A Christmas Worthy Love

The Bible teaches that barriers to our success exist in our mind. Your abilities with God have no limit. You will do great things in your life. Your “Bamma” prayed this prayer over you as an infant every night, so grateful to God for the gift of our next family generation.

David defeated Goliath NOT because he fought well…

But because he believed well.

My mother in law wrote these words under a full quote of Psalm 139. She wrote them to my son when he was five, shortly before she lost her battle with cancer. I can barely type those words without being overcome with awe. Not tears. Awe. This was a person who knew the end was not only coming but imminent. There would be no last second medical heroics and no sudden news of a misdiagnosis.

So what did she do? She turned to her God. The same God who had not, for some reason, answered all her prayers to be healed, prayers that I’m sure were whispered to heaven with no selfish motives. She wanted to stay awhile longer. For her husband and her children, and most of all, for her beautiful grandson, who was born with Cerebral Palsy and was going up against a terrifying world with special needs. She wanted to be there, to help, love, kiss and counsel him through it all. But God said no.

So what did she do? She turned it all over to God. Again, I have to say…awe. It was a maturity of faith that a Jacob-like fellow like myself could not (and still cannot) grasp. I’m all about questioning God, debating God, wrestling God. To endure the pain and solitude of leaving this world in my fifties, before my youngest child has married and just five years after my first grandchild was born? Oh man. God knows me. I’m too weak for that. My faith is not there yet. There would be war. I would fall away.

But Carol WAS ready. It WAS her time. As I think of her this Christmas season I remember a woman who loved to put up her Nativity set, building and expanding on the display and characters and joy represented therein. I think of someone who lovingly chastised my obsessions with wealth, power and money. The woman who once told me I was a horrible multi-tasker (the nerve!) and who would quietly watch me with her daughter, to make sure that each day I was worthy of the gift God gave me in Maxime’s love. And I think of the woman who wanted Anthony to hear her voice whenever he was down.

So what did she do? She left a love note to her grandson that laid it all out under the canopy of scripture. Then she framed it. In a written testimony of faith, she turned his growth and well-being over to the God born in a manger under a bright star in a dark night sky. It was blind faith. It was naïve. It was pure and utter surrender. It was a Christmas worthy love.

And what did God do? Take a look at my son. You will find your answer there.

Mother, May I? (Part 3 of 3)

One player is "mother". The other players are the "children". To begin the game, the mother stands at one end of a room and turns around facing away, while all the children line up at the other end. The children take turns asking "Mother, may I ____?" and makes a movement suggestion, like "Mother, may I take five steps forward?" The mother either replies "Yes, you may" or "No, you may not do that, but you may _____ instead" and inserts her own suggestion. The players usually move closer to the mother but are sometimes led farther away. – Wikipedia (“Mother May I’ Game Rules)

My mother never intentionally meant to harm me. She may have done things that made me move farther away from her, or made unfavorable suggestions. But note that the child has a role in this game too. The child can ask to move forwards many steps, openly, or very few, guardingly. I am working my way towards being healed. I hope you are too, with your splinters, because we all have them. It’s just that most of us get caught in the trap of thinking and talking about them, instead of just getting them out.

I’m done asking my mother for permission to love her or be loved by her. What’s that you say? “You kinda don’t have a choice now, Tony. She’s gone.” If only that were so. The truth is that Death does not end the conversation. It only starts a new one. Now I only ask her one thing: “May I?”

And as I pray for help sometimes to pull those splinters out, and feel the angels come to minister to my wounds? I feel another presence there, too. She has soft brown hair and a sweet smile. When she was little she would play hide in seek in her favorite dress and give herself away by giggling too much. Then she grew up, tall and stunningly beautiful, and the world began to take advantage of her, and she let it. Until she couldn’t take it anymore and lashed out at it and lost her way a bit.

Heaven has removed my mother’s splinters, of this I am sure, and from the other side of that veil, I can feel her now, being the mother she always wanted to be. Because mother’s never really leave us, and they never stop tending to the “boo-boo’s”, especially the ones they themselves have caused us. 

And if I wait patiently enough? I can feel her kissing each and every one of them, just before she whispers “Alllll better now.”

Mother, May I? (Part 2 of 3)

“With my mother’s death all settled happiness disappeared from my life. There was much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.” – C.S. Lewis

In the midst of mourning the loss of her husband, my mother immediately turned to her children. In her mind it was time, at last, to address many issues. But it’s never that easy. Sometimes the past is a very tall wall. Frustrated and confused she found sanctuary in her faith and the church. Now I had a problem. As a Christian, I had to deal with Jesus getting all up in my face. Not only about harboring unforgiveness in my heart or failing to honor my mother, but also about shutting out a fellow believer who was in need.

For me, this was beyond the pale. Thirty-five years of hurts were supposed to just be set aside? Really?  “Do you not understand my splinters?!” I cried out to Jesus. He looked down at me from the cross with tired eyes that said, “Really? Your splinters? Try coming up here for a while.” Jesus understood that the splinters had to be removed. Not discussed. Not understood. Not rationalized. Not theorized over. Just. Removed.

My mother and I began to work on this process. We talked openly of the hurts we’d caused one another over the years and I was stunned to find that I had caused splinters in her as well…imagine that. I know what you’re expecting…a happy ending. But no. Neither of us had what it took to get the job completely done. We were able to end the war, but unable to comprehend what to do next with the peace that followed. Two hearts reached a detente, of sorts, but the borders, sadly, remained.

Then she died.

But after she was gone I realized that though the splinters were still there? Our efforts to love one another had at least brought them closer to the surface. I could see them again, and get at them, and begin removing them. I’m still at it. And can I tell you something? It hurts. Really bad. A splinter quickly removed is not painless, but a splinter from a festering wound? Yikes. But it was time.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK.

Mother, May I? (Part 1 of 3)

Somebody's Mother

Somebody's mother today

Will linger by her phone

Hoping one child will call

Before the day has flown.

Somebody's mother will weep,

Heartbroken and stunned tonight,

Because her children gone

Forgot to call or write.

Somebody's mother somewhere

Will kiss with lips of grief,

Portraits of children grown

And cry herself to sleep.

Often in my life, I tend to dwell on the hurts. I like to tell myself that it’s the intellectual thing to do: engage those mental and emotional wounds to better understand the pains they cause. But lately, I’m not sure that one is meant to understand pain. The body evidently doesn’t think so; it feels it and reacts to heal it as quickly as possible. And that works, as long as the splinter is in our flesh. 

But the splinters in our mind are a different matter, entirely. For some reason we feel that we can only get these “out” by contemplating them, ruminating over them and analyzing them. Many of us will find a way to blame ourselves for some of the splinters, and then begin a series of construction projects in and around each of them, inevitably making more out of them than they originally were.

The thing is…splinters are only meant to be removed. 

My mother and I separated when I was five. She left. My father and I. And just like those two, very short and no doubt grammatically incorrect sentences, that was life for a long time: my father and I, against the world, and my mother leaving, only the one time in reality, but in my heart? It felt like she left over and over. It was a sharp splinter and in my youth I only pushed it down, further and further. Until I couldn’t see it.

Forty years later the man my mother left us for died. I was as indifferent to his death as I was to her grief. My dad once told me that my mom had a saying she’d use with us kids (me and my half brother and sister) that used to drive him crazy. It was “You made your bed, now go lie in it.” Well. As my mother mourned and found herself suddenly all alone in world, I didn’t say that to her, but God help me, I thought it. Yeah, I know. Harsh. And we're just getting started.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…

Word Up

- Emily Dickenson

There was a time when words spoken and words written had meaning. They still do, of course. But, sadly, they are spoken less frequently, and when written, come now to us in muted strings of 140 characters, or in Facebook posts that only highlight the victories of our lives. But there is no real wisdom in the garbled haikus of Twitter. No defeat in the glamorous posts on Facebook.

I think the world would be a better place if people were just willing to bleed a little in public. Not in a self-pitying way, not to play the martyr, but rather to more genuinely proclaim their humanity. Because there is a strength to be found in sharing our weaknesses, to help each other. As Hemingway says, “"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." It’s our job to seek those with wounds that match, to advise, and wounds that don’t match, to consult.

A word is a living thing. Spoken. Written. Conveyed. So often, we don’t take time for them anymore, and as a result, it is a crime each day how many moments of love, connection and encouragement are lost forever, sacrificed on the altar of our newsfeeds and work deadlines. Until, one day, you wake up and say, “Waitaminutenow. Hold on. I…have something…I want…to say.” If your heart is right, this moment is not followed by an egotistical “Listen to me!” but rather in a humble, contrite, nauseatingly vulnerable “Will you hear me?”

I write stories because of words. It is in their architecture that I can find a way…to you, to others...and invite you in. A story is a building, the opening the foyer and each chapter a room. Once the tour is over, all I can hope for is that I will find you in the study, warming yourself by the fire, a little richer for the experience before you head back out into the world that is your life.

And if that world is sometimes cold and lonely? If I have been blessed enough in the telling of the thing, you will have been given a story that sparks a fire in you that will never go out.

Happy Reading

There is, I think, an inevitability to all things. Growing old, the change of seasons, discord amongst peoples, temptation and auto spell repeatedly failing you during a text, to name a few.

Recently I read “The Pearl” by John Steinbeck. It’s a fascinating little read that reminded me of how much I love short stories (Hemingway and Chekov are two of my favs) and how much I miss them. There’s something magical about a writer saying something briefly, sometimes even incompletely, and then moving on down the road, leaving the reader to sift through the remnants and distill the reflections. A firmer acknowledgment, I think, by the creator of a thing in asserting the equal role of the recipient in the alchemy of the entire process of creation.

I’ve moved on to novels now; the form of them, the art of them. For my birthday my sister-in-law gave me “Journal of a Novel” by…drum roll please…John Steinbeck. Hm. For a guy I've hardly ever read, he's popping up a lot lately. Anyway, it’s a fascinating read so far. Not so much for the technical aspects of writing a novel (the book is his journal as he was preparing to write East of Eden) as much as for the internal aspects of the mind of one of the masters, as he struggled with his views, visions and dreams…of his life to be as much as of his work to be.

Those who know me well know that lurking in the shadows of all I read or write are two great forces: C.S. Lewis and Marcel Proust. One to make sure that I’m listening to God, the other to make sure that I’m listening to my heart. I’ve had a literary novel in the works for ten years now, that’s at nearly 400 pages, and I’ve been scared to push on. “It will be too long,” I say to myself. “At least 1200 pages and probably far too boring.” To which Proust says, “I call your 1200 pages and raise you 2300 pages more.” It’s a novel about spirituality and mental health and when I get all nervous about talking about such things, Lewis replies: “If you’re not talking about God, why bother talking at all?”

I get locked up there, in my head space, and trip out. So does anyone think it’s a coincidence that along comes Steinbeck now, to share in his journal things like “There is nothing beyond this book – nothing follows it. It must contain all in the world I know and it must have everything in it of which I am capable – all styles, all techniques, all poetry – and it must have in it a great deal of laughter.” Or how about, “I can’t think of anything else necessary to a writer except a story and the will and the ability to tell it.”

I could go on but I think you’re getting the drift. Because we're all readers, you see, of our own lives. God the creator has made of us very short stories indeed, but we are each an epic tale. He has moved on down the road, yes, but if you look closely? He’s still watching from just around the bend. To see if you will sift through the remnants and distill the reflections, both of who you are and of who you’re meant to be.

Sing Me A Song

“In the full light of day, and in hearing of the music of other voices, the caged bird will not sing the song that his master seeks to teach him. He learns a snatch of this, a trill of that, but never a separate and entire melody. But the master covers the cage, and places it where the bird will listen to the one song he is to sing. In the dark, he tries and tries again to sing that song until it is learned, and he breaks forth in perfect melody. Then the bird is brought forth, and ever after he can sing that song in the light. Thus God deals with His children. He has a song to teach us, and when we have learned it amid the shadows of affliction we can sing it ever afterward.”  -- Nature Lessons /MH 472.  {VSS 461.2}

We all have a pretty good idea understanding the concept of being taught lessons. From almost day one we’re dealing with them; at home as children, and then at school, as adolescents, and even later, as young adults, in college, one lesson after another. Then? We get a job. More lessons.

So it should come as no surprise that many of us approach our spiritual walk, our faith, in much the same way. We study, read, observe and apply almost everything we learn into a paradigm of learning, with God as the teacher, handing out lesson after lesson, and we as the students, trying to learn them and “make the grade”. At some point we begin to sense we have this wrong, so like any good student just trying to survive, we avoid the letter grade and go for a “Pass/Fail”.

Then we fail.

Maybe it’s a health issue, or someone dies, or someone lets you down. There are so many ways to have your heart broken in this life. I could type for ten hours straight, trying to list them all, and barely scratch the surface. But whatever the cause of our pain, we act like good students. We respond to it with our knowledge, will, study, scripture, understanding and all those lessons we’ve learned.

And it doesn’t work.

Because God has not brought you this far to teach how to think, He’s not about "head space". He wants to teach you how to sing and feel. He’s about "heart space". What if every dark moment of your life, as painful and radical as it may sound, was God covering the cage over your heart (the cage you built with your own two hands, by the twisted metal of your sins) not only so that you WOULD listen, but also so that you COULD listen. In all the noise of this world you would then hear God whispering to you a tune of surrender, patience, presence and love.

What if the only lesson we’re ever really meant to learn is simply how to sing that sweet song of grace? 

Pleasure & A Paycheck

In the trials of life that come, and go, and come back around again, we often find ourselves. By that, I mean, our true selves, the part of us that has learned to hold the line, or that part of us that still, instinctively, inevitably, flees. You are in that moment, the real you, and that’s where you will find out how much you've grown, and yes, how far you still have to go.

I used to find such moments shameful because, to be honest, fleeing, or even doing the wrong thing, was just plain easier. “Life is hard enough”, I used to tell myself, “Without shouldering a single ounce more than I have to.” Screw that. Count me out. Get me to the next concert, or bar, and the next beer. I liked all that “eat, drink and be merry” stuff that Solomon talked about in the Bible. For that? You could count me in.

But I was, of course, doing selective reading. 

You don’t have to be a spiritual person to appreciate that tough times happen. Maybe, no matter how hard you try, you can’t get past being single. You keep meeting someone, who may be the right one, who ends up being the last one, while you’re left waiting for the next one. Or your job blindsides you by passing you up for a promotion. Or worse. Today I was on LinkedIN and saw a connection announcing her resignation as CEO of her company effective Feb 1^st, due to Stage 4 breast cancer that has spread rapidly to her bones and lungs. She's in her mid-30’s. Married. No children.

There’s something to be observed in all of these challenges. They’re all pains of a different kind, but they each tell us that we only have so much time to get things right, to figure things out, as best we can, in the time that we have left. You can say that we will never “figure things out”, and if you add the word “entirely” then I would agree. But we should be trying. If were not, we're simply existing. The billions of cells that have been brought together to make us each a sentient being would then be an alchemy of wasted effort, by a God who would love us nonetheless, but still, I imagine, be left scratching his head at the end of our days saying, “Really? All those years and it never became about more than just pleasure and a paycheck?”

The trials will come. We must practice facing them, not fleeing or avoiding them, and learn from them. That’s how we will grow. We must find hand holds of a firmer grip, not on the grand scale of the universe around us but of the universe within. Because life isn’t just all about the trials; it’s about all the moments amidst and in between them. That’s where the real you will always be found.