Learning

I am learning about faith.  The kind of faith that made our great-grandparents say, "God will provide" when all evidence was to the contrary and people died daily from the flu, from childbirth, from an infected wound.  I am recognizing miracles.  I am remembering that it is not work that makes me tired, but hopelessness.  I am learning to use my stove to heat leftovers because I don't have a microwave.  I am learning that no dishwasher and no microwave makes me think more about the food we eat, and somehow, to waste less.  I am learning that laughing with my children does more to create obedience than discipline does - because love is more powerful than fear.  I am learning about discipline that is not punitive, but productive.  I am learning that it is not ownership that creates a feeling of home, but investment in making a house a pleasant place to spend time does.  I remember that I crave richness in red, but I am learning that the softness of green and yellow bring me to gentleness and peace.  I am learning that people know things about me that I don't have to say, and that they like what they know.  I am learning to go to bed early and to revel in good sleep and good dreams.  I am learning to be disciplined about wasting time because the fruits of wasted time do not satisfy.  I am remembering that reading a good book does not count as wasted time for the fruits are rich and sweet.  My weaknesses taunt, but do not haunt me.  I surprise myself equally with girlish indulgent whimsy and with calm logic and self-control.  I am more woman than girl now, and I am more grateful for my maturity than I ever was for my youth.  I am learning to look forward to the woman I will become without degrading the woman that I am.  I am learning what it is to be loved, and safe, and protected.  And I am remembering, and learning anew, that above all, I love to learn.  

I hope this post feels like richness to you, like red comfort, with highlights in yellow and green.

Grief

No brave platitudes today.  No tidy little ending where my feelings are resolved into a lesson learned.

I HURT.  I keep trying to find something to eat that will answer the emptiness and then I realize the gaping demand is crying from my chest rather than my stomach.  No amount of food will satisfy loneliness.  No volume of sugar will bind up the wounds of my aching heart.  Every country song I love draws out my hurt with its empathic whining sap, or with unkept promises of a love I've never met.  There is not enough understanding in a room full of understanding women to understand away this pain.  

I will sit in this grief until it passes.  The only way out is through.  I guess I ended in a platitude anyway.  Maybe tomorrow I'll laugh at that, but today...today I grieve.

Judgment

It would be easier if I were angry.  Anger is a fabulous tool for creating distance and repelling sympathy or empathy or love.  It is a terrific defense against anguish and heartache.  But I am not angry.  And when I foolishly read his words I am wooed, as I'm sure, are the others who read them, and even when I see the duplicity in his tales, in his depictions of me and our marriage, I question myself first.  And then I hurt.  Because his words make love to me now in ways he never did when we were together.  How many times did my heart beg for some affection, some signal that he had warmth in his heart for me?  And how many times did he utterly reject my supplication?  Did I just miss it?  Did I manage to misinterpret or overlook his shows of affection and love? He calls me a liar, and deceived, and I say the same.  He says I never supported him, that I tried to control him, that I was only and always critical of him...and I would say much the same.  We both say that we have searched our own hearts and examined our consciences for sin.  We both say we feel comforted and sustained by the Lord.  How can that be true?  How can it be that both of us are trying to do what's right and yet, we are here, separated, divorce on the way?  One or both of us must be deceived and deceiving.  

I know of only one objective and qualified judge in this circumstance, and His judgment will not be shown forth until long after this post and my questions are long gone.  Let him judge between me and thee (1 Sam. 24:12).

Solid Ground

So...my last 2 posts have more than alluded to me having a hard time right now.  In fact, they were pretty clear on that point.  But that's not an entirely accurate picture of where I am, because generally, I feel inspired to write when things are particularly difficult and not in the better moments.  Most of my time is spent in better moments.  Better mothering, better health, better happiness.

When someone dies or when something bad happens and it does not absolutely bring us to our knees, we feel an obligation to grief, or at least to the appearance thereof.  "Shouldn't I be more upset?", or something along those lines.  But I trust that what we feel is generally what we ought to feel in that moment, and that when we feel what we ought not to feel, rage, for example, it's an opportunity for us to work through that feeling, and arrive at the other side having learned something from the experience.  In fact, all of it is about learning.  Every experience we have in mortality is an opportunity for us to learn - to refine our skills and talents, to grow in self-discipline, faith, love, and in understanding.  I am learning about faith right now.  Faith that my kids will be okay.  Faith that I am not doomed to failure and misery.  Faith that in this space, when I am alone, I can grow to be more than I have been before, rather shrinking and withering under the weight of aloneness.  I am not lonely.  The depth of my gut does not cry out in anguish or fear and I am not compelled by need as I have been in the past.  This is a revelation in my life.  I have spent my life wandering from need to need, and always needing more.  Contentment and happiness have not been included in my emotional vocabulary.  Yet here, right now, living in a tiny little house that doesn't have carpet, with an absolute minimum of furniture, without someone to hold me at night, with my 3 small children who demand so much care, worry about bills looming, my credibility and competence threatened, I feel genuinely happy and at peace.  I am standing on solid ground, and I am not afraid.

Breathing

I wake up in the morning, or in the middle of the night, and it feels as though I am holding my breath.  The tightness in my chest, the weight of anxiety, the waiting for the other shoe to drop - it holds me captive.  Until I hear "Mommy...!"  And I ask "what do you need?" and I receive my marching orders for this moment, this space.  The activity, the need keeps that weight and breathlessness at bay.  And when I find myself laughing, laughing because I just dumped milk on the baby's head while holding the phone up to my ear with my shoulder, a can of formula in one hand, a bottle and lid, both, in the other hand, and the baby looks up with his beautiful blue eyes like "what?  I already had a bath today, and it was warm!", and my six year old is standing there, looking at me like I'm nuts  - then I breathe from the depth of my gut because there is no room for anxiety in laughter.
But now, sitting at my computer, the kids gone for the day so I can work, I read an email from him and I want to run.  Run to a place where the world makes sense, where I am not forced to choose between 1) arguing over semantics because the lies are so clever they can't be clearly exposed or 2) swallowing my defense and hoping that eventually "by their fruits ye shall know them" will vindicate me.  Not because I want revenge or for him to suffer, but because I want to carry only the guilt that is truly mine.  
He wants to take my kids away from me, and it appears that he intends to do that by shrouding me with the label of mental illness.  He's telling our friends that I have Borderline Personality Disorder.  He told my son that the devil is making me do this, and not to tell me he said that because it would make me more angry with daddy.  My son can't decide if I'm a bad guy or not.  He's six.  I am thoroughly enjoying trying to parent a kid who thinks I am evil, and because it was his daddy who told him that, also thinks I no longer have authority over him.  Really.  Because this isn't hard enough on my kids already.
So I take a deep breath.  And I look forward to a time and a place where the custody is settled, our life has a routine, and I don't have moments of wishing I could just go home.

I can live with that

My one reader left me a comment 5 days ago saying something along the lines of "Hey, you haven't posted since October, why am I a reader of your blog again?". 

Truth is, I have plenty to write about, but I'm short on guts.  I have moved out.  I am divorcing my husband, and likely facing the battle of my life over custody of my two youngest children.  And this blog isn't anonymous enough for me to feel safe describing the day-to-day, or even the overall picture of what these circumstances are doing to me.

A few things I'm learning - 1) righteous people throughout the ages have been persecuted not in spite of their righteousness, but because of it; 2) having my credibility with my kids challenged is far worse than being judged in the court of public opinion; 3) now is not the time for me to say, "I can do it all".

Still, much of the time, I feel a sustaining and powerful peace.  I have hope for my future, I am sleeping more, eating better, and I have more patience and more fun with my kids.  Things are hard, but better.  I can live with that.

Help, help, need help!

Help, help, need help!  I said as I slapped my hand, in uneven rhythm, on the armrest.  The gravelly sound issuing from my throat reminds me of a downshifting Mack truck.  My husband is driving fast, but cautiously.  He tells me that he may seem calm, but he is pretty freaked out because that was the sound I was making right before our first child was born.  We are on our way to the birth center, and my son will be born 45 minutes later.  

This morning as I prayed those words ran through my head - "help, help, need help!".   I wasn't asking for the pain to go away, because pain is fundamental to the birth process, it is not an unfortunate side effect.  And pain in life is the same.  I do not ask for help that the pain might be erased, but there are a few keys to birthing without medication, and without walking away believing it to be a horrific experience - we need help to cope with the pain.  My childbirth class taught that the keys are rhythm, ritual, and relaxation.  Perhaps the most troubling times in life are when events disrupt our daily rhythm, throw off our rituals, and when stress prevents relaxation.  I could not settle into rhythm and ritual, I could not relax in that stressful ride to the birth center when the contractions were coming hard and fast, and labor had seemed to arrive out of nowhere.  I needed someone to settle me down, to guide me to my center where I could devise my own comfort.  Today I feel trapped in my life, hemmed in by circumstances, some in my hands, but many that seem to be out of my control.  And I want help, need help, need a guiding principle like listening to my breath, or focusing on an object, or slapping my hand in time with my vocalizing to get me through this disrupted, painful day.  Labor progression is stopped when mom gets too cerebral, too tapped into thinking and worry, too distracted to allow the primitive part of her brain to let the natural processes of birth take over.  Life progression gets stopped when too many factors crowd my mind and I cannot see a clear path ahead of me.  When I cannot take the action that makes the most sense, that fixes the problem, because there are other worries, other factors to address, other agencies to respect.  Today I cry, help, help, need help.  Not to take away the pain, but to settle me down, to guide me to my center where I can devise my own solution.