Bewilderness

A bright triangle of sky gleams at the gray edge of cloud, between a neighbor’s sloping roof and hemlocks huddled, whispering tales.

I barely noticed chiclet-sized buds on our front maple’s branches. Today they are blossom-kisses. My heart is light like the spots between rain-spits outside our smudgy windows.

It’s difficult to determine what caused the overall heaviness against which I butted and strained lately. Did we in this house battle a virus’s lingering effects? Should we have taken pills to ease sadness at its first attack? Or have I overreacted to everything, a fat goose waddling around mucky shores when the air spoke Spring and Flight and Northern Fields?

All I know is, today my heart is lighter, like the brightening sky outside, beyond maple, hemlock and a ridge of familiar-faced hills.

Understanding

What I’m doing is gross. It’s big, and it’s ugly.

No matter how many people come together around it, and no matter how my path to it allowed my escape from heinous attitudes and creepy morals and just plain hard aspects of life in this sinful-peopled world, it still doesn’t make right that thing I do that God said not to do.

I am every person on the planet.

I’m glad I got married and had kids. Otherwise, I’d have likely been able to hide a lot more from myself than I can.

I’m not a breeze down the hall in your underwear sort of person. Good grief, I shower and dress before sitting at my computer. Tim and I share this reticence toward exposure. We’ve probably reinforced it in one another over the years.

Lately, the three people under this roof have experienced pain. None of us has an easy time expressing, or figuring out, what’s going on and where one person’s trouble ends and another’s begins. We all tend toward melancholy. We miss our Victoria, the one who balanced gloomy storm systems with splashes of sunshine, beckoning cheerier moments or telling us plainly, “You’re not seeing this right.”

Good things arrive, though, even along stony, scrub grass-covered stretches of life’s way. I’m glad for the past couple weeks, because of surviving them, yes, but also because, in struggling to relate with the other two dark thinkers here at home, I’ve been given more glimpses of truth.

As my son and I talked yesterday, he helped me get something I’ve never caught sight of before.

I’ve mentioned here previously my youngest brother, the one whose significant other is a man. My poor, patient little bro. I’ve tried to process verbally what I think about his gayness, using several written venues as well as through talking endlessly about it (sometimes even with him). This wrestling method of mine mirrors the way I deal with Tim when we disagree. Since I’m unable to hide as I bump against people other than myself, it’s my way of forging a path through fogs and forests of confusion to try and understand something complex. I’d rather bury it over in the shrubbery, but some things I must keep talking about, wording in some fashion, until I am able to know.

Here’s the thing my son expressed yesterday, in his own words which I won’t reproduce, but in a similar vein. First, when we’re younger, we experience the negative reactions of others, often adults, to hard stuff. It’s easy at that place in life to reason, I’ll be sure never to go through that. I can make myself stronger than the weak ones around me. Next, we run into situations where hard stuff is forced upon us. Depression/anxiety results, as we recognize our limitations to avoid reacting in ways harmful to ourselves and others. At this time we may reach for a method to escape the truly bad things that grabbed us. We find a different way to do life, even if we achieve it by practicing an act or a “lifestyle” we’ve been taught is wrong.

This becomes more significant the more deeply we think about believing God and trying to do what’s right.

These things we do that help us, but that are understood by many to be unsavory, “gross” or sinful serve a purpose as we scrabble along the road toward wisdom. If we don’t hide from the truth that they’re things God said not to do, then we have to admit we are going against God to some degree.

When I lie to myself, or when I strike out at Tim with words, it’s gross. It’s always wrong. When I rationalize, Just this little bit of something bad; I’m only sidling up beside it; I’m not doing it, it’s always troubling. There are reasons Jesus said so much about the heart of people, about what’s on the inside.

And Paul, writing to people in Rome, expressed rational ideas surrounding the ugliness of sin. He used an example of “grossness” that the people to whom he was writing would agree with. Homosexuality was one of the worst-looking sins they could imagine.

But it has always been just another wrong behavior. The problem I have with our society is its push to dub same-gender sex not gross. It is gross, but people do it. Some of those people have hard hearts toward the truth. Some are soft-hearted, traveling a path where dense fog clears some days so illumination occurs. Like it does some days for me.

If the Bible only included a list of those certain things God disapproves, then we’d be justified wagging our fingers at people doing things we know are wrong. But God looks to me like someone teaching the ones who’ll listen. There are things I couldn’t learn if I never sinned. There are things I need to learn by being unable to ever break free of particular sins.

Yuk, I hate to look at those. I’d so much rather hide. But they make me cry to God to save me. I want to stop the sin, and sometimes God helps me do so. But even more I want God’s mercy. The truth is, mercy is what God will certainly give. That’s God’s solution to the huge and the ugly.

A definite problem

Global warming? Unsettling, maybe. Giant meteor on its way? Could be difficult. Star Gate: SG1 in its final season? Sad, perhaps.

These dire predictions pale in comparison, however, with this: a possible future chocolate shortage.

save me......

Chips

“Extremely happily married since 1979, _____ and _____ homeschooled their children…”

I read the blog description and blinked. Sort of gulped. Didn’t quite gag, but I could have.

Tim and I’ve been married since 1979, and we have homeschooled our children. And if I know anything, nobody in our shoes has been extremely happy doing that (or anything else) for a whole bloomin’ twenty-eight years.

I’m sure the Christian woman who composed the blissful sketch meant well. It went on to state that the husband and wife now “travel all over the world to share the joys of loving learning, honoring one another in the family, and enjoying the journey.”

Okay, I have issues. A chip or twelve on my shoulder. Mainly, memories of myself working, straining, shoving, to fit my life into a similar description. And recognizing, at least subconsciously before I’d admit it in daylight, that I wanted something unreal. I thought to be cool or nifty or good or something I had to seem okay.

Phooey, phony. That’s all I can say for it now.

Having got that off my chest, let me direct you to articles by another Christian. If you’re an aspiring writer, he may inspire you. But Chip MacGregor will sound authentic doing so.

Read his March 15th post. You’ll discover naked musicians, burning trailers and how it all leads to a writer’s success. Well, of course we knew that already. And it makes us extremely happy all day long.

More idea-processing

We were meant to pursue quiet lives. Some call it growing where you’re planted. As believers, we're supposed to grapple with the word, the message we believe, in order to understand it in full. We ought to feel drawn to like-rescued people, others plucked from a drowning human sea and set on solid gangplanks, huddled in blankets and sipping hot tea. We need to spend hours reflecting on the fact that we’ve been spared. To ask ourselves, “What just happened here? What does it mean?” We must, upon landing ashore, seek out answers with humble hearts. On our way to gathering-places we must respect the fellow beings we encounter. We can take our time to get our bearings, to become engaged with this new education, to learn to converse until dawn around tables in upper rooms, to feel the swell of music and to dance at midnight.

Good, hurting and "hurting good"

Brindy snores, asleep on her blanket behind our recliner. I sniffed her doggy scent while reclining and thinking about the uneven week behind me.

Tim worked nearly all weekend, on problems arising from an early daylight-savings switch at the TV station where he’s chief engineer. This followed late nights he spent dealing with the aftermath of a burglary at a mountaintop translator site. My husband has not been having a lovely time.

So, I asked, why’s the timing this way? Something good happens for me – an acceptance letter. But Tim can’t share my joy. In fact, yesterday he hurt my feelings by bringing up money – how I’m not making up our constant monthly budget shortfall.

I don’t blame Tim for his bleak outlook. I did get angry, though. Last night I expressed my feelings, late, when we were both tired and spent. It didn’t help. I got in bed with my journal, then, and wrote about circumstances I hate right now. I hate them, I wrote, but I love Tim. It helped. This morning we talked, somewhat like civilized beings, about reality’s hard edge.

Questions we can’t answer exist, I’m reminded. It’s one reason reality bites some days. Our lives’ chapters don’t get tied up with pink-ribbon endings. Often they leave us dangling, vulnerable, exposed.

Before church this morning I read the latest newspaper column by Dorcas Smucker, her monthly Letter from Harrisburg. For Dorcas, life as a Mennonite minister’s wife does not preclude facing rough-edged circumstances. Since one of her nephews took his life last summer, you might expect Dorcas to sweep her grief beneath some dogmatic carpet. She, however, does not try to hide. With her niece (the nephew’s older sister), she recently spent days processing, even questioning. As Dorcas says, “I longed to do the impossible and dispense answers that would make everything make sense.” She admits she did not have those answers.

Years ago I told myself I had all the answers, the day my youngest brother left his wife and announced he was gay. Through prayer, I thought, I would bring him back.

Yet I had to learn there was no “back” – he’d had homosexual feelings already for years but had kept them and his related actions secret.

I had a process to begin. Years of hurt and anger to experience. And over lots of time since then a picture of myself to see, loving my brother, forgiving him for withholding from our close relationship his boyhood pain. Like Dorcas I’ve recognized I cannot make everything make sense.

Now Tim’s come home and rested in the bedroom. His station is working, except for the closed captioning equipment. A new week awaits – good things and hurting will combine, no doubt. I’ll work to be genuine with my husband, and to let memories of joyful successes buoy me when reality bites.

It’s reality I long for, though, in all its colors. Somehow I’m made to go through it, eyes open, stretching and bleeding and aching, to see.

Wow. Relief at last.

A story happened.

Today I received an email from the editor at Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression. It said my story’s been accepted!

Can this be true? A literary journal. Yippity skip and woohoo. It will come out in May, I think.

Now, to bed. I’ve fought a cold all week, and I’m an exhausted wimp. But a happy one.

Earlier Tim and I drank celebratory Arby’s milkshakes – black cows (root beer flavored). Yum.

We’re living high on the dairy hog.

Ideas; a possible theme

Pursuit of the gospel of righteousness and truth is a separate thing from my cultural theology.

Belief breaks into my world.

I am caught off-guard by mercy. Captivated, blindsided.

Martha and Mary had their schedule interrupted when Jesus came to dinner, and again later when their brother got sick and Jesus didn’t come.

Belief is not decided by me ahead of time; it’s not pigeonholed, categorized, or indoctrinated.

It messes up my plans.

It pursues me.

Like love.

I chased it until it caught me.

It lengthens like a growing flame.

It dances atop my candle in darkest midnight.

While we're on the subject...

A man who’s starting a business in town came to my door yesterday. Somehow our conversation landed on writing and running.

“You’ve been published in Runner’s World?” he asked, admiringly, making my morning. “Hey, I’m sure I read that issue. I have all of them from the past decade or so. I’ll look for it when I get home.”

It’s been eight years this month since my piece, “A Short Running Tail,” appeared in RW. It was about my runs with Brindy. And it was my first (and only, so far) article in a magazine anyone could pick up shopping at Fred Meyer. Of course I enjoyed seeing it in print. Then I received a phone call from a lady in Florida, who told me about her two doggies that she took running. Then, a couple months later, RW’s letters to the editor section carried two or three energetic responses to my story.

What fun. I didn’t know then I would all but cease writing that year, or at least abandon the marketing method (if you could call it such) that I’d practiced.

Life changed, because I went through a theological crisis of sorts. More a new journey than a crisis, I guess. In any case, I’m very glad it happened, since it brought me and my family into the community surrounding Gutenberg College. I may write volumes someday about that ongoing experience.

Why, though, did theology keep me from sending more articles to Runner’s World? Partly, it was a desire to try to strike out on a more literary path. Since I was leaving (or at least becoming unable to satisfy theological particulars anymore for) periodicals such as Moody, I decided to become a different author, if possible.

Partly, too, I was able to write some things for Robby at News & Views, learning in the process more about people I interviewed in our new church family.

And the last part was simply having two homeschooled children who were growing up and needing lots of time and energy. What a gift to participate in that project. It’s almost done today (yay; sob; sniffle; grin).

This past year has given me time to explore the literary path. And to have fun blogging. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve made myself a different author. Perhaps I’ve gleaned artistic flourishes, somewhere.

But lately it’s occurred to me writing is a job. The only one, if I gotta bring in a paycheck (and I do), that I prefer. It’s hard; it’s rewarding, like most occupations. Nothing about it will make me rise above anyone. In fact, it can and does bring out the worst in me, as those who’ve followed my whinings on this site can attest. Yet it’s good for me, too. Thank God, 'cause it’s what I do, paycheck or no.

This evening I looked up the Runner’s World website and noticed their author guidelines caution that it’s difficult to get published in their print version. Mmm, I feel good again. Somehow, though, I doubt they want another column from me. A forty-something woman whose dog has retired and whose top speed on her treadmill is 4.8 mph. Hmm. Think I’ll try more sedentary sources in days to come.

In collaborative print

If you followed this entry’s link a while back, you might find it interesting to look here. My sermon-type essay worked for Gutenberg’s monthly News & Views letter, and it will be available online until April.

Robby Julian (yes, she’s Erin’s mom; I’m getting the whole family in here) is N & V’s editor. She could have made her successful way in one of New York’s publishing houses, I’m sure, if her life had been so designed. Thankfully for Gutenberg, some local homeschoolers and myself, Robby has used her talents to teach and faithfully order the written words of others (she has also written articles and poetry).

After Robby asked to use my article, I mulled over her request for hours – NOT. I replied immediately in the affirmative. Then Robby edited, making my piece a bit more academic and definitely more readable.

Next she asked if there were any more I could say, seeing as space remained if I needed it (a rare request; usually editors ever only want you to cut some more). I expressed a desire to follow up on a paragraph near the beginning:

But, you may ask, is a lifetime spent just believing good enough to warrant eternal life? Is someone who repeats the mantra, “I believe, I believe,” being simple, like a character from Peter Pan trying to keep fairies from falling down dead? How can such a faith bring about change in our world? Where is my love for others when I focus on making my mind do this “weird” thing? And who really cares what I believe, as long as my actions show that I am kind, merciful, and just?

I wasn’t sure how to bring those musings back into things near the end and answer my questions aptly. Robby suggested I try. My attempt helped add a bit more, but it still lacked something. Robby (tactfully) emailed her own idea:

So then, a life spent “just believing” describes a person faced into reality, not fairytales. It describes a person God is changing on the inside so that real changes happen (over time) on the outside. It describes a person who, by the grace of God, is learning (over time) to be truly loving, kind, merciful, and just to others. A life spent believing describes a child of God.

It was perfect. The words I wanted but couldn’t access. I learned from reading my own article.

This phenomenon is not new, for me, anyway. Editors augment a writer’s work with much hard work of their own. In the big, wide world, they’re not often recognized. While reading, I fail to think about them except when becoming convinced an article or book lacked editorial guidance. Which is really collaboration. Which I’m grateful for when it’s well done. Thanks, Robby.