Tag: BE REAL

{When You are Clutching at Hope}

Is it enough to strive?

to want,

to work,

to try
your hardest. Is it enough? There are no guarantees.
Friendships flounder, parents betray, marriages flop or fizzle, children

flail. life
hurts immeasurably

sometimes, is it enough
to try harder? To do your best, when your best
just doesn’t make it all — work — out?
God is faithful, always. is the promise but really, I want to say
always?
Life hurts in my pores, each breath catches in my lungs.

How it possible — God is faithful.
So much sorrow, grief, loss.
So much pain, death, anguish.
How is it possible,
that God is faithful, a comfort;
is holding us tight, sheltering?

Is it okay, I don’t feel it?
Is it okay, I’m not certain?
Is it okay
that every pore hurts?
How it is possible,
God, how?

That’s the trust, that’s the whole thing.

Letting go, free falling into his wings.

What Does the Word “Evangelical” Mean to You?

Wondering what the word “evangelical” means to you? Not completely sure, but I am thinking of quitting — being an evangelical, that is.

Yes, my church is evangelical but that’s neither here nor there to me. I am not my church nor do I agree with every single thing they teach (that would be weird) and I’m not sure I am one any more — an evangelical.

No drama, totally longing for civility here, just wanting your thoughtful response to what “evangelical” means to you, in 21st century America, i.e. today — not originally.  Or perhaps there is an original meaning that is important and was lost.

I think “evangelical” has become both a “dirty word” for non-believers, yes regular non-church going people. And a misunderstood and misused word.

It feels soiled.

Either way, I think it isn’t what I am any more.  Though I am not sure yet what I am.

In this really thoughtful article, My Journey Toward the “New Evangelicalism” By , I found a little of my own heart’s cry:

“… a larger truth is at stake. Will we use the Gospel for political purposes, or make it hostage to any political person or cause? Some sixty times in the New Testament the death and resurrection of Christ are described as liberating, and the Christian life as one of freedom. The apostle Paul declared, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).

“A demand for political conformity is a form of legalism that must not characterize the body of Christ. Neither should any judgmental or unloving attitudes over differences of opinion. Disagreements, moreover, should not be regarded as off limits but as legitimate and even healthy. They offer the opportunity to discuss conflicting ideas with a spirit of prayer, openness to the Holy Spirit, and unconditional submission to God’s Word. In this way the church is a community that transcends, while never denying, its internal differences. Here is victory over the last great temptation (as the book of Revelation intimates): that of making politics more than itself.”

This is a Story that is only beginning for me.

{Dust to Dust}

This is the week I learned that our children do not belong to us.
We are not gods, to create a small being in our image.
They come to us

needy and helpless, and we are
Caretakers.  Lives, made up of
oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus, even
heart, mind, and soul;
each are but dust returning to dust.

Arrogantly we live
day after day, with these small persons
believing that each meal, healthy or otherwise,
each book carefully chosen and lovingly read,
each activity selected so diligently,
each pastime and hobby, talent nurtured,

each word spoken into their small world

will stop them, and

start them,

make them
do; our Possession

to be molded, shaped, crafted
carefully controlling every encounter while they are young.
As if it changes anything.
Eventually they will choose Life or Death.

Unthinking, we are judiciously creating a small being
In Our Image.

This is the week I lost.

I knew,
I gave,
I wept,
I died,
I let go.
This is the week everything changed forever;
Inside me something broke
open;
the illusion of control.

This is the week, I gave them back;
to be “mine” is to lose them forever.

Yes, this is the week I lost.
And yet, here they are. Still
living and breathing, asleep in their beds.

and I am (still) full of hope, leaning on it

confident of this:

They are not mine, they are
released from my sweaty grip.

This is the week everything changed forever,

as mother became
helpless, child became

person, and everything changed, forever.

{When Up is Down}

Up is down

And down is up.  God is real

To me.  And doesn’t exist

To others.  I pray
And God does not answer. Others pray

And seem to know.

Up is down

And down is up.

I have too much.
Others don’t have enough.  I am stuffed
Others hungry.

My heart aches and others seem to dance,
always dance.

They say I am a good mother
I believe otherwise.

They say he was a good man,

I say bad, very bad.
We have everything but we feel empty.

Good and bad
Up and down.

What is? 
What is not?

{a house comes tumbling down}

Strange how life works, I didn’t sleep – and because of it I am in a bleak, dark place.  I’ve had two nights in the last few weeks where I quite literally lay awake all night long – not awake enough to do anything productive, but not resting deeply either. The result is I’m sick at heart and physically shaky; short-tempered, and irritated by everyone.

Old and ugly insecurities are having their way, messing with me.  This makes me sad, so very sad.

I ran this morning out of pure conviction, blaming and shaming myself the entire way.  You should be running longer, you should be faster by now, how silly to be your little 2.5 miles, why do you bother? What’s 27 pounds, when people will always be younger and fitter than you!? To them, you are fat.

I can tally my mistakes so quickly when I am tired.  I am full of self-doubt, as a writer certainly and especially.  I wish for a career again.  Or even simply an office to go to or perhaps a paycheck to make me feel I’m making a contribution to something tangible on the planet earth   I wonder why I cannot ever feel resolute and worthwhile in my role as a mother, caretaker, home maker?

My chest is heavy with fear and doubt about my path.

My chest is also heavy too for my children.  I want so much for them, but I am learning that they must be “allowed” to question, make their choices, voice their doubts, express their ideas, have problems that I do not solve for them.  I cannot always defend them to other or be defensive about their choices.  I have to let my children become.  I have to let them fail, perhaps.  Bailing children out isn’t the answer. Pushing is okay, at times.  Encourage and buoy up, even reward and bribe, a carrot, for a future which is full of possibilities they cannot yet imagine.

I am learning about boundaries, mostly that I am terrible with them. I do for others until I resent the doing ending up with no time to write or think or pray or sit with the Holy One.

I resent those that have been to seminary and are clear in their understanding of theology and can write out of those assurances.   I resent those who knew early on who and what they were.  I resent that I lived in a gray, lost fog for much of my life, and then that I became a drunk, and then … just managed to survive.  Yes, I am a survivor but what else am I good for?

Yes, most days I just persist on, hoping that the future is better than the past. Today I’m having a hard time believing in anything.

I feel empty and invisible in a world where stature, and statuses, and lists and mentions matter. And then I feel utterly ridiculous for looking, for caring about those things at all, for being the sort of person that needs assurance of others, the esteem of men in authority, the likes and tweets of writers whom I admire.  Perhaps if I get another degree I will finally feel okay.

I sit in church and I am filled with doubt; traversing into the land of agnosticism, as my husband likes to say – he takes day trips, I am living there today.  I feel angry, skeptical, pessimistic, fearful and tired.

No, I cannot prove there is a God to satisfy my children.

No, I do not know why some people are so happy, successful and life seems to be so easy, for some.

No, we do not live in the perfect house like so and so, nor am I the perfect homemaker, like so and so’s mom. Nor am I handy, to create the perfect anything.

I need sleep and some days that’s all that it takes to push me over the edge into an ugly place of fear and skepticism.

I read this morning in the book of Psalms, David asked for a sign of God’s favor to help against his enemies. 

Who are my enemies?  Today they are self-doubt and lack of surety about the purpose of my life. My faith is weak but does this mean God has failed me?    My children doubt, push on my beliefs, even fail to thrive, does this mean we are failing them? I look at newborn babies and I am filled with dread.  For we all grow up and live lives full of disappointment.

 It is amazing how sleep holds one together or lack of it brings a house tumbling down.

{on feeling the crazies and hoping, still}

some days just are.

crazy that is,

when you wonder how to catch your breath.  and realize
in a shocking moment that you may not be taking in h20.  and yet miraculously you’re still

alive.

panic, dread and fear threaten to consume. some internal, perfectionist voice screaming: this can’t be right?
how can parenting

be so hard?
early, before the dawn you rose up out of bed.  in the dark, sipping

hot coffee, you read about being called. and you prayed to be wise. knowing.

a steward of the precious lives, entrusted.

my head says, poor me.  life is so difficult.  wisdom scarce. challenges too many,

i want to flee.
bail. feeling hopeless, helpless but God promises
to be a SHIELD.

you read: “He lifts my head.”

i am shocked, perplexed by these words, from Henri JM Nouwen who said he was “impressed by the enormous abyss between my insights and my life.”

some days

are about longing for wisdom, dreaming and hopeful, still

in the midst of the crazy years.

{Enough, Continued …}

Part One of processing the book Enough is here.

I read the book “Enough” by Will Davis Jr and wrote my review.  I kinda thought that would be the end of it.  Lesson learned – my More Than Enough, my Plenty, my Abundance can be or IS someone else’s Enough. Such a neat  idea in theory, but what that means in a daily way didn’t fully sink in – not at all.

That book is messing with me!

I read in “Enough” that we are to be giving our ten percent to the church, but in reality for us we’re giving about five percent to our church and about one percent to other organizations.

I cannot stop thinking about that principle that is all over scripture.  What will it mean this month to give ten percent off the top, at the beginning before we pay our bills, and sort out how to live afterwards? These are things that we don’t really want to think about or do.

I woke up this morning thinking about this again, that we’re instructed in scripture to give ten percent and we’re to trust God to provide for our daily manna.

That means honestly taking a look at how we spend our money, where does it all go in a month? Many times for us it is frittered away on more video games, and frozen yoghurt, and iced coffees for the kids; on the conveniences of modern life, like dry cleaning and lawn care and mobile phones and eating out a few times.  For me, on buying books and not requesting them from the library.

What does it mean to take a cold hard look at our monthly spending and at the beginning give to God off of the top and then sort out the rest?

The first thing I remember from the book is that Davis suggested we look about our home for all the things we haven’t used or worn in the last year.  That job, to clear our home of these things so that they might possible become someone else’s Enough, is the task for this week. (Even though, I REALLY DON’T WANT TO DO IT! I’m so lazy.)  We’re going to photograph all the things we don’t need and use, things that are just taking up space in our basement and garage, and give them away.  The task just as it stands is a daunting one and today with the sun shining and a long  empty day looming ahead, what I really want to do is hang out by the lake or something, anything but go through our stuff.  But I think this act of obedience is the thing that needs to be accomplished, today.

Davis spoke of slowing down, listening and being open to God speaking. 

Yesterday, I found out someone I know is sending their kid to a Shakespeare away camp.  (It feels like everyone sends their kids to summer camp away, except us.) And another person is sending their kids to Grandma and Grandpa for the duration of the summer.  When I heard that I felt envy and anger that we haven’t take our kids on a vacation in several years; although it is out of an act of obedience, where we decided we would never again live on credit.  That was a baby step of financially growing up, that we took a few years ago.  This means we don’t travel if we don’t have the cash the bank.  Yes, I wish to be able to take the kids to visit Grandma and Grandpa, that but for now this is not possible.  We have a child in college and we have many other obligations.

As I woke this morning I was angry and to be honest kind of thought I was mad at God.  Then I realized that we’re just being smart.  We save for retirement, we live within our means, we give (like I said not ten percent yet) and we try to respond to needs as they come before us.  Right now there is no margin for vacations.

It’s not God that is to blame for an unsustainable American Dream.

And if I feel angry that we don’t have Enough to go on a vacation with our kids this summer, I should focus that emotion toward clearing out of the house our More Than Enough so that others can be blessed.

MELODY

A part of the Patheos Book Club on the book “ENOUGH: Finding More By Living with Less” by Will Davis Jr.

{The Black Dog is Chasing Me}

I struggle with periodic depression.  I’ve written a lot about it here on the blog.  See above link for more. 

This, this is today.

'Run!' photo (c) 2012, Steve Garner - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

I feel myself withdrawing.  I am slowly closing in on myself, retreating …
Avoiding the very thing that heals,
I do the thing that I most hate:  run.

I cannot stop.
For days I have run and run and
that Black Dog laps at my heals.  Chasing
me, mocking. But on and on I run

believing I can run fast enough, far enough.
Away.
I have never outrun the Dog.

I am filled with sadness, a despair
that’s sweetly familiar while so sour.
I hate
that old dog. I hate myself. I hate my
cycles.

This too I hate
about myself for I am a piss poor friend.
There it is
the Demon of Lies, legions there flying about the room — named.

Long ago, before I was even born
this legacy grew into an inheritance, and I cannot break the cycle.
It, this would take a miracle.
Where do I find a miracle because I’m all out of them.

Break the cycle.
Break the pain.
Kill the demon that
whispers,
chants,
sings,
sighs,
plays with me,
plays an opus of loathing.
Someone please help before it crushes me.

For I am just a little girl not good enough for a friend.

{When You’re Not Qualified to be Alive}

So I’m trying something new.  Picking a subject at random that I seem to obsess about or fixate on, something that grips my imagination in compulsive and ugly ways, (I started with one of my secret obsessions.) I’ll write honestly without  a lot self-editing or controlling “the message” to see what comes out.  No answers. No over spiritualizing.  Just the real, gritty, sometimes awkward me. I’m trying to push myself in my style to loosen up a little. Have you noticed that I take myself a bit too seriously? This is my second excursion into a different kind of real. 

Parenting surely is the most difficult job I’ve ever had.  Many times in a day I think “I am not qualified.” But it’s too late, for those regrets.

No one is qualified to be a parent, not really. 

Yesterday, I was reflecting on our exceptionally verbal, strong as steel, at times tyrannical daughter  who is so like my father!  I just wanted to fall down on my knees, humbled by my own lack.  Again, as if a prayer, whispering this time as a lament: I am not qualified to be a mother.

I went through most of my life in some strange, surreal auto pilot. 

I went through forty years utterly afraid of life.  I sometimes think back, strange as it sounds and wonder aloud how I even survived the catastrophes of living in our home.  My father’s spirit and soul crushing rage destroyed me, my personality and I spent many years just grieving who I might be, might have been.  That sort of grief is debilitating.

Oh there were moments, especially outside of home, where I found  parts of myself.  I loved my youth pastor; he listened to me and allowed for my incessant questions about the Bible. He listened to my ideas and fears.  He never once yelled at me, or told me my sarcasm or sense of humor or quick thinking and verbal sparring was bad.  He somehow validated me and I loved him.

But for the most part I went through my tens and twenties and thirties heart-sick, depressed, and afraid.

So when my daughter rages at me (I told you she is like my dad) or the world, or she stands up to me, or questions … every little thing, a small part of me is cheering inside!!

She is alive.

She is breathing, kicking and screaming, going into the world believing that her thoughts, her questions, her jokes, her ideas matter and for that I am so pleased.

She is alive and I am slowly coming alive too.  I believe my father had to die for me to begin living.  A new friend, after hearing about the childhood that I had said to me yesterday “It’s a wonder that I have any faith at all.”

I am simply grateful I am alive.  Yes, this life of believing is really hard; harder for me than it seems to be for many people I know.  I’ve come to accept and understand this to be a part of what makes me, me.  And yes, this is something I embrace.

I may not be qualified, but I am grateful to be alive.

When It Hurts to be called out by God’s Spirit

This now has a part two.  It is found here.

I’ve been uneasy and perturbed.  I am a Slow Learner.  I know that an edgy, even grumpy unsettled spirit inside me usually means that there’s business to attend to and something to be learned.  I am  drawn down into a Place of Reckoning.  I am learning in the place of Love where God begins to change and shape me into Someone Other Than Me.

It usually requires time. And when finally my ego shrinks down to a normal size, I am ready to start.  This time I shakily verbalized it to Tom.

Bless him, my Tom has my rhythms down.  He knows when I need an ear, when I want (need or don’t need) advice, and the instances that I must simply talk (out loud.)  Introverts will know what I mean.  We introverts talk all the time, right?  It is just in our heads, which is sometimes unproductive, unhelpful or unclear.

Gideon was the most unlikely of people to lead the people of Israel and perhaps ironically, his name means “Destroyer,” “Mighty warrior,” or “Feller (of trees).”  His story read in chapters 6 to 8 of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible was not one of a giant faith, in my opinion. Really his faith was immature; he was often testing and always questioning God’s power, before he would act.  He had a “do this for me and I will do x for you” attitude.

That’s me.  I suppose what most convicted me by thinking about Gideon’s story is the obvious ways that I’ve flailed about, unsure and doubting myself every step of the way over the last few years. I have made some messes and done some stupid shit.  Recently (the last two years especially) I’ve been angry and unsatisfied, especially wanting “clarity about my career.”  I have asked for it, even demanding it. [As if God cares, really what I do.  Okay, he cares some but ultimately, this is only measured against who I am and how I treat others. How do I love?  Do I serve the needs of those who are powerless among us? ]

How very ungrateful I have been.

My heart lurches.  I know ingratitude when it sneers at me.

Fact is the Strong Independent Me believes deeply that women should have a job. (Everyone should have a “job” men and women, young people, old people …  I fundamentally believe in the idea that everyone should contribute to the community, everyone is obligated to this.)

It is especially important to me that women have careers and “represent.”   Do you know what I mean?  I live with a lot of guilt, even shame that I don’t have a career right now. Or even simply a job.  Just a job. Any job.

And this is how it goes in my head. Beyond the value to the community, a job earns “Respect.”  Respect would make me feel validated and valuable and valued.  A job where I go to a different place (than my home) and do “things.”  If I am most honest, things that will build me up and help others recognize my value.  Then bring home a paycheck for all the same reasons.

I’m a writer.

I know with certainty that I would write even if I never got paid or published because I have been a writer for as long as I can remember and it is who I am. The same goes for my photography — I live and breathe the pulse of life through a lens.  I put word by word, ideas together as an offering.

But as I toil in relative obscurity, Ego Me leaps out saying that this won’t do.  Who cares if you are an essayist or poet, who cares if you are writing here on this blog if no one knows and applauds? Bingo! That’s the crux.  Validate me world!  Say what you think of me please.

A friend got mad at something I said.  Mad because I said that art is useless.  I know that is not true.  And I don’t even believe it, but the voices in my head tell me otherwise.

That’s crazy, and besides, in God’s framing of things it shouldn’t matter.  I have to know my value is legit no matter what I do. 

And I have (to learn) to believe that creating art is not useless.

And so for now at least, I will write.

And what I felt most convicted about from the sermon this week was my infantile attitude and my lack of gratitude for this life that I have.  Shame on me.   My anxiety comes out of this place.  My fear comes directly from that spigot, gushing, flowing, spilling all over me in ugly incomprehensible ways.

Gideon tested God on more than one occasion.  He never complained, but he didn’t believe.

Do you flail about in an infantile way demanding that God meet all your needs as if you deserve to be happy, fulfilled and useful? 

Have you learned the slow path to contentment and spiritual maturity that involves a way of relaxing into Him, both by trusting and by stepping out into an unknown future looming ahead?

May it be so.

P.S.  As I mentioned, this has a part two.  It is found here.

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

Who Needs a Heart when a Heart can be Broken?

For one human being to love another;

that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,

the ultimate, the last test and proof,

the work for which all other work is but preparation.


— Rainer Maria Rilke

[I have avoided writing this; dreaded the moment when I force myself to write about the sermon on Sunday about Turning your Family or Friends into an Idol. A part of my Be Real series.]

I have spent the last twenty-three years trying to understand my family and a lifetime of living within relationships that I cannot understand.  It has been long and hard.  Even in my most optimistic moments, yes I do have them, I don’t have much good to say about growing up in my family of origin. I do not idolize family, if anything I have turned recovery from my family’s co-dependence into an idol by spending so much emotional energy on it.  These days, I just want to do and think about something else.  I’m tired of the subject.  It is a stove that guarantees to burn.

My family of origin was dysfunctional.  My family was hard to grow up in.  I got an acid stomach ache every time I walked through the doors of my parent’s home as a young adult, when I was living nearby and coming over for Sunday meals.  My family was (Oh!  You see, there goes my blood pressure rising as I write this.  My heart is beating more quickly.  Anxiety floods into my chest. Cold white panic sits in my belly.)  Just to talk about it still causes me physical pain.

I’ve told this story elsewhere on my blog, so I don’t want to belabor it.  My father was verbally and emotionally abusive.  Home was a place of fear, secrets, and shame.  My family was not all bad – there was love, my mother reminded me recently.  You could call it that.  My father could be tender and loving.  One never knew if he was going to think you were good or bad, pleasing or not, funny and clever or rude and cheeky, insightful and brave or insulting and mean.  It had no logic or rhythm, my father’s anger.  It only had the same result over and over – to me family came to mean fear, anxiety and pulse pounding stress.

My family was nothing you’d want to be a part of and that hurts.  If my father had lived I don’t know what I would have done about his impact on my children.  I am (mostly) grateful that I never had to figure that out, because he was verbally mean and dangerous, and his anger was frightening.  (My stomach lurches again.)  It still frightens me because I am his child — I got his brain and his verbal skills and red hot temper.

I did two decades of psychotherapy to heal.  I spent years in a fog of alcohol and before that as a workaholic.  I was always eager to make my dad happy and he rarely was satisfied with me. This is his legacy.  This is what I have now — and all I can do is stumble to the foot of the cross.  Without Jesus in my life I would be – without Jesus I am a shattered and broken person.  If there is anything good in me, it is Jesus.

So when I hear sermons about how people idolize their family to the point of putting them ahead of Yahweh (which is what any idol is) I feel kind of sick to my stomach.  And my heart feels heavy with sadness that can’t be ignored.  I’m not ignoring it but I’m also trying not to place it too high in importance.

I don’t even feel envy anymore, okay perhaps a little, when I hear my pastor talk about how important his family is to him.  But I’ve lived long enough and had enough hurtful experiences to not even believe in that mysterious thing — familial love — as something special or attainable, at least not for me.

We are not family in any way that our culture says is good.  I don’t believe I can change that.  I’m not sure that I should try.  All I can do is work on my stuff – be responsible for how I treat others – not shutting anyone out when they reach for me.  We are separate, autonomous, and seemingly lost to each other.  I deeply love each member of my family but I know that they have found “family” elsewhere.

Most days it is all I can do to love my husband and kids without smothering, boxing in, shaming, chiding and berating, criticizing, or condemning someone.  You do what you know. I want to know something different, something better.  And Tom has taught me something else, he is beautiful, pure and good.  After almost twenty years of marriage, I can say he will not intentionally hurt me and I believe it.

It is all I can do to try to live in the midst of the reality that I have no faith in the idea family. To me it represents broken hopes and pain.  When people talk about their “precious family” life, I will smile in response and inside I am wondering what the hell they are talking about.

Lest you completely despair for me, I wrotethe following poem last year.  It too is true.

I Never Knew Love

I never knew
that love would be so good.

Our beautiful chaotic life
of music, creativity and ideas. Of
trust, values, and goodness.
Of dreams.

I’ve learned
what it means to give up yourself, yes die
to self. That’s love
to me.

Often the world says
otherwise. But they don’t have
this beautiful chaotic life
we share.

I thought we had to fight,

and disagree
more than not. I imagined
we would be in constant friction.
Because the house that raised me
burned to the ground.

But I learned
the way to live is to give. Then
you get it all back without even realizing you are loved.

My dear, you are, everything.
And from you I have learned
to live.

So how can that be true and all the above as well?  All I can say is that it is and that is the tension of life.  I am learning how be in and make a family.  I am learning about loving, giving, and hoping and perhaps one day I will be able write more about what it means to create your own “precious family.”  Until then, all I can say is, no, I don’t idolize my family.

(Parenting by Free Fall is something I wrote about my fear of parenting based on my experiences.)