No more fatal flaws

Mar19

whiteme_1 The past couple of days I’ve been struggling to focus and get my work done. I have a to-do list that’s quite long, commitments that I’ve made to things that need to get done this weekend. And as the hours have passed and not much has gotten done I’ve felt this vague sense of shame about it. I don’t do negative self-talk, really — the words in my head tend to be more free-flowing and random — but I do negative self-feelings. I sink into familiar feelings of shame, that go back to when I was a kid and I couldn’t explain what I was experiencing physically. “I don’t feel good,” was all I had, and I don’t remember exactly where the message came from, but somehow I internalized it: “You’re fine, get over it, do what you’re supposed to do.”

Even more than that, I somehow got the message that if I didn’t feel good it was somehow my fault. I can’t really explain it. Maybe it was because my mom was really into health food and vitamins, and I sometimes balked at the orange juice with brewer’s yeast or carob bars instead of chocolate. Maybe I felt bad for sneaking candy (successfully) or those bright orange cheese puffs (unsuccessfully — kids, pro-tip, wash your hands and face after) at parties. But somehow I grew up thinking that the headaches, nausea, fatigue, light-sensitivity, sound sensitivity, inability to focus, overeating — all the strange migrainey symptoms that could come in any combination, often without the tell-tale headache — that they weren’t really real, or a good enough reason to go home (oh what I would have given for an ailment that showed up on the thermometer at the nurse’s office!), and that if I was just a better kid I wouldn’t feel so yucky anyway. No one ever told me that, I don’t think. I just put together the pieces weirdly. And that feeling continued into adulthood, the sense of shame whenever a migraine came on.

I’ve done a lot of work on that. But it’s amazing how, even after years of migraines and years of working through exactly this issue, it still takes me hours and hours to frame days like today as, “I have a bad migraine,” rather than, “I’m being so lazy and unfocused today, what’s wrong with me?”

Does anyone else struggle with this feeling? I’m going to speak some truths to myself today, and you can listen along:

You have a bad migraine today.

You have a lot that needs to get done, but you might not be able to get it all done, because YOU HAVE A BAD MIGRAINE TODAY.

You are not making excuses, that’s just how it is.

You didn’t do anything wrong; you didn’t make yourself have a migraine. You just have one.

You are doing the best that you can.

You are trying really hard.

Your body is telling you that you need to rest.

It’s okay. Rest.

You’re not lazy. You’re ill.

Or, maybe you’re exhausted, worn down, over-stressed.

Life can be insanely stressful, you know. Not because you’re doing it wrong, just because it is.

You are not lazy. You do not have a fatal flaw of laziness, or spaciness, or excuse-making.

You work so hard. You try SO hard.

Having a chronic illness is hard enough without blaming yourself for it.

Having a chronic illness is hard enough without misdiagnosing yourself.

You have a bad migraine today.

That’s all.

Love,
Jessica

***

Stay tuned Monday for an exciting book review and give-away! Unless I can’t get it done, because I have a bad migraine. But I’m going to try.

On loving someone in pain

Jan11

Job Rebuked by His Friends, by William Blake

A dear friend texted me today asking for advice on how to support her friends whose teenage son has been suffering from debilitating migraines for a year and a half. He is angry at God, she said, and can’t believe a good God would allow this kind of suffering. His parents are afraid he is going to renounce God, and she wants to know how to be there for them.

I wrote last year about my own experience with debilitating migraines and depression and struggling to find God in it all. When you are in pain and the life you know has been pulled out from under you, you naturally ask why. When you have prayed till your knees are bloody and cried out to God until your throat is hoarse, and still the pain continues, of course you wonder why a loving God is not answering you. Of course you do.

But when your friends and loved ones have prayed their own knees bloody and throats hoarse, and still you are not better, something else begins to happen. They may question God, too, but they may also — out loud or only in their heads — begin to question you. Are you sure you’re praying enough? Are you sure you have faith that God can heal you? Are you taking the right meds, have you tried acupuncture, are you eating right and getting enough sleep; have you tried everything you can? And the blame begins to shift, slightly, to the one in pain. It can be subtle or overt, but it echoes the person’s own questions and doubt. Are you sure you aren’t psychologically attached to the pain? Maybe you’re getting something out of it. Why did you stay up late last night when you know a regular sleep schedule is shown to help migraines? Maybe all of this is actually your fault?

In my earlier post, He suffers with us, I wrote that I didn’t find answers to my questions, but instead I found God’s presence with me in the pain:

Then, one day on a whim, I bought a little crucifix online. I was raised in the Protestant tradition and remember being told that Catholic theology was wrong because they kept Jesus on the cross, whereas Protestant crosses were empty, representing the resurrection. When the package came, and I took out the little plastic Jesus it seemed so strange — a little Jesus doll when what I wanted was the real man, present in my heart, mind, and spirit, as he used to be. But one day, when the pain was at its worst, I placed my fingers on the nails in his hands, studied his face and his body, and wept with understanding: Jesus was in pain, too. He was suffering, too. I might not understand why it was happening to me, or why he wouldn’t answer my prayers to take it away, but now I knew that He was in it with me. For the days and months to come I lay in bed, clutching the crucifix to me and crying.

That presence, that willingness to be with me, to suffer with me in the pain, was what I found in God — and it was what I most needed from my friends and family.

I don’t know how much you’ve read Job, but it has always been kind of a confusing book to me. I don’t understand why God would allow Job to lose his family and everything he owned. I don’t understand his friends’ advice really, or what God means when he shows up and silences them. And I don’t understand how everything is supposed to be okay when Job gets a new family and new riches. You can’t make the loss of children all better by having new children. But this quote by Buechner helped me to understand it a little more:

Words Without Knowledge

IT IS OUT OF the whirlwind that Job first hears God say “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 42:3). It is out of the absence of God that God makes himself present, and it is not just the whirlwind that stands for his absence, not just the storm and chaos of the world that knock into a cocked hat all man’s attempts to find God in the world, but God is absent also from all Job’s words about God, and from the words of his comforters, because they are words without knowledge that obscure the issue of God by trying to define him as present in ways and places where he is not present, to define him as moral order, as the best answer man can give to the problem of his life. God is not an answer man can give, God says. God himself does not give answers. He gives himself, and into the midst of the whirlwind of his absence gives himself.

There aren’t answers to our questions, at least there aren’t answers that we can understand now. Job’s friends try to explain God to him, to tell him he must not be praying enough, must not have enough faith, must have some un-confessed sin or pride. And Job listens and argues with them and suffers even more because of their arguments and advice.

(Another time we can talk about the bad rap Job’s wife has gotten, and the nasty look she’s giving the beatific Job in Blake’s painting above. She lost her children, too, you know. She was in pain, too. Her advice to Job to renounce God must have come out of that pain.)

But when God finally shows up, he does not give answers, he gives something better — himself. And that is what we need from each other, too: Not answers, but just presence, just understanding and listening and presence. I told my friend that even if her friends’ son does feel like renouncing God, or even if he renounces him, the best, most loving response his parents and friends can give is not arguments, but presence:

“It must hurt so much. I’m so sorry. I can completely understand that you would want to renounce God, and I don’t love you any less for it. If God is God, he will understand, too, and not love you any less for it, either. Go ahead and cry and swear and do whatever you need to do. We’re here.”

Love,
Jessica

***

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A busman’s holiday: On volunteering and finding my purpose

Jan8

photo by Christopher Jones

For a few weeks now I’ve been volunteering at a homeless shelter, leading a play group for two hours so the parents can attend classes. I signed up for it last summer when the Planned Parenthood videos were breaking, not as a political statement but as an attempt to do something other than talking, writing, and debating. My Facebook feed was thick with posts that mostly demonized the other side, as well as calls for people to take a vocal position on the matter. I didn’t want to choose between the labels “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” If I had to be labeled, I wanted it to be, “person who works with kids at a homeless shelter.”

When I signed up last summer I had Wednesdays off, but by the time I did the training and received my placement I had started working Wednesday afternoons. So now I nanny Monday afternoon, then for ten hours on Tuesday, volunteer with kids Wednesday morning, pick up kids from school Wednesday afternoon, work another ten hour nanny day on Thursday, and then a six hour nanny day on Friday. It’s a lot of kid time, and I wonder if it might be too much. The wonderful woman who co-leads the play group with me called it “a Busman’s Holiday,” that wonderful old-fashioned expression that means that you do the same thing on vacation that you do for work. I love the kids — all of my kids — but I definitely find my blood pressure is a bit higher, the tension in my neck and shoulders a bit tighter both during and after my shift.

I struggle with it, because I’m good with kids, and it seems right to offer my best skills as a volunteer. But to be honest I’ve been wishing I could do some volunteering that involves lying in a dark room with my eyes closed and no one talking to me. Maybe medical testing? Donating a kidney?

Glennon Doyle Melton says that people often ask her how to find their life’s purpose, and she asks them, “What breaks your heart? That’s your purpose right there.” Whenever I ask myself what breaks my heart, the first thing I think of is old people. Except, I think they break my heart too much for me to be helpful to them. I think too deeply about how sad, lonely, and confused they must be, their bodies giving out on them, maybe their minds as well, not being able to go out and do things like they used to, being stuck at home or in a home. I feel it too much, and it doesn’t energize me, it makes me sad and depressed.

I can't figure out how to remove the "sample" stamp from this clip art, so I'm going to leave it as an ironic statement.

I can’t figure out how to buy this to remove the “sample” stamp, so I’m going to leave it as an ironic statement. This is a sample of a person trying to drive considerately: Actual drivers may vary.

But I have figured out one way to channel that particular heartbreak into good. When I’m driving in Boston, and people cut me off, swerve, make weird lane changes without signaling, or generally act as if they don’t understand how driving works — or how 2000 lb vehicles crashing into each would work — I try to imagine the drivers as little old ladies or men, nervous and confused, maybe having trouble seeing over the dashboards. And I tell myself that my job is to help the little old ladies across the street, providing as safe and encouraging an environment for them as I can. If someone cuts in front of me, I step on the brakes carefully and avoid the instinct to honk. Poor Gertrude, I think, she is just trying to get to the store to get half and half for her coffee. If we can see each other I give a smile and an encouraging wave. Here, dear — let me take your arm and help you across.

For now I’m going to keep going to the Wednesday morning play group for as long as I can. I’ve seen the dangers of pushing myself too hard, so I want to be aware of my energy level and my limits. But I’ve quit so many things in my life, and it would feel so good to see this through. So I drag myself out of bed Wednesday mornings, have my coffee with low fat milk and hop in the car for the half hour drive to the other side of the city. I can’t really do it, but I’m doing it anyway, for one more week at least. And while I’m driving to my Busman’s Holiday I step on the brakes whenever someone cuts me off, smiling and waving when I can (the coffee helps with this) and helping dear old Mathilda to get safely to her bridge game.

***

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Welcoming the dark

Dec7

Sunset at Arnold Arboretum

Sunset in Boston these days is at 4:12 pm. Today it finds me sitting on my couch finishing up an editing job, glancing now and then out my eastward facing window at the darkening sky. More than the cold and the snow, winter in New England is defined by me by these early sunsets. It’s still day by the clock, I still have two hours of work on work days and two hours till dinner on non-work days, and four hours after that till bedtime, but night has set in and the next six hours will be passed under artificial lights.

There is something called Seasonal Affective Disorder which means that the person becomes depressed in fall and winter, but I don’t know many people who aren’t affected by the encroaching darkness. It’s just harder to move about in the dark; even with all the lights on you can’t trick your body and spirit into thinking it’s light out. So I’ve found that it helps me to acknowledge the difference. I try to notice when the sun is setting, to take a moment to look out the window, say goodbye to the light, and welcome the darkness. Sometimes it’s just a brief glance and a deep breath, others I take the time to light a candle, say a prayer, or put my hands over my heart in anjali mudra, the gesture of greeting that is also how you set an intention in yoga. I would rather stay in sunlight, but since the night is here I welcome it, acknowledge the sadness and fear that accompany it, and set my intention to move through it as well as I can.

Anjali Mudra by Claudia Tremblay

Scraps of poems and passages help me, too. I’ll share a few of them here in case they are useful to you, too.

Steadily and continuously that process went on, till now, as he faced his enemies, he felt the interior loss which had attacked him at other stages of his pilgrimage grown into a final overwhelming desolation. He said to himself again, as he so often said, “This also is Thou,” for desolation as well as abundance was but a means of knowing That which was All.
~Charles Williams, War in Heaven

(Sometimes I say to myself simply, “This also is Thou.”)

And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

I love to think of those lines while watching a winter sunset.

Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.
~Desmond Tutu

Light is stronger than darkness, even when it seems like the darkness is winning.

O holy night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary soul rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!
~Adolphe Adam

Gregory Boyle writes movingly about what it means for the soul to find its worth in his book Tattoos of the Heart.

The Welcoming Prayer
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,
situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,
approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation,
condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and
God’s action within. Amen.
~Father Thomas Keating

That’s a lot to let go of all at once; it helps me to just focus on one or two of those things at a time.

Do you have a ritual for welcoming the dark?

Love,
Jessica

How to write a blog post

Oct30

Discovering the Water’s Edge by Mark Slawson

“There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.”
~from How to Write a Poem by Wendell Berry

I’ve been feeling discouraged lately. I have some foot problems and a knee problem that have been keeping me from going for walks and doing yoga, and I need that exercise as much for emotional health as for physical. I also need it for my work. I do two marathon days of 10 hours each with three kids, and I need to be strong to make it through.

I also had an argument with a friend the other day, where we were crossing wires and each hurting the other. We talked about it and we’re fine now, but it left me feeling familiarly frustrated with how easy it is to say something stupid or hurtful — how in fact it seems like the harder I try the more blunders and absurdities I end up adding to the list of things that haunt me at night when I can’t sleep. And then I drive in Boston and people are so mean to each other sometimes, and so angry.

I don’t get outside much in my current jobs. The little kids go from activity to nap to activity, and the big ones have to go straight home from school to do their homework. The boy I watch on Fridays is just a (very cute) homebody, and if we get out it’s usually just for a walk around the block. So I was surprised and excited when he agreed to a walk around Jamaica Pond this afternoon.

I wish my phone took better pictures, but believe me, it was lovely at Jamaica Pond today. Still, I was feeling low and just kind of dull, and the autumn colors weren’t stirring as much joy in me this year as they usually do. Also, the first thing we saw when we stepped out of the car was writing scrawled on the curb — a variation of the “call Sally for a good time” except with explicit details about what the good time would entail, and what I assume was the poor girl’s actual phone number. And I thought — people suck. I suck. Why can’t we all get it together?

Still, I was at a gorgeous pond with an adorable four year old, so I settled myself into my job description as a writer (via Frederick Buechner): “Pay attention.”

The water level at the pond was much lower than it had been the last time I was there. J and I walked on a little beachy area below the landscaped stones that usually mark the edge of the pond. We threw stones into the water, and then sticks. We examined fallen branches and played walking games that J invented. I told him there was a really cool tree I wanted to show him, and he put the hood up on his sweatshirt and put his little hands in his pockets as we walked. We acted on suggestions from both parties: “Let’s climb that tree!” “Let’s go up those steps and see what’s on top.” “I’ll take one step then you take one step then I take two then you take two.” “Let’s go see where the old mansion used to be.”

My feet hurt a little bit, but the red and orange maples and the slope of the hills were beginning to get through my malaise. We traced the outline of the old mansion up on Pinebank Promontory and read the little plaques with its history and the history of the pond. Then we looped back down towards where the car was parked. We still had 20 minutes till we had to leave to pick up his big sister, so I tried to think of something to do.

“Do you want to throw rocks into the water again?”

“Okay.”

We went back down on the drought-created beach, and started walking but suddenly there was a large flapping and a great blue heron moved away from us a few feet, startled by our proximity. We quickly went back up onto the path and sat down to watch it. I’ve lived in this area for nine years, and this is the first year I’ve ever seen a blue heron at the Pond. It seemed a little precarious. I’m used to seeing them in more secluded places. Jamaica Pond gets hundreds of visitors a day, lots with dogs. J and I watched as it resumed its slow stalk for fish, its long, S-shaped neck moving in concert with its feet. I explained that it was walking slowly like that so the fish wouldn’t notice it, and that when it saw one it would jab its long beak underwater and snap it up. Funnily enough, the heron’s walk looked a lot like one of the walking games we’d just been playing. J told me a joke:

“Why did the pelican get in trouble at the restaurant? Because he couldn’t pay his big bill!”

Suddenly the heron’s head jerked forward, there was a splash, and it came back up with a perfect little rainbow trout in its beak. It was exciting and dramatic and beautiful, and in that moment joy broke through to me again, celebrating the heron’s catch with a little boy on the path by Jamaica Pond. We watched for a while longer, chatting with others who had stopped to watch, and I exulted in their happiness, too. The heron caught one more fish while we were there, and missed one. People took pictures and smiled at each other, and laughed at J’s cute and wise comments.

It was a sacred place we’d stumbled onto, just yards away from the desecrated curb where we’d started. But there are no unsacred places, Berry said, and it’s true. It’s just that I needed the heron, and the maple trees, and J to help me remember.

What kind of month has it been?

Oct23

I have a bunch of ideas for blog posts but life has been so busy the past few weeks that I haven’t had a chance to sit down and flesh them out. So I thought I’d tell you about what has been keeping me busy.

The most exciting thing was the Love Flash Mob over at Momastery. In 24 hours we raised over $475,000 dollars to build a new wing for the Heartline Maternity Center in Port au Prince, Haiti, and to buy warm clothes for mothers and babies from Syria who are still living outside in Berlin, even as the cold weather has set in. These Love Flash Mobs are my favorite times of the year because we take the power of community and turn it into concrete, practical action to love and care for each other. The maximum donation is $25 — the average for this one was $21. That means my $25 counts just as much as that of the millionaire or billionaire or anyone else. 21,000 of us got together and gave, and countless lives will be saved because of it. You just can’t get efficiency and joy like that anywhere else on the interwebs. Check it out here. And don’t be sad if you missed this one, just follow Momastery on Facebook and/or my Facebook page and we will be sure to tell you when the next one is happening. I even stepped way out of my comfort zone for the flash mob to create and video tape myself doing a touchdown dance for every flash mob update. Enjoy!

I’ve also been busy with the launch team for Sarah Bessey’s upcoming book Out of Sorts: Making Peace With an Evolving Faith. The book is amazing — You are going to want to read it, trust me. I’ll have a review up soon, but for now you can preorder it on Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble, or support your local small bookstore by buying it there. The release date is November 3rd.

The launch team has been an incredible experience, not only discussing Sarah’s book with her and the others, but getting to know the other team members as well. I have two new favorite blogs through the launch team: Esther Emery’s Church in the Canyon and Tanya Marlow’s Thorns and Gold. Esther is a homesteader, deep thinker, and a brilliant writer. She crafts sentences like this, which I read several times over: “And even here I see God revealed — refracted, bent, and shattered — shining out the cracks of crooked people.” Tanya Marlow writes about struggling to find God and God’s will in her life while suffering from debilitating chronic illness, something which you know is dear to my heart. And it was also through the launch team that I found this beautiful, moving letter from a 19 year old girl with Asperger’s to her ten year old self. (The rest of Debby’s blog is well worth checking out, too.)

Another project I’ve been a part of is the Almost an Inkling flash fiction contest happening over at Mythgard. It’s a six week contest with a different prompt and guidelines every week. We’re in week five now, which is poetry. I just tried my hand at a Clerihew and a Triolet, two forms which were new to me. I actually won the literary prize for week three, the “Minute Mystery” which was very exciting for my twelve year old self, who didn’t dream of writing viral essays about gay weddings, but about writing stories. (She doesn’t really get blogging, even though I’ve tried to explain it to her. She just wants to know why we aren’t writing more stories about cats and unicorns.) My story for week two, with the prompt “Here Be Dragons” was dedicated to Say it Survivor, my friends’ Laura and Mary’s organization dedicated to helping women and men who have survived childhood sexual abuse tell their stories. They have workshops and talks coming up in Massachusetts and beyond — check it out on their website. The challenge for the story was to surprise the reader with an unexpected perspective on the dragon. My heart was full of Laura and Mary and the other brave survivors that week, so this is what I wrote:

She first saw the dragon the same night her uncle first came into her room. She was very young. After he left she lay there, choking back tears – he had warned her not to cry – and wondering, for the first time in her life, if there was something wrong with her. Then, suddenly the dragon was there, hovering over her bed, its green eyes shining in the darkness. It had brown-red scales, like muddied flame, and its wings spanned the room and, somehow, beyond.

She caught her breath and stopped crying, terror of the dragon greater than the pain. She waited for it to pounce, but it never moved, other than the slow beating of its wings and the whirl of its eyes, locked on hers. Time passed, minutes or hours. Then, despite her uncle and despite the dragon, her eyes began to droop and her small body fell into sleep. It was very late, and she was very young.

From then on, whenever her uncle came into her room, after he left the dragon would appear. Soon she found that she would wait for it, lying in the dark, holding her breath and blinking until its unblinking eyes appeared above her. She never really stopped being afraid of the dragon, but she was comforted, too, by its presence, its strong, sinewy legs and sharp claws, its tireless wings that beat the air, swirling it into a gentle breeze. Even though the worst had happened, even though she was so, so far from safe, she felt something her young mind did not have words for yet. Something like hope, something like confidence.

She only spoke to the dragon once, a year or so after the dual visits had started. One night she took a deep breath, lifted her small chin and said,

“Just go ahead and eat me, dragon. Do it.”

And the dragon lifted its own chin, and opened its jaw, and a blast of fire came out, heating the air above her head, but she was not harmed. She understood its answer: Yes, the dragon had said, I could fry you and swallow you whole, but I will not. And she cried harder that night than she ever had before.

The last time the dragon appeared to her was years later. She was older now, not young anymore, not at all young anymore, and the dragon came to her late one night. And she looked in its eyes and noticed something she never had before: They were the same color as her own green eyes, with the same brown flecks. And she saw that the mud-red scales were the same color as her own auburn hair, which shone in the sunlight.

Then she flexed her arms and legs and she felt the sinewy strength of a dragon flow through them. She felt the movement between her shoulders of powerful wings. And she stretched out her wings and she flew.

The Almost an Inkling contest is still going on if you would like to try your hand at a poem this week, or next week’s prompt which will be “Speculate and Subcreate.” Also at this link you can read the winning entries from the first three weeks, and vote on the poems from week five. The winning entries will be published in a special-edition ebook by Oloris Press and we’ll be reading our work aloud during a webinar at the end of the contest on Halloween.

Whew, well, there’s more I could tell you about — what a busy month it’s been! — but I’ll stop there and give you a chance to check out the links I’ve included. I hope you’ve all had a good October so far! What have you been up to? Let me know in the comments. And if you haven’t been doing that much, that’s okay, too. The resting is part of the doing.

Love,

Jessica