Unclasping Our Hands

They can feel the baby’s head.  It’s nice and low, they say.  There’s no going back now.  They tell me my body is getting ready.  Things are opening up, thinning out, progressing nicely.  I remind them not to predict when they’ll see me at the hospital.  I remind them that I walked around for a good three weeks with Charlie all ready to go, but he decided to circle the runway, take his sweet time, look both ways before crossing the street.  When he did decide to show up, he was confident and sure, barely gave me time to take off my coat before he appeared slimy and secure with these big hands that made the nurses gasp—Wow!

The midwife says they can induce me after 39 weeks if things are progressing and I’m feeling uncomfortable.  “No,” I say quickly, “I don’t want that.”  And I don’t.

Many of my friends know when their babies will arrive.  As a matter of necessity or convenience, they have scheduled inductions or C-sections.  That’s fine and as it should be…for them and their individual situations.  But as restless and uneasy as I feel, and as uncomfortable as I will get, I’d rather not know.

Last week I had some sudden dull back pain.  I sat, aching on the couch, remembering this feeling with Charlie, this false alarm that things were starting.  Yesterday he was so active, I felt that for sure his head might pop out while I was dishing up the spaghetti.  And last night, I had a runner’s cramp in my lower abdomen while I lay awake wondering, “Is this it?  Are you coming?”

I am feeling bored in my body--sick of being a lump on the couch, unable to run in the yard with my boys, unable to hoist myself out of the pool, unable to make it to noon without needing a nap.

But at the same time, I’m excited by the page-turner that life is here in August 2014.  I’m thrilled that at any moment my body could start doing funny, strange things—spilling water, cramping up, creating urgency, creating life.  I don’t want to skip ahead.  I like the foreshadowing, the chance for prediction, the opportunity to be right or wrong.  Someone else is in charge of this narrative.  I have to think about what’s for dinner tonight, but I like living in the possibility that I might not be there to make it.

And it doesn’t escape me that while I’m talking about life, I could just as easily be talking about death.  It doesn’t escape me that friends and acquaintances who are living with terminal cancer or illness could be feeling the same things with less enthusiasm—sick of being a lump on the couch, unable to run in the yard with their kids, unable to make it to noon without needing a nap, someone else in charge of their narrative, planning a life they might not be there to see.

And this is where faith lives.  An atheist friend said recently, “I just don’t understand when people say they need to pray about it.  I don’t get it.”

It’s a big question.  I wasn’t sure how to answer.  But I think the answer is here.  Although we clasp our hands tightly in prayer, it is actually an opening up, palms to the sky, a release. 

Writing the story, planning the days, creating the life can be fun, exhilarating.  We feel good about the productivity of it all, the routine, the certainty we feel we can create if we lay out the plan just right.  We like to have a spot for the scissors; we like to know where things are kept.  We like to view the hourly forecast, so we know just when to mow the lawn or when to plan a day at home.  We get shaken when the baby wakes up with a fever because the playdate is on the calendar, the babysitter is all lined up for our night out.  It’s written out in front of us—the plan, the expectation, the certainty of what is to come.

But prayer is an unclasping of the hands, a closing of the calendar, and an opening of the heart and mind.  It’s the fear of the unknown transformed into the thrill of the ride, the trust that despite the discomfort, the suffering, the restlessness, there is something marvelous waiting on the other side, something beyond our own imagination, something written in ink that could never come from our pen alone.

Because even when there’s a 90% chance of rain, there’s still a 10% chance for something else.  And as long as there’s that 10%, there’s always an opportunity to fall to our knees, open our hands and pray that Someone Else knows exactly what He’s doing on the next page.

Impossible Questions, Implausible Answers

"So, Mommy did God die?"  The question came from the backseat, from five-year-old Finny, early morning, on our way to the YMCA.  I had one and a half cups of coffee in me, and still felt like I could easily take a nap if given the opportunity.

"No, God will never die.  But, Jesus died and then three days later he rose from the dead."

"How did Jesus die?"

"Well, some people killed him."  Lame, incomplete answer.  He's five.  How much do I say?

"Why would they kill Jesus?  He's the best!"

"Because they didn't agree with what he was saying."

"I'm gonna kill those people!"

"Well, Jesus wouldn't want you to do that.  He would want you to forgive them.  Remember that song we sing, Amazing Grace?  Well, grace means that even bad guys get forgiven.  Even when you do something very wrong, if you ask God, He will forgive you.  That's how much He loves you."

"So, Jesus is alive now?"

"Yes, he's alive and he rose up to heaven to be with God."

"So if God is his father, is God Joseph?"

"That's a great question.  You know how God took a piece of me and a piece of Daddy to make you?  Well, God took a piece of Mary and a piece of God to make Jesus and then, Joseph acted like his father on Earth, while God was his father in heaven."  I realized how unbelievable it was as I said it.

"That's confusing."

"Yeah, it is confusing."

"So, where is Jesus now?"

"He's in heaven with God."

"Will we die?"

"Yes, we'll die and then we get to live in heaven with God and Jesus."

"Is heaven on Earth?"

"No, it's better than Earth."

"I can't wait to see God, but why do I have to wear a dress in heaven?"

"What do you mean?"

"At school when we see pictures of angels, they have dresses on."

"Oh, well, I'm not sure what you'll wear in heaven, but I bet you don't have to wear a dress if you don't want to."

"Oh, ok."  

And then before we could go any further, "Let's stop talking about this."  It came from three-year-old Charlie, who was trying to follow the tangled ball of string I was unwinding.

"Yeah, we can stop talking about this.  The most important thing is that you know God loves you very much and he forgives you."

Small morning.  Big questions.  And my answers always seemed to sell it short.  It sounded ridiculous.  It sounded like fiction.  Man born from God, dies and rises from the dead, loves the people who killed him, expects us to try and do the same.

It sounded implausible to me...how did it sound to a five-year-old?

Every year, I grieve at Lent.  I cry when the cock crows.  I cringe at the beating, the blood, the thorns, the nail holes.  It's so violent and horrifying.  Too gory for me, let alone a child.  I hang my head when I hear, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"  I feel the disappointment, the anguish, the suffering of my God who was man who teaches a greater love than we, small and flawed, seem capable of.

And I wonder, as I describe it, did this really happen?  Did this man really rise?  Did these miracles really happen?  Did this story, passed down and translated over and over again like a giant, centuries' old game of telephone, really happen the way we proclaim it?

I give my fiction-sounding answers like fact to Finny, who absorbs them and accepts them and begins to form his own belief.

And I have no proof.  I concede that it doesn't make sense, that it is, in fact, confusing, that it could very well be misinterpreted, misconstrued.

And yet, this incredibly implausible story fills me, makes my cup run over.  I have no proof and yet against all my arguments to the contrary, I believe.  I weep.  I fill with light.

God came down to earth as Jesus.  He spoke his truth about love, forgiveness, and compassion.  He was persecuted, died and was buried.  And on the third day, he rose again and ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father.

And at the end of the story, just like Finny, I often have more questions than answers and yet I come back to hear the story again and again because I'm struck by the hope behind its implausibility.  That even if I placed the nail, even if I hammered it in, even if I crucified my God, His love is greater than my sin.  His embrace is bigger than all of my disbelief.  And I don't need any more proof than the way my heart fills when he holds me in the palm of his hand.  

As implausible as it sounds, nothing feels more real than that.

The Better Part

"...He invited Martha to Leave the kitchen for a while and share in the better part,"  Joanna Weaver. from Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.

 

Yesterday, because Finny wasn’t feeling well, we were ready for school early, had a half an hour of un-urgent time to spend before we had to get coats on and head out the door.  Charlie came running into the kitchen and I scooped him up, pressing my face deep into his cheek, soft and warm.

I spotted a puzzle on the counter.  I wanted to sit down with him and work on it.  I knew he would like that too.  “Charlie, want to do the pirate puzzle with me?”

“Yes, I do want to do the pirate puzzle with you!”  Charlie, an English teacher’s dream, gives all his answers in complete sentences.

And then I remembered:  the laundry.  I needed to keep it moving.  There were still two or three baskets down there that needed to go in.  I could fold a load now, switch it out, keep it moving.

“Ok, let’s do the puzzle.  Let me just switch out the laundry real quick first and then we’ll do it.”

But we never did the puzzle.  By the time I got the laundry folded, there was not enough time to start and finish the puzzle.  So we got in the car and I dropped him off at school, and he played there, with teachers and kids, but not with me.

Work, in my mind, must always come before play.  Checking emails must always come before reading my novel, doing the dishes must always come before sitting on the couch.  I am conscientious and conscientious is good.

Or is it?

Last winter after our move, I became so overwhelmed by all that I thought I had to do that I had something akin to a nervous breakdown.  Stressed and weary, my worry began to consume all my thinking and I began to have panic attacks.  It was paralyzing.  Horrifying.  The thought that would bring me to my knees is:  I’m losing my mind.  And that’s a dark and dangerous thought to have.  It makes you feel caged, takes your breath away.

Eventually I was forced to drop everything and address my mental health.  I couldn’t go on unless I took action and resolved my troubled mind.  I started an antidepressant and began seeing a talk therapist.

She was so matter-of-fact:  Of course you’re feeling like this.  This is hard, and you’ve been trying to do everything yourself.

She asked me an important question:  What did you look forward to about being a mother?  Why did you want to do it?

I knew the answer right away.  I wanted to play.  I wanted to snuggle and tickle.  I wanted to teach and learn.  I wanted to sit on the floor with them and do puzzles.  Snuggle on the couch with them and read stories.  I wanted to sit at their feet and take them all in.

I did not want all the work.  I didn’t want to be doing a constant load of laundry, 24 hour kitchen service, meal planning, grocery shopping, nagging, harping, time-keeping, battery changing, book taping, and constantly, constantly picking up and putting away pieces and pieces and pieces of toys.  I didn’t want to sort clothes and books.  I didn’t want to keep track of the water bottles, the snack cups, the dragons, the watch, the hats, the mittens, the socks—where do the socks always disappear to right before it’s time to go?

And I also didn’t want to constantly, constantly be trying desperately to be keeping up with my emails.

And so I lost it.  The joy.  The idea of three or four children sadly disintegrated because I was headed to the asylum, drowning in the responsibility of caring for just two.  And I felt like a failure.  I was not enjoying motherhood.  What my mother referred to as the best years of her life, were for me, turning out to be tiring, stressful, miserable, a time I looked forward to seeing the end of.

And the thirty dollars I wasn’t willing to spend on three hours of babysitting before, I was now spending on a co-pay to a psychiatrist, pleading, “Help me!”

And she gave me permission to ask for help, to pay for help, to start enjoying motherhood, to sit at their feet--to sit at His feet.

My aunt started to come over once a week for a few hours so I could run errands or write or run, I hired a cleaning lady to get to all the stuff I never got to—the cleaning.  I was so busy with the picking up and organizing, so busy with the kitchen and the laundry, that the bathrooms and the dusting, the floors and the blinds and all the other nooks and crannies of the house were never touched.  I let go of the guilty voice that said, “You shouldn’t be spending your money on this.  Your mom never had a cleaning lady, plenty of other moms don’t.  Why do you need one?”  And I wrote a check and ran around the lake with Charlie in warm weather that would not be around for long.

Just recently, I joined a Moms small group book study.  We meet every Wednesday morning at a church while generous caregivers watch our children.  And we just started a book that one chapter in has already lifted my spirit, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver.  Only one chapter in and I feel like she’s talking directly to me. And I can’t be the only one.

Martha, the sister who is hard at work in the kitchen, busy with the preparing, resentful of Mary who is just sitting in the living room listening to Jesus—I am her.  Mary, the sister who sits at Jesus’s feet and listens intently to her teacher--I want to be her.  I want to sit and enjoy, listen and absorb, smell the roses and the lavender baby shampoo in their hair.    The Martha nag within tells me there’s always work to be done.  The dishes should always come before snuggling up on the couch with a movie.  The laundry should always come before sitting down to do the puzzle.  And so I’m missing out on the joy.  And the lesson.

I’m so glad I found this group of women to sit and sip coffee with on Wednesday mornings.  It’s wonderful to have a time when my hands aren’t busy, the list isn’t going, and I can sit and feed my spirit.  We are co-workers, in this together:  The spiritual part of motherhood.  We carry our burdens to this conference table and we lay them down together at the Lord’s feet and we pray for each other and support each other and listen and guide and laugh and cry and take a break from motherhood to remember how much we love motherhood.

I want to leave the kitchen.  I want to share in the Better Part.  I’m so glad that Jesus invites me to do this, and I’m so grateful to have people in my life that remind me of this.

Last night I asked David to help me dry the dishes.  It was movie night and I wanted to see the movie too.  And you know what?  He came in the kitchen, pulled a towel out of the drawer and began wiping down the dripping pans.  And then I sat on the couch, like a magnet, as both boys climbed into my lap to settle in for the White Lion movie we picked up from the library.  And we all watched the movie together, no laundry being folded, no bills being paid, no lists being made, no emails being checked.  And when Finny started “pouncing” like a lion on his stuffed animals and pretending to tear them to shreds with his teeth and Charlie, who misunderstood, starting “bouncing” on his stuffed animals, jumping up and down, making roaring sounds, David and I sat and watched and laughed and looked at each other…

—the two of us together,

--in the living room,

--giggling,

--enjoying the Better Part,

despite the fact that there was still and always will be more work to be done.

Holy Yoga

Ever since I had children, and really well before that, the most natural state of my mind seems to be in a constant state of worry.  And sometimes that worry, if unharnessed, will run away with my mind, leaving me exhausted, confused, and hopelessly drenched in tears. 

The two things as of late that have been most effective in moving my mind in a healthier direction are a focus on body and a focus on soul—practicing yoga and going to church.  Yoga has been a great gift for my anxious mind and my tight back, hips, hamstrings and obliques.  I get to twist the knots out of my mid-back and shoulders while I take deep, long breaths, which place me in the present moment.  When my lungs fill with air as my quads hold my body in Warrior I, I can think of nothing beyond that feeling, that burn, that moment when I am trying to be still and strong and grounded.  Likewise, when my butt hits the pew on Sunday morning at our little Lyndale church, and I hear Pastor Meta reminding me week after week that life is messy and I am forgiven and that all is well because I belong to Jesus, I can think of nothing beyond that feeling, the feeling of being filled up with Love.  It gives me chills.

So, recently I wondered if I could marry these two gifts in my life:  yoga + Christ.  And sure enough, the World Wide Web brought me here:  Holy Yoga--http://holyyoga.net/.

The mission statement of Holy Yoga is this:  “Holy Yoga is an experiential worship created to deepen people's connection to Christ. Our sole purpose is to facilitate a Christ honoring experience that offers an opportunity to believers and non-believers alike to authentically connect to God through His Word, worship, and wellness.”

I like the spiritual aspect of traditional yoga--I don't mind hearing that I have strength within me (traditional Hatha Yoga). But, I also enjoyed hearing today that the strength within me is the Holy Spirit. The instructor read from Ephesians. She played Christian music. At the end, we prayed together. Instead of saying “Namaste,” we said “Amen.”   It was yoga…with Jesus—the best of both worlds.

But there’s another school of believers that find this appalling, insulting and even demonic. When I Googled Holy Yoga, I found a number of articles about the great Holy Yoga debate.  Some people very passionately believe you are worshipping pagan or Hindu gods when you practice yoga (I guess some members even left the Presbyterian Church I just practiced at because they felt pretty strongly about this).   A Pastor by the name of Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle is particularly adamant about this, going so far as to say, “If you just sign up for a little yoga class, you’re signing up for a little demon class…That’s what you are doing. And Satan doesn’t care if you stretch as long as you go to hell.”

Hmmm…I’m thinking he must’ve attended the 6:15 a.m. Hot Yoga Warrior Sculpt class at Core Power Yoga in St. Louis Park, MN.  I was definitely down-dogging through the fifth circle of Hell there.  (But I did feel like a million bucks afterwards.)

That class aside, I find it pretty hard to believe that God is opposed to us stretching our hammies and holding our planks while we breathe deeply and look for peace within, peace that He gives us.  I find it pretty hard to believe that God would be opposed to me sitting in prayer pose or rolling around in Happy Baby regardless of whether there’s Christian worship music or Buddhist wind chimes in the background. 

After all, a God that knows my heart as deeply and intimately as the God of Heaven does, also knows that sitting in very close quarters to that heart is a giant knot in my spine.  And not too far from that is the ball of concerns in my mind.  And didn’t He send me his Holy Spirit to break apart these distractions?  Didn’t he send me yoga, Holy or Hatha, to bring me back to the very breath He gave me?

I read in Yoga Journal recently that saying “Namaste” at the end of a yoga class acknowledges the belief that there is a Divine Spark within each of us.

I am able to feel that Divine Spark on both the Yoga mat and the pew, on a run around Lake Calhoun and snuggled up to my children on the couch.  Namaste does not belong only to yogis, just as Christ’s love does not belong only to Christians. 

Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians says this, “May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. ¹⁹ May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”

I heard this in child’s pose today and it filled me up.  Amen to that.

This Little Light

I’m not a prophet or a pastor, a martyr or saint.  I’m not a Biblical scholar or a theologian.  I’m just a girl, selfish and flawed, broken and scattered.  And thirsty for faith.  For living water, for daily bread, for forgiveness.

And nothing moves me more than hearing those words:  You are forgiven.

Nothing moves me more than hearing:  I love you anyway.

Nothing moves me more than hearing:  You’re exactly as I created you to be, in My image, all of the pieces, even the messy ones, especially the messy ones, I’ll take those too.  I’ll fill you with light.

I cry when I hear it; my cup spills over.  Nothing is more powerful than:  I love you anyway.  And I feel those big arms around me as I bury my face in His chest.  My Lord, my God, my Light, my Salvation.  Thirst-quenching love, living water.

And yet, so often, I hide it away, this spirit that fills me.  I gulp it down and hide it, afraid of what others might think, afraid that I’ll be labeled “Religious” and all the baggage that comes with that:  foolish, prejudiced, fanatical, devout, Bible thumper, judgmental, pious, self-righteous.  So I hide it away.  Bumper stickers make people rush judgments, put people in boxes, lump people together.  I don’t want to be a part of a lump.  I don’t want other people’s assumptions on me.

And yet…

I have something to say.  About faith, about love, about forgiveness.  About Jesus.  This little light of mine, it doesn’t want to be doused.  It wants to shine, shine, shine.

I have something to say.  It’s important.  I’m gonna say it.