lamentations

“In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o' clock in the morning,
day after day.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I cried my way home from Charlotte.

All of it.

The climb towards cruising altitude
the rough air when the plane tossed like an ATV jumping sand dunes at kitty hawk
I cried during the beverage service, when I was tempted to order a double,
mid-afternoon
I cried sitting bitch between a gum-popping pregnant woman
and an elderly man who's cranium shook from side to side while he slept
like a bobble head doll
I cried even though I knew the lash blast would streak like fresh paint
under running water

I cried as I traveled toward home.

I don't understand the platitude about God not giving us more than we can handle.
To what end?

More than I can handle before an embolism?
More than I can handle without leveling my eyes at strangers who annoy me
for no legitimate reason?

All that means is that life will go on regardless.
It doesn't even promise you'll survive.

Work is a mess right now.

People keep shuffling things from their crowded plates to mine,
which has long since overflowed.
My natural tendency is to deck these people.
To put their actions in perspective.
To level them with my words.
At least in my head.

But of course I cannot. I would not. I don't really even want to.
It would only satisfy the part of me that would like to spread the toxicity,
which threatens to choke out the light.

Besides,
the rare occasions when I do raise my hand in complaint always leave me feeling
petty. foolish. exposed.

Yet when I don't complain,
when I shoulder the burden and keep my feelings to myself
I'm told that I'm intimidating. Arrogant. Not human enough.
Not prone to show weakness.

I doubt the passengers in seats D and F would agree with that assessment
as my shoulders shake and my make-up runs.

People always offer to help, but they rarely mean it.
I started to say never, but Doug would disapprove of my use of absolutes.

It feels like never to me.

In my experience, everyone is busy and I am alone.
Accomplished, but alone.

I know how to survive.
That's what I'm good at.
I get shit done,
Rob Peter to pay Paul
Dream the answers
Write while driving
Type frantically as the seconds tick and hit send before the buzzer
only to be lauded for the effort.

But I don't know how to do that and remain soft.

I don't know how to do that and not appear as a monster
to the people who promote "balance" without lessening expectation.

It's a catch 22 I suppose.
But it's my catch 22. I have to live it.
And my sherpas are never around.

God is around.
But he can't write my creative brief.
And He doesn't choose to heal my mom's cancer.

Best I can tell He promises that the sun will rise even if I fail
and when I die I won't have to write creative briefs at all.

That just doesn't help me on the long flight home from Charlotte.

Learning How to Die

Context: I'm in a weekly huddle, run by the brilliant and beautiful Jo Saxton. Each week I dial in to talk to Jo, Libby, Beccy and TJ about what God is revealed (and what He's asking us to do in response). Last week, Jo posed the question to the group: What is God asking you to die to? And the post below is my response...

___

I need to die to...
the need for affirmation from those around me.

I thrive on praise (particularly for my competence), so it's always a treacherous space for me. It's so motivating. It's so affirming. It's so addictive!

When I felt like God was starting to challenge me finding my identity in my work I found myself automatically putting more effort into my volunteer projects - at first I thought it was my way of refocusing my energies. But subconsciously I believe it was because I was getting the affirmation there I'd gotten so used to at the agency. I had this moment at our annual planning day for blood:water mission where I looked around the room at the adoring faces and I felt really ugly. I wondered how much of my motivation for staying up night after night to build the perfect strategy/ presentation was for the good of Africa and how much of it was my pathetic need to impress people. I think it was at least 80/20 good intentions, but I hate that I had mixed motivations.

Last weekend I sat in a coffee shop reading The Enneagram. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I'm a base 4 (The Need to Be Special) with a 3 Wing (The Need to Succeed). I saw so much of my need for external affirmation in those pages. The 4 feels there's something fundamentally wrong with them. Like they're different (more flawed) than everyone else and at the same time that feeling like an outsider becomes a part of their identity and they embrace it as a need to be special - set apart.

The book talks about about how the 4 (which is the quintessential "artist" type) needs creative expression as a way to exorcise the junk within. I can totally see that in my writing. It's such a transcendent experience for me (when I apply the discipline to sit down and do it) and often I find answers I didn't know I had at the tip of my pen (or it's digital extension).

So when Doug and I were talking about what I should do in response to that kairos, he suggested I really focus on my blog - but create it in such a way that no one can comment on it. No one can praise me for my writing. Or affirm the way they connect with it. And the thought was devastating to me. The uglier part of me thought, "Then how will I know I'm special? How will I know I'm worth anything? If people can't comment, where will my sense of well being come from?"

The monster rears it's ugly head.

I think I need to die to needing "credit," affirmation, outward signs of success. But I'm truthfully terrified that if the voices telling me I'm okay go away I'll completely disappear.

Small enough

I suspect God is constantly trying to get my attention. A word of kindness here. A word of warning there. Sometimes I’m good at listening. Sometimes I can’t slow down long enough to think. Let alone to sit with Him and have a cup of tea. Yet, gently He presses.

This isn’t the forum for the rolling kairos that God has been speaking to me for the last few months. But I’ve shared with a few of you the areas where He’s probing me.

First was my identity.
"Elizabeth, do you see yourself as what you can produce? Or as a daughter of the king?"

Then it was my happiness.
"Don’t you think I can make you happy? You seem to believe I’m either apathetic or incompetent."

I once read a book in which a woman asks, “What would you do if you were carrying the world on your shoulders?” and the man she’s speaking to says, “Shrug.” In ways big and small He seems to whisper, "Set it down Elizabeth. Set it down."

Right now I’m reading Bird by Bird, a book about writing by one of my favorite authors. She tells this story…

"When I was 21, I had my tonsils removed… afterward swallowing hurt so much that I could barely open my mouth for a straw. I had prescription painkillers. When they ran out and the pain hadn’t I called the nurse and said that she would really need to send another prescription over and maybe a little mixed grill of drugs because I was also feeling somewhat anxious. But she wouldn’t… [She said that] I needed to buy some gum of all things and chew it vigorously – the thought of which made me clutch my throat. She explained that when we have a wound in our body, the nearby muscles cramp around it to protect it from any more violation and from infection, and that I would need to use these muscles if I wanted them to relax again. So…I began to chew with skepticism and hostility. The first bite caused a ripping sensation in the back of my throat, but within minutes all the pain was gone – permanently. I think something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds – the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliation suffered in both – to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So the wounds never have a chance to heal."

And for all of my analysis and talk about how the difficulties of my past have shaped me into the person I am today (for good and for ill), the muscles of my character contract around my wounds to protect me from reinjury. I don’t ask God for anything because I’m afraid of being disappointed when He says no. I choose to be the tough girl who can handle life alone because I secretly fear that alone is exactly what I am. I leave people before they can leave me. And for all the ways in which my eyes have been opened to a parent’s love by having a daughter of my own, my muscles contract around the fear that I’m different than Avery because she is lovable and I am not.

I am seldom reinjured in those spaces. But I’m also never really healed.

Not yet anyway.

I’m flying over the American Midwest as I write this. Before me, a glowing screen. Beside me, a window into the world below. Brown and dead from winter wind, yet the intricacy of the landscape leaves me awestruck at the power and artistry of our creator. I was getting lost in the bigness of God as I descended from the clouds, until I caught sight of a flock of sheep. I was reminded of the bible’s promises that God is our shepherd. And that He would go after even one of His sheep if it were to go astray. I may not be astray. But I frequently have one foot outside the pen. I’m sure God finds this annoying.

I’m reminded of a song I haven’t listened to in years. One that captures the vulnerability I try so often to keep at bay. The need for a God so big and yet small enough for my tiny world. This is my prayer as I fly home tonight:

oh great God
be small enough to hear me now

there were times when I was crying from the dark of daniel’s den
and I have asked you once or twice if you would part the sea again
but tonight I do not need a fiery pillar in the sky
just want to know you’re going to hold me if I start to cry

oh great God
be small enough to hear me now

there have been moments when I could not face goliath on my own
and how could I forget we’ve marched around our share of jericho’s?
but I will not be setting out a fleece for you tonight
just want to know that everything will be alright

oh great God
be close enough to feel you now

oh praise and all the honor be
to the God of ancient mysteries
who’s every sign and wonder turn the pages of our history

but tonight my heart is heavy
and I cannot keep from whispering this prayer

are you there?

and I know you could leave writing on the wall that’s just for me
or send wisdom while I’m sleeping like in solomon’s sweet dreams
but I don’t need the strength of sampson or a chariot in the end

i just want to know that you still know how many hairs are on my head

oh great God
be small enough to hear me now.

Anna Karenina, Mamah Cheney and me.

I had a kairos moment sitting reading in Barnes & Nobles today, and I thought it might be helpful to write in order to unravel it.

A recent revelation to note. I've always fancied myself someone who, through much introspection, is thoroughly acquainted with my inner life. It turns out that's not true. I am introspective. And according to a Myers-Briggs assessment, my type (the ENTP) is more aware of my environment than almost any other type because my dominant drive in life is to understand the world I live in. But paradoxically, ENTPs are often quite unaware of their own feelings. Perhaps because of the extraversion which dismisses the need for quiet and solitude. Perhaps because of the constant drive to invent, create and seek new frontiers (leaving inadequate time for true reflection). After a lifetime of feeling like I quite knew myself, I am coming to terms with the fact that I often am misinformed about my initial reactions to things. And it's only when I take extra time (something in such short supply) that I can peel back the additional layer to discern (or receive revelation) on what's actually going on.

So back to my kairos. Here's how it happened...

6 weeks ago on vacation in the Dominican Republic I read Loving Frank, a well-researched novel about the life of Mamah Cheney, the little know mistress (and eventually common-law wife) of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Mamah was bright, challenging, restless, independent and fearless. So fearless that she left her affable husband (whom she had no real affection for) to pursue a passionate love affair with Frank. They both left their marriages and children to be together. After a stint in Europe they returned home to America to face the wreckage they had left behind, and while both of them suffered for their affair - [she was particularly scorned and ultimately met an untimely end, which some no doubt attributed as some sort of divine retribution for her adultery] - she seemed to bear the lion's share of public scrutiny for their union. The book left me heartbroken, frustrated and unsettled. When I turned the last page I literally threw the novel across the room, watched it hit the wall and sink to the tile below.

3 years ago I met a man named Steve Garber in what I can only call a divine appointment. We took a walk together and he asked me about my work, my life, my (then) recent marriage. It was one of those strange conversations that you just know are going to be significant though you don't know why. Even though we only talked briefly I remember so much about the conversation. I remember the grandfatherly warmth he exuded in our time together. I remember the sincerity and love that emanated from his person. I remember the way his eyes filled with tears and his voice broke when he spoke the words "the new heaven and the new earth" (a reference to Revelation 21, which has since become my favorite verse in all of scripture). During that conversation he suggested that I read Anna Karenina and I said that I would.

I bought Anna Karenina in Kramerbooks & Afterwords in Dupont Circle the following weekend and anxiously dove in, fully expecting to find it transformative. Half way through I was surprised that in fact I find Russian writers quite laborious and was having to push myself through it. Somewhere in the midst of it I left the book at my aunt's house in South Carolina on vacation. She wasn't able to find it, and assuming the book would later resurface, it was put on hold indefinitely.

3 nights ago I ran into Steve in DC and we talked about the book. He asked what I thought of it, and too embarrassed to admit that I hadn't finished it, I pulled from my memory of my reaction upon putting it down. "Sad. I thought it was sad." He, of course, pointed out that the book is ultimately redemptive - and I resolved to finish Anna Karenina after all this time. So it was with that goal in mind that I descended upon Barnes & Nobles tonight. I sat on the floor of the Fiction & Literature section for hours until I'd finished it. Yet I felt a familiar emotion creeping up in me as I read the final pages.

Heartbroken, frustrated and unsettled.

Tempted to throw the book across the room, just to watch it fall.

It wasn't redemptive for Anna. She, like Mamah Cheney, left her husband and child for the man she loved, was scorned by society and met an untimely end. I started to wrestle (and have been wrestling since) with the 2 reactions that both of these stories evoked.

1 IT WASN'T WORTH IT. (and)

2 IT'S NOT FAIR.

I'll start with the second, because it's easier. Both of these women lost everything. Their children, their friends, their reputations, their lives. Both of them left everything behind to be with the men they loved. Men who were equal participants in the adultery. Frank Lloyd Wright had a wife and children of his own. Vlosky pursued Anna knowing full well that she was married to another man. And while neither man emerged unscathed from these affairs (careers suffered and both ultimately suffered the loss of the woman he loved) - what they experienced was NOTHING compared to the fate of their paramours. These women were skewered by society for their choices as if they'd made them alone. And for both of them to die... I don't know. It just felt like a cautionary tale to women and women alone. [WARNING: Following one's heart will ultimately lead to your demise.] I didn't see Frank hacked up by a servant or Vronsky thrown in front of a train. It just felt so uneven. The women perished for their love and the men went on living. Where's the justice in that? Maybe it's the feminist in me, but I found that deeply disturbing. So strong was the sense of misogyny (real or imagined) that it almost overrode the second, and I suspect more significant reaction.

It wasn't worth it.

A year and a half ago a couple in our small group broke up. After ten rocky years of marriage, 2 beautiful girls and some genuine bright spots, Kelly got sick of Chris's gambling, his temper, his negativity - and she had an affair. She "fell in love" (or thought she did) with a friend of his, and following her heart, saw this other man (who was also married) for 6 months unbeknownst to any of us. It unraveled and she ultimately came clean, but decided to end the marriage anyway realizing that the affair had been a symptom of the diseased marriage and not the cause of their troubles. It was devastating. To everyone we knew. To our circle of friends (none of whom had ever really been that close to an affair), to the 2 involved (Chris still hasn't really recovered and has left the faith altogether) and most of all to their little girls. And in the midst of that turmoil (and in moments since) I've occasionally felt these pangs of regret and, remembering the good times and the potential we saw in both of them, thought "it didn't have to be this way."

I felt a lot like that when reading these books. The stories are tragic. Even before the deaths of their heroines, both women's lives were in ruins. Their children were devastated and robbed of their mothers (and as a new mother myself I can't quite explain how upsetting that was for me to think about). Their husbands (though representative of fairly loveless marriages) were anguished. The reaches of the destruction sin wreaked on their lives and those of everyone near them can't quite be explained. And I kept thinking that it wasn't worth the warm feelings or good sex. It wasn't worth sense of destiny or significance. And it didn't have to be that way. I ached at that thought. And I ached in wishing it could all be undone. But as much as I wanted to hate them or at least be angry with these women for abandoning their children in pursuit of personal fulfillment - I couldn't. I related to them too much.

Not because I'm in a loveless marriage (thankfully) or because I love someone else (I don't). But I relate to wanting to feel significant. I relate to wanting to be loved passionately. For wanting to live an epic love story. One in which I and my husband ache for each other the way we did in the beginning. I relate to feeling like life isn't what I signed on for at times. For reading a book or seeing a movie in which the dashing hero sacrifices everything to be with the woman he loves - and wishing someone loved me that much. He does so because he thinks she's beautiful. Because he thinks she's worth it. And sometimes I find myself wishing I was worth it.

(Note: Don't try explaining that to your husband or he will feel deeply inadequate and sincerely wounded.)

I started thinking about the intermingling of tragedy and recognition I saw in those women and wondering what God was trying to say. Both women chased passion and believed it would bring lasting happiness. Both were disappointed. Aren't we always when we chase the things we think will make us happy? Where are the areas in my life where I want my identity to be affirmed by others? And how often does that end up deeply passing and disappointing?

I'll be honest. I'm too tired to write much or process much more tonight. But I wanted to get these thoughts out of my head for fear that they'll dissolve before I fully understand.

Good night dear void.