Listening

I have never been very good at making decisions.  I've been afflicted by self-doubt and fear for more of my life than I'd like to admit.  Remembering daily to turn my will and my life over to the care of God has relieved this in recent years and yet there are still too many moments where I just feel immobilized by anxiety; the "right" answer always seeming elusive.

I should be in Kentucky right now.  Spring residency for my Master's program started last Friday and I was supposed to be there.  For the past month, I had been feeling increasingly uneasy about the upcoming trip.  It would have been my fourth residency and nerves had plagued me prior to each trip before but this apprehension felt different. I couldn't shake it and each time I've been before, excitement had always eventually edged out the worry.  But this time, even though I prayed through the fears, practiced positive thinking, talked my feelings out with others, still the feeling of foreboding persisted.

The week before I was to leave I felt like I was starting to come down with a cold.  I started popping the Vitamin C.  Then my knee started acting up.  I'm scheduled for knee surgery on June 3rd and had hoped everything would be fine.  As the week wore on, my cold grew worse, my knee swelled bigger and by Thursday I couldn't get around without my brace.  "I'll be fine," I kept assuring myself but the inner nagging continued. I reminded myself,  a cold is just a cold.  I have the brace.  I'll push through.

I could have pushed through.  I do it all the time.  I'm a pretty determined person.  Sometimes things work out positively when I do that and sometimes not.  I could have gone and slowly felt better while I was there or I could have gone and developed pneumonia and been unable to walk at all half-way through the week.  Those aren't just silly exaggerated concerns.  With a chronic illness, those would have been possible realities.

So, I started to feel a little like, maybe, God was telling me something.  But then my other voice was saying, "It's only fear."  So, I woke up Friday morning at three to leave for the airport.  My ten year old and eight year old daughters were both awake.  The oldest said she'd prayed that God would wake her up to say another goodbye.  I dressed, had a quick cup of coffee and hugged and kissed them goodbye.  As I hugged my younger daughter, I noted that she felt hot.  Very hot.  So, I took her temperature and it was 102.5.  She had a bulge in the side of her neck, as well.  She'd been complaining of a "stiff neck" all week but we hadn't noticed any bulge and she hadn't had a fever.  My husband said he'd take her to the doctor and go into work late, so we left for the airport.

I knew he had it covered.  That she'd be okay and well taken care of but by now I was seriously starting to doubt my decision to go.  It seemed like signs were coming in all directions that it was not a good idea.  I prayed in the car.  I texted my sponsor and a friend.  I asked my husband to exercise his husbandly leadership and tell me what to do. We parked at the airport and we walked up to ticketing ( I limped) and my sponsor texted back the simple words, "Follow your heart."

So, I did.  I cancelled my trip.  And something's happened in me since then.

We took Verity to the doctor who ruled out strep throat, ear infection, and UTI.  We were sent to a radiologist for an ultrasound and told it might be an abscess and if it was she'd most likely have to be hospitalized.  Thankfully, it wasn't.  It was just two very large lymph nodes reactive to...something. Five days later, we still don't know what they're reacting to.  She's on an antibiotic but each day her fever is higher than the day before and we've now been to the doctor three times.  Currently, we're just waiting for results of the latest tests.  It's been scary and frustrating but I know God's got it.  I don't fear the worst.  And I know I'm here because even though she would have been well watched and well tended while I was away, it would have been horrible to not be with her while she's so sick.

But there's more going on, I think.  The decision to stay, not fully knowing the entire 'why' of it was pretty huge for me.  I like to know things.  I drive myself crazy with the need to know things.  And I can't know all things.  God just doesn't tell me everything whether I like it or not.  And this is why I think I have such a hard time with decisions.  I like to gather facts.  I do not like to be wrong.  I like to be right.  One hundred percent right.  But, this time, I followed my heart.  And I felt peace pretty immediately.  For a couple of hours.  And in those couple of hours I began to make plans: alright, well, postponed graduation, so now, the kids and I are both on summer break and it will be glorious;  quality time and I'll catch up on housework and start cooking again, etc.  And then as the evening wore on doubt started to creep back in.  By Saturday, even though Verity wasn't on the up and up, I was regretting my decision.  It began to sink in what I'd "given up:" a much needed break, time to focus on just me, silence, solitude, creative enlightenment and for what?  To hobble around the house in the mess and the noise and the chaos doing laundry?  Like I do every. single. day? And I started getting a little comfy on my pity pot.  But then, I also got quiet enough to look at what I was feeling.  To identify my feelings without judging them, to sit in them, to move past them.  And I stayed quiet.  In between doctor's visits and keeping vigil with the sick child and entertaining the well children, I've been examining my life a bit.  Recognizing too much to write here, today.

But I'm going to keep looking at the awareness and I'm going to pay attention to what I'm trying to tell myself -- what God is trying to tell me.  Because that's what I'm most taking away from this experience at this point, that I can trust myself.  So rather than draw up an elaborate plan of what I'm going to do with my free time (which, one thing I'm realizing about myself is that I like to be busy and have plans; free time is slightly uncomfortable for me) is just spend more time be-ing.  Being still and quiet, without expectation.  I'm going to listen to what's inside.  And I'm going to make some changes in order to do that.  I'm going to deactivate Facebook as an "experiment."  I can't be inside my own moments if I'm always in someone else's moments.  But I'm going to come here and write.  I could journal and that's great for sort-of vomiting out all the swirl inside my head, but when I'm here, I come closer to God and to what I really need to say.  And there's a bit of freedom knowing that even though I post here, I won't be, after today, linking to Facebook.  So, now I can just write and send my thoughts out to space in a way.

I'm excited because this is overdue.  I've been talking over myself for a long time and I'm going to practice really listening instead because I'm beginning to believe I have something important to say.

Imploration

We pray to a God who won’t respond…or so it seems.

We pray to a father God, a mother God, a man God, a child God,
a Buddha god, a yoga god, a nature god, a million other gods.

We pray for wants, for needs, confusing these. 

We pray desperately in disaster or alternately denounce existence, disseat,
disrate, spit in the face of what appears to be a placid god,
maddeningly calm in midst of chaos,
refusing to intervene.

Inept or cruel?  Easier to efface:  God is dead.

We worship at makeshift shrines of momentary sacrifice.

Congregate in cathedrals of ecclesiastical décor with alabaster
windows with stained hands clasped and our perfume hoarded.

We are a searching people, blind to what we find.

We look for you in burning bushes, in consecrated bread and wine. 
Parched, we need to taste you. We look to the clouds for signs.
We mine the scriptures, memorizing passages to suit our purposes but not to live by.

We confess to priests, we hail Mary, we pay our tithes, we swear off church, disassociate
with those who claim your name, return in hopes. We are gold-diggers. 

We praise ourselves when all is well and blame you when it is not.

In measurement of altitude, we place your elevation low, humbling you and not ourselves.

We,
who are open and bared before you
                              beg for you to bare yourself.

Herald the works of your hand, we say,
                          so we might believe,
                          then we turn away
from words that say,  I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity. 

We hunger for milk.  We try and force your hand with pleas,
with demands, with the works of our own hands.

We drift away and feel you've left us.
We, who are so depraved with such gall, feel deprived.

We fear you and we do not fear you.

We emplaster you in icons-we want you plastic and adaptable.

We want vivid, graphic, blatant.

Our prayers lay out Irenicons- God, sign here, on dotted line. 

We are a loud people, bold in our absurd appeals,
errant in our exaction.
You are a quiet God, slow to anger.

Your gifts are bared before us, everywhere-

Embossed in vein of leaves we step upon, traced in space of sky with argent stars,
sketched in shadows after every storm.

Yet, I am deafened by your seeming silence.
Open the eyes of my heart. 
Take my mustard seed of faith
and multiply it. Perforate my conscience
that I might observe the wondrous
works of your own pierced hands. 
Create in me a clean heart.

The Sunday Whirl

So Grateful

SO GRATEFUL

I pretty much have to fake it,
                            act like
                                   I’m not
                                          new-
because I’m not.
Remind myself that far fewer
people are looking at me
than I think.  Like take the total amount
and then minus all.
And then uncross my arms.
                                          Relax.
And there’s this girl sitting next to me
with her arms crossed, looking
straight ahead, awkward, in a loose-fitting,
pink and black, pin-striped business suit 
and I feel like I should introduce myself,
but instead, I,
too, stare straight ahead while
trying
simultaneously to fake ease
and then, I’m so grateful
that the meeting’s starting
because that means no one else will come up
and hug me.
And now I’m listening and nodding.  Uncover,
                                    discover,
                                    discard,
the speaker says.
I need to remember that.  I also need to know
what to uncover.
After the meeting, I forget
how to act confident,
and leave right away.
I’m tired but I have to think.  Uncover
             discover,
             discard.
So, I drive to Karen’s house and then I’m sitting
cross-legged on her couch eating
eggplant parmesan, disclosing
so uncovering
             all the bullshit.
                                    I find out I’ve been blind
                                    to my own dishonesty-
as usual.  And she suggests
prayer cards
and even writes them up for me
while I eat.
She reminds me to bring God
into every aspect. 
Before I leave, she asks me if I’ve read The Artist’s Way
and also says she’ll text me the name
of the Carl Jung book
she told me about and I say thank you
and ask
if there’s any
writing assignment
I can maybe do to figure this all out
and she says no – I do enough of that
and she doesn’t mean writing, like this-
but enough thinking – analyzing.
She says, go like this, and she holds both arms
out wide, and pause.  And, she adds,
if you’re going to write, write with your left hand-
about anything.
I pre-pray
all the way home
without the cards
and stuff just starts
                     falling off
and I am lightening
but
     then I tighten again
     and repeat everything
over and over
so I can remember
what I’m figuring out
and then
I remember to put my arms out
                                           and just let go
                                           and take in
and so because I’m driving
I just put one arm out but it works and I hear
my own trio-phrase- an original
or probably God made it up:
                               See. Accept.  Do.  See.  Accept.  Do.
And I think I can remember that.

Waking

I am waking to
                     the flames.
Come
                             and fill me.
                                         My knees shake.
                                       
                                                       Stirred by beauty,
                                                                            ablaze to love.
I can feel it rising,
tantalizing,
song
                                                sung in unison and I can't be still.
                                                         I am dizzied, drunk
like
by the grappling between what I want and what I fear,
                                but release is welling up and I am warming to the call, the splendor of all You are.
                                                      Wash these feet of clay so they might run.
                                                       Won over by
                                                                           Your goodness, I waver less and less;
                                                                           Your love, immeasurable.
Give me voice and words,
a
         melody.
Draw me close.
Send
in sheets, a purifying rain - renewal.
                                                   Woo me with in an unrelenting romance because I believe
and I am done with safe.
            I have stood long at
                                          the edge,
yearning for the courage, testing depth with pebbles thrown in plea.

Make
me brave enough
to say
        Your name.
My knees shake
but no longer, in trepidation
                                     and my heart confesses truth of
                                                                                     ownership.
Bend me to Your will.
   Erode my own.

The Sunday Whirl


                                                                         

Please

Dear God,
Do you see? 
That they have a part of me?
That they’ve stolen, lied and cheated?
That I’m down here on my knees,
begging for restoration,
                   renewal, You to hear.
I’m alone, and I’m scared. 
        And I’m waiting. 
For mercy, for grace, though they’re already mine.
Make me
know,
see,
believe.
Dear God,
Please.