renewal.  Healing.

It is time to live into that healing. 

Be the truth that I have experienced.  Stop being “the abused child.” Stop being the frantic workaholic archetype striving for meaning in my work and looking for personal value in everything others do and say about me.

Stop living so empty.

Allow the One who fills, to fill me up overflowing.

Will I continue to talk about injustice?  You’re damn straight!  But I want to do it differently, do it with hope, and grace and peace.

With every part of me, I have wanted to be useful and in my cavernous need to be important I have invalidated myself.  My story.   For that I seek forgiveness and will endeavor to live out of Jesus’ fullness!

Mine is a story of healing and of transformation.  Not because of anything I have done but out of the grace of God and by receiving love from my husband , my children, and from my community of believers.

But by holding on…

to my anger about my upbringing,

to my disappointment with being born woman into a man’s world,

and to my fear that if “allowed to fly” I will flounder, fall, and I will fail.  Well,

I have allowed fear to rule and this is the day that it stops.

I want to live like I believe that the One who began a good work in me is faithful to complete it!

I am going to step toward trust.

Trust the words that I wrote today in the poem Nothing and Everything.

The Holy One accepts you for everything you are today and sees who you are becoming. For this Creator God made you, even chose you and is the architect of your life. The Holy One heals, because we sure need a healing.  Especially when confronted by the hideous ogre of our envy and pride. The Holy One guides and has a plan.“Even for me?” I cry, in the shadowy, nocturnal hours of fear, anger, twisted truths, ignorance, self-delusion and distrust?“YES, even you” whispers The Holy One.

I am going to step toward a life of abundance.  Even for me, my soul quakes?  Yes, even you.

MELODY

P.S.  I am so grateful for my husband.  And for the community of believers that I am a part of – it is a community of grace and abundance.   And I am grateful for my online community which is becoming a rich source of love and support.

Simplify Stupid. If only it were that Simple.

I’ve done a lot of writing of late and that has led to a lot of chores piling up.  When chores collect one begins to notice how much stuff we have around the edges of life.  Why is that?  A few things occur to me:

  • I look around my home and of course I have miles and miles of books — if they were stacked end to end.  There are more books that I will ever read, but they are on issues that I care about.  I have several books ideas of my own in the works and many of those books relate to research topics.  Still, why do I need to own so many?
  • Looking in my closet this weekend, my son asked me “Mom, does the Goodwill pay you to take their clothes?”  Ha ha, very funny. Though I don’t think he was trying to be funny.  It was ironic and too close to home.  His point was that I own a lot of clothes!  You can read about my year of no new clothes here and here.  I do have an issue with buying tons of clothing.
  • We have some friends who are downsizing from a house to an Airstream with two kids in tow and it sounds like a dream project.  I haven’t had a chance to hear their story in person but I am fascinated by the idea.

Christmas is coming.  How do we face the challenge of consumerism vs. living out our giving with integrity?  And why do we collect so much stuff when in total honesty much of it remains untouched? Is this a matter of simply needing to be clearing out more often to reappropriate things to the next family that could use them whether it is toys, clothing, gaming systems, movies or books?  Or should this be a conversation about buying less.  And about the value of simplicity?

A singer and artist I appreciate for the poetry of her words, Carrie Newcomer, said this on Facebook today:

I have a sense that simplifying is not about denial and lack, but rather about getting rid of what does not ultimately give life and deeper meaning to our lives. If we got rid of what clutters and fills our lives to the very edges – what would happen in those open spaces? What do you think?

How do you teach yourself the discipline of reappropriating things?  Why is this important? What do you do to simplify, remove clutter and create space in your life?  What would you do differently if you had the mental and physical space?  What resources have you found that help you?

Thankful.

Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday, because of times in the past that were hard, but perhaps this year it can be redeemed.  Since no one is making me perhaps I will talk about gratitude.

“The continuum of words related to gratitude go from greed and jealousy; through taking things for granted and feeling entitled; to appreciation, acceptance, and satisfaction. The practice of gratitude would be an appropriate prescription whichever one of the above describes your attitudes.  The rules of the grammar of gratitude are not as simple as they seem at first glance, however. For example, often instead of rejoicing in what we have, we greedily want something more, better, or different. We can’t be grateful because we are making comparisons and coveting other possibilities.  When this happens on a personal level, when it’s our ego that is dissatisfied, then we are ungrateful. But when we want something more, better, or different for the glory of God or for the benefit of the community, this greed may be a manifestation of our devotion, our love, or our yearning for justice. And then we are grateful for these commitments.”  — Spirituality & Practice.

I read this yesterday:

If God hasn’t changed your circumstances then perhaps he wants to change you.

This has been a long time coming for me. I have asked God to change my circumstances for years.  And seemingly he is either silent or I am not listening well.

I thought I wanted a job that pays money.  I still do want that and a job where I am making a difference in the world, a contribution to my community or to helping others through exposing the injustice with pictures and words.  If I am honest, I also still want position and power for my glory and ego, so perhaps this is why God doesn’t give me back those opportunities just yet.

Instead I am learning to lean in to being a mother, for it is an honorable, risky and challenging job (though the pay is low and the retirement plan stinks!)  In all seriousness, God has given me the four children I have for a reason, they are an extravagant gift. And you never know whose mother you are, who your children will become.

I am learning that I am valuable even though I don’t make money. And learning that my contribution to world just may be through something else — through insight, or creativity, or dare I say a prophetic word (small p definitely) from time to time?  Okay perhaps not.  I don’t know much, but I am learning.  There is so much that I don’t know.  I too quickly go from insecure to proud and satisfied; from cock sure to fearful and hesitant; from mute to long-winded and rambling; from loving my own thoughts to wondering at my idiocy.  But I am learning to be comfortable with my voice and in my skin.

And I am unlearning many things.  Sorting and sifting through what has been taught to me. I am encountering and learning from beautiful people along the way.

Though my house collects dust bunnies — even as my house collects them — I see

all that is growing

in and around me. 

The dust bunnies can wait.

I am being transformed and I am grateful.

October 26th, 2011

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 NRSV

Thoughts on the Impotence of Parenting

I’m sitting in the lobby at surgery having an internal hissy fit because I cannot get my wireless to work. Ironically I don’t even need to get online.  I have come prepared with two bags filled with at least four books, a journal and my camera – the bags are heavy with options!  My thoughts alone could keep me busy or at least entertained for hours but instead I’m angry that I cannot get online.  A sad commentary of the state of my mental life.

Note to self: never wait in a healthcare office without headphones.  I forgot how badly this bothered me when my dad was ill and we had endless waits in the hospital as he was treated for his brain cancer.

Hell, I hate the clatter associated with the comings and goings in a doctor’s office.  A moment of total honesty — Humanity’s cacophony gets under my skin.  With the nurse’s numerous interruptions as they are fetching folks in and out, the cable television blaring unceasingly, the elevator’s chimes, and boring conversations on cells phones as people make arrangements for their day.  No, I don’t want to talk to the elderly woman with a novel protruding from her red pleather bag.  So she chats with the stay-at-home mom who has already introduced herself and has already mentioned her four sons and that she is waiting for Kevin, her husband.  I am also annoyed by the two loud women, (it is much too early for loud or conversation) obviously friends, whose smoker’s voices are husky and grating, their tracksuits and year-round tans are simply strange and irritate me.  I have no patience. Stale coffee smells.  Everyone is nervous, chatting with the companion who drove them. Their voices annoy me, made even more so because I cannot resist listening to them and that pisses me off.  The only one that sounds halfway interesting is the gentleman on the phone speaking in Spanish who cannot reach whomever he needs.  He shakes his head in frustration.

This place is depressing.

And all the while my baby girl is in there, knocked out cold, having an invasive procedure on her face.  Sinus and Adenoid surgery and I am thinking about the fact that I never made that call to my friend Mark about natural remedies.  Perhaps if we had done that, changed the phlegm level in her head, she wouldn’t be here today.  I suppose one can always second guess.   I know I will.

It is likely that I am so irritated because I am scared.

This day has been three years coming and here I sit at “the Holy Grail” because we are hoping against all hope that this resolves the consistent sinus infections that have plagued our thirteen year old daughter for years.  I cannot imagine what it is like to live in constant pain.  It makes me work extra hard to be patient with her, to understand that her frequent moods may not simply adolescence.

And I wonder, what is it that makes me withdraw into myself here in the waiting room pissed off that I cannot connect to the internet?

Rosetti01
Image via Wikipedia

Perhaps I am simply too introspective.

I think — I amagine — that I am in control of my children’s worlds.  And this week I have one under the “needle” and the youngest has traveled to Florida for a trip to Disney with Grandparents.  The truth is I have no control over these circumstances.

Finding a small consolation in the knowledge of my impotence, I begin to read an essay in Not Alone by a young (I’m assuming) woman named Laura Droege.

It is a distressing story and once again I feel anger that a person can suffer for so many years and the very people who should have helped – parents, teachers, doctors, pastors, therapists and friends – all left her alone in her mental illness.  Why?  What is the meaning of this and how is it that we are so unable to understand when someone struggles with an illness such as this.  Something needs to be done to educate the public, I am especially interested in Christ-followers knowing how to help those they love when they come up against someone with the troubles that Laura faced.  Something must be done for people who live for decades with suicidal thoughts, obsessive behaviors, wish for self-harm, depression, and the never-ending feeling that God has abandoned you.

Something must be done.

I wrote my story to help others, but as I was doing that I realized that I could barely say anything in 2000 words.

The challenge to the Church is clear, it is there in the stories of the forty people in Not Alone who shared their experience with depression in that small tomb. The question is how will the church respond?

Truly Depressed People Scare Me

My neighbor, who is eighty-four, won’t answer me directly when I ask how she’s doing.  “Tomorrow will be better” is her reply.  It always amazes me that she never complains.  Not even when asked! And in my estimation she’s got some things she could.   She had surgery on her back last year for pain.  It didn’t work.  Now she’s home bound (not allowed to drive any more) and a few days ago, when we talked on the sidewalk, she told me she is suffering from “what you had Melody.”

Depression.  It is huge that she would admit it to me.  At least for me, the telling to others was so difficult! The feelings of shame and failure and personal weakness are overwhelming.

For two days since that conversation, that knowledge has ridden on my back everywhere with me.  It is heavy on my mind and heart when picking up my kids, shopping at the Goodwill for Halloween, chauffeuring children to church and back, walking the dog past her house morning and night, washing the dinner dishes at breakfast. I can’t stop thinking of it. Jeanne told me she’s depressed and I should know what to do.  But I don’t.

Should I bring her flowers? She loves plants.  A happy pumpkin.  A copy of Not Alone and tell her about my essay in there?  What should I do?  Experience does not bring knowledge of what to do.  Everyone is different.  And I’m so upset by the realization that truly depressed people are scary.  

That shouldn’t be — not for me.  I know what she’s feeling (as much as one can.)  I can picture her over there, in her darkened living room, sitting alone, unable to stand at the kitchen sink any longer because of back pain, or cook, or do any chores.  “The only thing that doesn’t hurt is sitting.” she told me last summer when I asked.

I know I need do something. Give her a call.  And I am afraid.

I think sometimes when we know someone is depressed we get overwhelmed by how to respond.  And so we don’t do anything.

I am here to tell you anything is better than nothing.  All a person really needs is contact with another human being.  How easy it is to forget how very alone one feels.

I will search for my lost ones who strayed away and I will bring them safely home again.  I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak…”  (Ezekiel 34.16 NLT)

I am thoroughly glad to not have had a depressive episode for months and months.  So I can freely say that I am in a good place and I feel so grateful!  I recently had an essay published about my experience with depression called Hope Heals.  It’s published in the book Note Alone: Stories of Living with Depression.   

Whatever the outcome I will give her a call.  I don’t have to fix the situation in fact, of course, I can’t.  I just need to show her that she is not alone.  That someone cares.

I Am More (a poem response to Blackhawk’s Sermon “Who Is Your God?”)

I Am More

By Melody Harrison Hanson

The future disturbs,
chases at my sanity and sensibilities.
I am scared of each intake of breath, every thought
and this moment. I am stuck.

The only thing that makes sense is Jesus.
I lean in to Him.  I cry, ready for anything.
If only I could cry actual tears. 
That too soon reminds me I am only partly healed.
I feel barely human.
What kind of person cannot cry?
The weight on my chest is unimaginably heavy. 
Hope is cloying and oppressive.

I am scared of the future, looming dark and cold.
I am afraid of these days I am living now.
I want to believe that eventually this life of mine will have a purpose beyond this day.

I am more than the money I don’t earn.
I am more than the things I do.
I am more than what I give.
I am more than what I take.
I am more than the words I write, slipping them into the cosmos with trepidation.
I am more than merely a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a friend.

Why doesn’t being beloved feel better than this?
In the end I am stuck with myself, I am barely human.

I want it all to mean so much more.  I want
the children I meet to change me.
I want the people I love to make me feel alive.
I want each action I take to mean something.
And yet it is all utterly meaningless unless
Yahweh is everything.

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This poem is about the greatest of idols self-identity — allowing our meaning and purpose to come from anything but Yahweh.  The sermon at Blackhawk this week kicked off a series titled American Idols.  The premise is that anything in your life, even a good thing, that becomes more important than God is an idol.  In an age of psychology and self-healing, through medicines and talk therapy, self-worth can all too quickly become an idol.

For me, the journey of finding my way back to faith and belief was so huge in my development of a healthy identity.  Still, many days, as I search, as I long for, need, wander, hope and fear — the process becomes an idol.  The process becomes this thing that distracts me from who God is, what it means to be his beloved child, and the few things that he calls me to each day.

Here is what I wrote last week in response to the sermon Stop.  It is a part of a series I am writing called: Be Real.  

One of the ways I’m going to do that– be real — is by writing a response to the sermons I hear at my church, Blackhawk. These responses are not from the church, just my reflections.  I am always challenged by teachers at Blackhawk, sometimes profoundly, but I don’t — to be honest — always take the time needed to apply them to my life. But, if life is too busy to apply what you’re learning about your faith and if you don’t change and grow, what’s the point? So here goes.  Many people are busier than I, including my husband, and I just hope that this helps reinforce in some small way what God was already saying to you.