Vanity, the Great Motivator
I’ve written about being a charter member of the Church of Devout Cowardice and how in my sixties, I finally decided I might as well risk riding down a luge on a tour in Austria, since I was already in pain and in a wheelchair.
Recently, I turned seventy-five about the same time my great-grandson turned sixteen . I suggested we celebrate together by riding a new zip line in our area. But, he must have inherited my genes and joined my old church, because he said, “NO WAY!”
Then to my dismay, I discovered that the upper age limit is sixty-five. I considered trying to get a fake ID, but thought perhaps that was a bad example for my great-grandchildren.
Suddenly, I ugly laughed out loud, remembering that a few weeks ago, I had done something with a lot more potential for serious injury than riding a zip line.
We were invited to go out to dinner and the symphony with some young and glamorous family members, so I bought my first pair of high heels in about twenty-years. Even after several days of practice walking in them, I had to cling to my husband’s arm most of the evening. (I left my walker at home. Somehow, it seemed to defeat the effect of the high heels.)
Adventure has nothing on vanity as a motive for risk taking.
Alzheimer’s and Other Cruel Realities (Readers Beware; This is a Downer.)
One of the most difficult things for me to accept is that for some problems there are no good answers. That you have to choose the option that does the least harm to the least number of people. At some gut level, even at seventy-five, I am still screaming in protest at this reality.
My mother’s fourteen years of dying by inches with Alzheimer’s came close to destroying my marriage, my faith, and very close to destroying me. To this good day, sometimes when I let myself experience those memories, I still want to howl with anger and guilt and anguish over her suffering . Here is something I wrote when struggling with this painful time in my life.
MY GOOD FRIDAY GOD
What kind of God are you, dying like that?
I want a real God, a fix it God,
not one that gets Himself crucified.
You’re just as helpless as the rest of us;
here we are dying together.
What a weird way to save a world!
Such sorrow pierced your mother.
Yet, she didn’t run away.
She stayed there suffering too.
Was she filled with a mother’s self doubt?
“Could she have done anything
that would have made a difference?”
I watched my mother die by inches.
Her dignity destroyed
by fourteen years of Alzheimer’s.
I’ve seen my children make choices
that would cost them for years.
I could only ask, “Am I to blame?”
I listened to my friend whose mind
had become her enemy.
I heard her despair, yet could not help.
I hate being helpless, not good enough
or smart enough to help
even the ones I love the most.
Not long ago, you did miracles,
in my own small life.
Now I just see our shared brokenness.
You are a Good Friday God.
I think about the expectations
you gave your disciples.
Only Judas got the picture.
How disillusioned he became.
He must have felt that you
were betraying them all.
Sometimes I’m like Judas.
And when I realize that we
are sheep being shorn,
I’m as cowardly
as Peter; asking
“Jesus who?”
But I know as well as John
that your love is perfect.
We need nothing more.
So though I, like Thomas,
fear a hard ending,
you are my Lord and my God.
I ask the grace to follow,
though through the cross you call,
my Good Friday God.
My Lord and my God.
Two times in my struggle over my mother’s suffering, God’s well timed footprints carried me through despair.
One Sunday evening, shortly after we had finally had to place my mother in a nursing home, I was driving home from my full time job as Director of a Religious Education Program at a near-by army post. It was a large program and this Sunday there had been complications and I had not managed to attend worship services. My own home church didn’t have Sunday evening services and I felt in need of Christian support. I was in deep despair over having to put my mother in a nursing facility and I was crying, as I asked God to help me accept what seemed so wrong.
As I drove home down a back road through a rural black neighborhood, I saw people going into an old looking, small and simple church. I had an impulse to turn in and join them, but told myself that it was silly. They would wonder why I was there and might not even want me there. But, as I continued down the road, about a mile from the church I saw a very elderly and somewhat frail looking gentleman in a suit. He was walking toward the church in what now was a drizzling rain. I stopped and asked him if I could give him a ride back to the church. He accepted gratefully as the rain was getting heavier. He graciously invited me to join them, seeming quite sincere, so I decided this was confirmation of my impulse.
The service turned out to be a gathering of choirs from local black churches. As I sat there wondering why I was there, one choir group sang a spiritual about Someday, when we are with Jesus, we’ll understand the reason for our sorrows. I could hear the reality of the suffering, but I could also hear the faith of generations of blacks that trusted through centuries of injustice and personal hard endings. I heard God speaking to me in that song, sung by those that knew both hardship and faith greater than mine.
The second time God reached out to me in another moment of despair was shortly after my mother died. Any delusions of reprieve or revelation, that I might have clung to, were now in ashes. I was in my parked car at a rural intersection, having arrived early to share a ride to a meeting with a friend. Sitting there with nothing to distract me, I felt unable to handle the overwhelming sadness. As I prayed for grace, I noticed a house with a small gift shop in the front. I got out of my car and went in. The minute I walked through the door, one card in a large display of greeting cards leapt out at me. Large script letters in bold colors said,
“EARTH HAS NO SORROW THAT HEAVEN CANNOT HEAL.”
These two gifts of God’s timing are markers of remembrance for me of God’s presence in our sorrows.
Lately, I have had reason to revisit them, as I spend time with a dear friend suffering from dementia. When I drive home from our visits, I often relive my sorrow over my mother’s suffering.
Sometimes it’s hard to keep going to see my friend, because I’m a problem solver, a fix it kind of person, and there is so little I can do other than take her a pastry or a cappuccino. Right now I can at least bring her a tiny bubble of joy in her confusion and frailty, but I know that soon, I will only be able to sit silently and helplessly at the foot of her cross. Remembering the presence of God in the past helps me persevere.
Prayers for her and for grace for me to continue being there for her are greatly appreciated.
A Funny Thing Happened on my Way to Becoming a Grandmother.
As the mother of five, grandmother of eleven, great-grandmother of seven, and incidentally, the owner of a nicely framed diploma in psychology, I want to share some gems of wisdom gained the hard way, trial and error, with an emphasis on the error.
1. When you do co-create another human being with God, trust God a little! He stays involved. He gives human babies to human parents. As far as I’ve been able to tell, perfect beings like angels, don’t procreate.
2. Go ahead and read the child psychology books; they can help you hear where your child is coming from. But don’t take them straight. Mix them liberally with books by Erma Bombeck. There’s nothing better than a sense of humor for keeping life in perspective.
3. Do pray unceasingly for your first child. This is your practice one. God will have to invest a lot more in that partnership.
4. Accept the fact that on your first child you will spend a lot of Saturdays with your pediatrician. There is an unwritten law of nature that children only swallow dimes on weekends.
5. But know that when your second child swallows a dime, you will just calmly feed them bread and watch for the dime to make its journey back to daylight. With the third child you won’t bother to watch for it unless you know it was minted before 1945. And your fourth child won’t swallow dimes, because they will already be full from eating the dog’s food.
In my experience, the real fun of parenting came about child number four and the sheer joy with child number five. But then, I always was a slow learner.
Seven Basic Facts to Help You Enjoy Your Children
1. You don’t have to enjoy all the rigors of baby care to enjoy children. Infancy doesn’t last long.
2. A child can fix a reasonably healthy breakfast for themselves (and you) by the time they are five. (Their spouse will thank you for it someday.)
3. Their first grade teacher will toilet train them if you don’t get around to it. (Though they will undoubtedly not thank you for it.)
4. The child that you bat heads with from birth to puberty will astound you by winning awards and honors in high school. (The flip side of stubbornness is perseverance.)
5. Out of five children fed the same kind of food from birth, – no matter what you do – Two will eat only hamburgers and pizza until marriage. Two will eat nourishing and well balanced meals in reasonable amounts. One will eat everything in sight in over generous amounts.
6. Almost nobody normal enjoys their own Junior High age kids. But, God can give you enough grace to keep your homicidal tendencies reasonably repressed, and if you hang loose, they become interesting people and friends somewhere between 21 and 30. (Don’t let anyone tell you that God isn’t still doing major miracles.)
7. And best of all, some day when you are holding your brand new first grandchild and find tears of complete joy streaming down your face, you will realize how very carefully, if sometimes painfully, God has taught you to love unconditionally.
Pentecost
Pentecost Sunday just cries for the Spirit,
at least a tongue of fire or two,
or a sweeping wind that blows our minds
free of habit and ritual and rules.
So, I found a little brick church
with the name of Power and Praise.
Well, I started out pretty lively
clapping to drums with hands raised.
I thought I was blending in nicely
for a gray haired Presbyterian.
But, perhaps I should have drunk more coffee,
since after forty minutes, I ran out of steam.
I thought it might be time to sit down,
but then, a lady, who had to be over eighty,
began dancing blissfully in front of the pews.
Smiling and spinning gently around,
she looked so joyful doing this,
I found it hard to resist joining in.
But the music stopped, as we all sat down
for a seventy-five minute sermon
on the deplorable state of the world.
Though it was a bit of a downer,
with most of it I actually agreed,
until the preacher spoke about women,
who wear pants and short hair.
He said women only did this,
so they could attract other women.
That’s when I noticed I was the only woman
in the entire congregation
wearing pants and short hair.
I tried to hunker down low in the pew,
so no one would notice my pants,
but that wasn’t much help with my hair.
Thank God, I hadn’t joined in the dance.
But to give credit where credit is due,
the preacher admitted he’d been wrong before
and he might be wrong once again,
so we all should keep reading the scriptures
to let God, Himself, teach us the truth.
But though I keep searching the bible,
I haven’t found anything there
about women wearing pants or short hair.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t tempt any women,
nor did they me, as a matter of fact.
So, though, I’m a failed Pentecostal,
I probably wouldn’t be a good Lesbian either.
Consider Yourselves Leaked On.
Rick Warren, author of A Purpose Driven Life, says, “When you think of a problem over and over in your mind, that’s called worry. When you think of a Scripture over and over in your mind, that’s called meditation. If you know how to worry, then you already know how to meditate.”
He goes on, “Meditation is simply focused thinking. Prayer lets us speak to God. Meditation lets God speak to us.”
And the best part to me, “The more you meditate on God’s word, the less you worry.”
He concludes that a relationship with God, that includes prayer and meditation as part of a life style of worship, leads to an awareness of the presence of God with you.
He also points out that life is a series of problems. Either we are in one now, just coming out of one, or getting ready for another one. Rick says the reason for this is that God is more interested in our character than our comfort.
Another jewel that resonated for me in this book is, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep trying to crawl off the altar.” Love that one.
One of the daily reflections he suggested was to come up with a metaphor for our own life. I considered a journey, a three stooge’s movie, an obstacle course, a soap opera, but suddenly I remembered a story a friend sent me.
It was a story of a woman in a village going to the well everyday and carrying water home. Her pots were old and cracked and they leaked, so by the time she got home, a lot had leaked out. (I’ve always said that I’m Spirit filled, but I leak, so I do relate to her plight.) The woman felt she was a failure, because so much water was lost along the way. Then God showed her the flowers along the path, that had bloomed because the water had leaked there over the years.
I have such a bad memory and have to relearn so many things, a spiritual director once told me that I had spiritual Alzheimer’s. So, like the cracked pot, I leak whatever I hear of value, hoping it will take root for others, and I can relearn it from them.
Consider yourselves “leaked on.”
Not Forgiving, Creating God in Your Own Image, Awful Thoughts: Quotes from Anne Lamott
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you hate.”
“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud, because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish..”
“I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
“I think joy, sweetness, and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know, love, and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracles of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”
Quotes from my favorite author, Anne Lamott. Accessible at Anne Lamott Quotes or her books:
§ Operating Instructions: A Journal Of My Son’s First Year. Pantheon Books. 1993
§ Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Pantheon Books. 1994.
§ Traveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on Faith. Pantheon Books. 1999.
§ Plan B : Further Thoughts on Faith. Riverhead Books
§ Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. Riverhead Books
§ Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son. Riverhead Books. 2012.
Sometimes I Get Really Weary of Being an Amateur Human Being
Some days I feel like I haven’t got a clue as to what actually matters in the BIG scheme of things. I know that my motives are suspect, mixed at best.
Is seeking to experience the presence of God simply spiritual hedonism, for pleasure or escape from pain?
The scripture from Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity,” really does seem to sum life up lately.
Marquand’s point of no return haunts me. At seventy-five I fear there’s not enough time left to become the person God created me to be, the person able to give what those God put in their care need.
The scriptures about loving other believers are another scary challenge. The truth is I don’t like very many people, but I tell myself that being committed to their well being is love.
I have some serious up close and personal unresolved conflicts with a few of them. I’m trying to work on seeing through their eyes, so I can forgive, and I have made some progress. But true reconciliation takes both sides seeing through the other’s eyes. I still feel too vulnerable to work with them on that.
Does self knowledge only free us to not judge others, if we can first forgive and not judge ourselves?
Can we grow and get free only after learning to live with the humbling knowledge of who we aren’t? Sometimes I get really weary of being an amateur human being.
I truly know that God loves me unconditionally. But, something in me just won’t give up wanting to be a person God can love for whom they became with His grace. Then, I remind myself that we are only called to play the hand we were dealt and I cling to the hope that I have played my pair of deuces as well as I could with the grace of God.
And then I come full circle to “All is vanity.”
Maybe that’s where we need to be, so we can let go of ego and let God do His thing.
My number one favorite blog. An awesome post.
Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane Blog
I led a very untraditional lifestyle when I was growing up. My father, whom I later realized was schizophrenic, had the wanderlust to travel, which our family did for about 6 months of the year. He would remove me out of school and we would take off for various areas of the country, living in our Volkswagen van. ( Although I am sure that today’s public education system would not allow it, somehow I think my father would have taken me out anyway.)
It was quite an adventure for a child like me. I have a vivid memory of cracking eggs in a big, black, iron frying pan over a campfire in the Badlands in South Dakota. The rocks the pan was on were not sturdy, and the pan fell sideways with the eggs slowly leaking out onto the pine needles on the ground. (Clumsy then…still clumsy.) I remember traveling…
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Our Inner Twin to Doubting Thomas
Life is a journey for which we pack when we are very, very young. Along the way a lot of that baggage is outgrown and has to be let go.
Each of us has an inner twin to doubting Thomas. When we don’t know he’s inside, we’re afraid of the unknown and anything that sounds different from what’s familiar to us. Then our Christian journey becomes a quick return trip from freedom back to fear.
We often act like our beliefs are mass produced, low quality goods. We fear any sharp questions might snag one and unravel our faith.
Thomas was a realist. He didn’t assume everything would turn out well, like the others did. But he was determined to follow Jesus, no matter what. That’s faith.
Nothing good ever came from Nazareth or any where else, without having to pass the quality control test of the cross.
A confirmed pessimist would rather say “I told you so,” than experience resurrection. An unredeemed optimist will never embrace the cross.
Christians who have recognized their shadow side, can walk in the light, because fear of our doubts, angers, and lusts no longer controls us.
Balance and the acceptance of paradox are the beginning of wholeness or holiness.
A Country Education
When we moved to our hundred acre weed and rock sanctuary, I happily dragged the children through the woods on hunts for nuts, lichen, and pods for ecology crafts. We waded the creek finding smooth stones and fossils, even coral. In the snow, we went looking for animal tracks. And in the dark of night we drove the jeep through fields to find the perch of the Great American Owl, that we spotted flying during the day. I often enthused about all the amazing things, we were going to learn by living in the country.
One day, my first grader announced, “Mom, you were right. I’m learning a lot of new things in the country.”
Delighted, I asked, “What kind of new things?”
“Well, before we moved here and had to ride a school bus, I didn’t know hardly any cuss words.”
That wasn’t quite the answer I was hoping for.
Later, I realized that in my eagerness to get back to nature, dragging my family with me, I might have gone overboard a bit. A friend from church invited my first grader to go swimming with her first grader at the Country Club. She later laughingly told me she figured we must swim in a creek, because my son asked whether he should leave his tennis shoes on for swimming.
I told her I was surprised he didn’t throw rocks in to chase the snakes away.
A lot of things are different in the country.
