Something shifted in the cosmos today as I became a giver, her One.
The one who thinks like a pastor, fondly listening inside to her heart which is lonely.
The one who touches like a nurse, open to the clues, simple hints about pain.
The one who creates food to share, serving the body and soul.
Daughter became caregiver to Mother.
And altered who I am.
Only, she isn’t frail, broken down or helpless — not just yet but it’s coming. Even so she asks and I answer, and I tag along. In case something is missed, she says.
Even so she still bails me out and listens as my heart bursts open, pooling over the edges of my day. The “middle school” years, I am tender, raw with anguish.
Oh yes, she is still Mother, but today something in the cosmos shifted, and I became a Giver.
This is such a busy time for folks with kids. We are living the last month or so of school and for whatever reason my kids seem to teeter on the brink of things this year academically, spiritually, emotionally — this has been a challenging and demanding year. With summer looming, there will be any opportunities to stick our feet in the river and less time to write.
I am thinking about that tension.
I’m starting to work more seriously on writing projects. As I listened hard at the Festival of Faith & Writing and looked at my writing life and habits, I realize that I need to cut back on some things before I can ever dream of space to write every day. (I know I have a lot to tell you about that experience, the festival. We’ve been back a week and there’s been no time!)
Projects that I’m working on:
I am working on a book review of the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer for The Englewood Review of Booksand hope to do more of those, both for Englewood and other publications.
I continue to write for Provoketive magazine: This included a review of the book Resignation of Eve by Jim Henderson, a piece titled The Accidental Stay-At-Home Mom and others, but by far the most popular essay was The Voice of the Feminine. That content is not repeated here on my blog so you will have to pop over to there to read it. I hope you will.
I am working on a short series of articles on “The F word and the Church.” (Yeah, that F word: feminist.)
I am really excited to hear that I will have some poem in a book about fear titled Not Afraid to be published around August, 2012 by Civitas Press. (This is the same press that published my essay on Depression in their book Not Alonewhich is available now. If you know someone who suffers from depression this book may help. I have been told by many people that it has been a good, honest resource. I also have many pieces on my blog about my personal trials with the black dog of depression. They are collected here. )
What I want to change:
One thing that I find to be soul crushing and destructive for me is Facebook. Being at-home with such great flexibility to my schedule I see that I allow many things to interfere with the “work” of writing and with spiritual growth. Facebook is such a time waster for me. I’m inherently curious, nosy kind of person and the fact that I can vicariously follow along other’s lives is bad for me. That’s where the soul crushing part comes in. It’s like high school insecurity all over again. So I’ve been tempted to quit completely.
Image by JJ Pacres on Flickr
But at the Festival of Faith & Writing I heard over and over that writers must have online presence and following. We have to nurture that and be able to “prove” our popularity to a publisher. But the flip side of that is that it is just not good for me!
If I don’t have time
to think,
to be,
to write and
to allow the Holy One to mold and move me (not really in that order.)
So I’m backing off of social media for a season — except here. I’m really going to try to do this moderately. When I got hooked on Farmville (of all things — proves I can get addicted to anything!) I had to quit cold turkey and I did. I don’t want to do that with Facebook because I don’t like being an all or nothing person. But I’m going to try to limit my time there. And set some writing goals for the next few months. I look forward to sharing those with you.
Another thing that I learned at the festival was that I need to hone the purpose of my blog. Mine has multiple messages and intents. I have been known to write about:
family (dysfunctional and otherwise.)
God and devotion, faith and (dis)belief
women in the church, feminism as a Christian’s option
various justice issues
my alcoholism and addictions
my church – Blackhawk Evangelical Church
poetry on all these topics
prose on all these topics
Is there anything in particular that you come here to read? Where do you see my passions and strengths converging in helpful ways? Would you add more of anything?
I have always known that words have power
to disappoint and even threaten.
They so often offend and injure, colliding with others
perceptions
of me,
of themselves,
of life together in this messy place.
And words heal,
offered as a rich confession that brings one to the edge of truth
and back again to our plain old lives.
Sometimes it’s a sweet and holy thing,
words. The offering.
If I didn’t choose to put pen to paper, finger to keyboard?
What if, what then? If I didn’t fight to get
this very moment down through distractions, through issues and problems of my day.
What if I stopped fighting for these words?
Driving along, I feel that anxious gnawing in my stomach, again.
I am full of self-loathing, doubt and fear. I hate this weakness, but I am questioning every word put down,
wondering how and why.
Why try so hard?
But then I know.
I would write even if no one tells me I’m good.
Then it’s said to me: “you’re good” and I don’t believe. Or I wonder,
is this enough?
These thoughts, do they change
anything
anyone
for
the
better?
This not merely about purpose.
It’s not simply about being good or even great at this craft.
I don’t know why I write, except that I was made for this.
Each thought, scratched out on a piece of tattered envelope is an offering.
Each confession a piece of me. My flesh, my hopes, my mind
are all there on the page. I write.
This is what I was made to do.
And I will have to leave the rest up you.
———————————————
Something else I wrote on the negative power of our words, Hatred’s Sweet Kiss.
Family in town and from out of town
sometimes means heavy remembering,
and just a little trying to forget though you are
no longer disappearing.
Into the bottle.
Family in town means many goings-on,
even when you’re sick and tired. It means
running out of money. It means trying hard to make everyone
happy. Trying hard to just be.
Happy.
Family in town
means someone drinking too much, and
everyone else acting like it’s not true.
Your triggers activated, but sticking to the
almost- four- years- sober- kind -of- truth.
Family in town means laughing, lots of gut busting laughter,
Eating too many desserts, and wondering if you’re
forgetting something important.
Three simple words,
a confrontation that won’t come.
The fear-scab
comes off the child-grown-up-into-woman wound. The mutilation, scarred over long enough
that you had actually forgotten.
Again.
Impossible.
You needed to forget.
Until
mother-sister-blood
family rips it off again.
Their indifference,
your insignificance,
that’s what you need to forget
their command
over you.
They are the only ones
Wielding the control, able to make
you choke on the words. You hurt me.
They don’t read.
They don’t come.
They don’t care.
The middle years
of middle age come without fair warning.
Raising the young
who think they know everything.
And those of us solidly wedged into midlife know
with confidence, that we know next to nothing.
The middle years are half way to a certain death,
while breathing in a life we did not pick. For
life happens even as you make plans, dream dreams, and pray.
The middle years
when the body betrays,
the heart is crushed
by what actually happened,
not our plans.
The mind with every strong conviction
is suddenly even more
uncertain.
Oh, for the days of knowing everything!
But then going back there to certainty
would mean doing this
all over again.
Logic & Imagination 