living on both ends - an exploration of best and worst

words

Words have never failed me. For years, they taught me how 'normal' people live. They helped me defend my little corner of space, loudly and vigorously defending all who dared to intrude. For delight, I savored the ones – ubiquitous, ostentatious, fecund – that roll around in my mouth and burst forth. Then, I found Friends. I fell in love with silence. Not the punishing silence of contempt, annihilation, shame, and judgment. But the embrace of a silence that totally exposes me and totally accepts me, encased in a Light that is penetrating and healing. When spoken out of the silence, words are distilled, clean, and have a different texture and tenor than what I have known before.

I'm trying to find my words again. To be honest with my life-long love affair with them. To listen deep in the Silence so I can be faithful to the truths that are revealed. It is connection to that which is Eternal I know in silence. It is expression of that which I find in words.

It would be easy to say that words are failing me now. It would be easier to say that I am failing my words. The hard part is staying with harnessing the words until they say what I mean. Harnessing my attempts until what the words want to say become clear.

A year ago, we took the TV off the wall in Sojourn. It was the beginning of the end of the long wait, and the beginning of the move to Philadelphia. In August, Sojourn unsold, we moved to Solace, our new home on Fitzwater St. The only surety I have is that the move was rightly led and rightly ordered. Sojourn is occupied by renters; the fall passed in a blur of sickness, pain and struggle. The emotional wear and tear on the 17 year old is painful to watch, and yet I am so proud of his resilience and bravery. It is a beautiful thing to watch a young man be held accountable to what he is capable of learning, not the minimum standards for test taking.

What I lost:

-A house full of teens home from college, stopping by to recount their triumphs and, perhaps, give a wee glimpse into their struggles. Retelling the stories with a different perspective.

- a garden that gave me health and beauty and, often, a reason to get up in the morning.

-a neighborhood we know, with neighbors who fit.

-a front porch that dreams are made of and on.

- a meeting that taught me why worship is essential to everything I am as a Friend. That a moment of silence and centering and listening restores balance and peace. And that life and well-being is not about controlling what comes at me, but about accepting the reality and that offering that reality to Jesus often reveals the abundance that I didn't know was there.

-History. I lost the shadows of young boys that grew to be young men in that old house. Of afternoons by the pool. Of hearing the sounds of late night games. Too many nights staying up late waiting for teen agers to walk in the door. The despair and angst of college applications. Or not. An emergency room that I knew intimately. The space where I spent the majority of my time as a parent.

- Connections. What I lost was connections – to the past, to the present. In some ways, to the future.

What I gained:

- I avoided the tragedy of holding onto a time and a place that is over.

- A city I love.

-A new sense of my country's history, and the part Friends played in the birth of that country.

- Opportunities to make new connections.

-a deep appreciation for the meeting that birthed me as a Quaker.

- A delight in L's growth in his new place of work and his sense of well-being.

- a better diagnosis and a better long-term treatment plan.

- walkability to chores and restaurants.

-access to decent (not good but decent) public transit.

-choices.

Fifteen years ago, a friend told me to write a letter to God to "make my requests known". It was soon after my divorce from the boys' dad. It was also a time of choices, of letting go and new beginnings. I think tomorrow I'll see if I can find the words to make my requests known, to name what I desire in this new life.

-

Dog days

Sojourn is emptying out her bowels – and all other areas we have inhabited. A 40 ft truck sits outside her front porch, a crew of five has been packing and loading all day. The rooms, of course, are huge. Dust scattered, wood floors gleaming and bare. The rocking chair my parents gave me for me 20^th birthday is wrapped and on the truck. My mother-in-laws table, crayon marks on the underneath from various nieces and nephews, is being taken apart and wrapped for placement. Soon, my oakleaf hydrangea pots, black eyes susans, and other containers will go on the truck.

L was home for a few hours this morning to help the packers understand the garage sorting – most of it stays here, ready for the neighborhood garage sale in mid-September. He's back on the road, back to work. The 18 and 16 year old are off with friends, they will be home tonight to help me clean and straighten, and again tomorrow night to do it again. The 20 year old is at work, 30 miles from here, in the place he now calls home. I'm trying to write a report, and on hold with the appliance store salesman from whom I want to buy a washer and dryer.

The lamb pups are asleep at my feet, worn out from the constant movement and their own anxiety.

It's a full day.

 

faithfulness

Faithfulness. Perseverance. Insular. These are the words and themes that keep speaking to me. At this time. In this place. Yesterday, the 18 year old and I journeyed to Rutgers The State University of New Jersey. While he met with an adviser to pick out first semester first year classes for one with an undeclared major, I wandered the campus and tried to get a feel for this place where the 20 year old lives and the 18 year old will soon call home.

A young male student stopped me and asked if I would be interested in participating in a bible discussion. I smiled, said "I don't think so" enjoying the solitude and the insularity. I didn't want to interact with anyone. But there was something inside that kept nudging. So when the second young man asked me if I wanted to join in on the bible discussion about to start, I replied "Maybe" and then left to feed the meter. Maybe a sense not as strong as a leading, but a little more persistent than a notion led me to return, after feeding the meter, and join the circle on the grassy ground.

I listened as they discussed the beginning verses of Matthew 4. Soon, the 18 year old came and found me, I excused myself and we drove home. He full of schedule planning and future deciding angst, moderated by his personality that is not an over the top emotional one. Me, thinking about my silence in the discussion and the tenor of my time, sitting on the ground listening. It is a passage, to me today, about faithfulness. Being true to the process. Not taking short cuts.

The 18 year old has been watching the show "Weeds" on Netflix this summer. It is too dark for me, yet I watched the season 5 finale the other day and one line the main female character said in an aside has stayed with me. Repeating in my being. "We're all broken."

Often, when I lose my center of compassion, I return to the Jesus Prayer – "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner" I often add to it "Teach me the Way of mercy."

This morning, I realized that yesterday I was free from my usual weightings of "where are those sharing theologically? Are they in a solid place? Where is their brokenness and how is it presenting in this discussion?" Instead of running with those gerbils of analyzing and judgment, I was just listening.

We are broken, to live in this brokenness I need mercy, ergo, I must extend mercy. Mercy always comes to me from the Divine. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Teach me the Way of mercy.

L says I have a flair for stating the obvious.

 

weaving narratives

It has been a tender evolution. One who believes narratives are static and rigid moving to one who understands narratives are fluid and impacted not only by the past but also by the present experiences and understandings. Right now, the theme of the narrative of my life that is very present to me is perseverance and an acceptance that nothing or no one has been able to destroy me yet. Not that I am indestructible, but that I am tenacious. I hold onto life. Actually, it is more than I hold onto life, I hold onto my power, even when it is only remnants that I am able to own. And if that seems strange, I don't have the language or the ability to soften or make it more digestible. It is a celebration that the essence of who I am, who I was created to be, has not been destroyed and is coming more and more to life.

There are so many threads in this coming to life, that of understanding the illusion of control I lived in was deadening to my soul and others, that of intending to embrace the unknown, that of awareness of my fear, and holding it in the Light so the Divine can reveal to me how vapid it is. Yesterday was a hard day physically. Working in the garden, which often brings relief, brought more pain and nauseousness. By 5:00 PM I had acknowledged that there was nothing I was going to be able to do and to just sit and read. Even the computer was off-limits as my neck and back were too tender to be held at the needed angle.

I don't understand it, but there is such beauty in acceptance and yielding to reality. There are those in my life, prior and present, who have encouraged and modeled to not accept the reality. To not name the truth of pain or suffering; to live in the myth.

There is no life for me in the myth.

developing kindness as a spiritual discipline

WORST- Kindness is not an attribute that comes naturally to me. Protecting of the weak? Yes. Compassion to those who struggle? Check. Moving from a place of kindness? Not at all. Slowly, let me add an adjective there, very slowly I am trying to develop an innate sense of kindness. I tend to move more from an innate sense of judgment and I am learning that judgment and kindness are not good friends.

The edge of the prophetic, for me, needs to be tempered with kindness. L gets kindness. I know very few people who do.

Magical thinking, catastrophizing, and avarice

BEST- Although I hate to look it or admit it even to myself, there is a part of me these days that wonders if this is how an addict feels at times. Thursday, after a prolonged fight with Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield, my doctor will have the biologic drug, Cimzia, in stock. The drug that has been helping me to feel almost normal again. And when I am oh so tired right now, or when I feel the presence of tenderness or pain in my jaw as I chew, in my ankle as I move down the stairs, in my hands as I type, or in my shoulders as I stretch for the coffee can in the kitchen cupboards top shelf, I can hear myself saying "Hold on to Thursday, it will all better on Thursday."

I've also been thinking a lot about the difference between magical thinking and solid hope. The further outside of the Christian bubble I get, the more I am saddened and dismayed at the level of magical thinking that I indulged in under the guise of faith. And along with that awareness is the solid reality of who much of my life I have catastrophized events and happenings that were not at the level of catastrophe at all. A little inventory of reality seems to be leading to a little perspective.

And that leads me to thinking of the verse 2 Corinthians 10:5 – bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. What if it was about bringing every thought captive to reality, to the truth?

Yesterday, I felt that old fear start to rise up in me - what if the house doesn't sell? What if the 16 year old can't make the transition to his new school in a new city? What if because of the delay in treatment Cimzia has lost some efficacy? What if my husband wakes up one morning and realized he is married to a 48 year old with a chronic illness? What if? What if? What if?. It is a form of avarice, indulging in that kind of worry about the future. And then how quickly I can move to the self-protective magical thinking that is also not based on reality, but a usurious twisting of the goodness of God around to keep me from feeling bad.

So today I sit in the reality – for today it is enough. Everything I live is way more than enough.

 

myths and truths

WORST- A time of work, a time of rest. My life has become more active as I work to prepare Sojourn for market. It is hard to escape the comparative voice in my head and heart of what the old Anj could accomplish (high-energy, quick moving) and what the new Anj gets done. For me, part of integrity is living in the reality of what is, instead of the myth. I still have the capacity to be quite productive, it simply looks a lot different than it used to.

In the long term, I may find that the new way is much more productive than the old. It may be the old truth told time and time again in the story of the tortoise vs the hare.

softness and desirability

BEST- Two walks. The pups and I were out for two walks yesterday. One in the morning, in my effort to ease the stiffness in my ankles and dull ache in my knees, and one in the evening, as dusk fell and the air grew soft. The dogs were attentive to the shadows and the difference in the route because of the difference in light.

That envelope of darkness, of rest, has always seemed to me to be soft. A desirable time. I often forget to be aware and take delight in the blessing of another day ending, the cycle start of the following sunrise and new beginnings.

Full circle

I call my middle son, the high school senior and soon to be 18 year old, the bear. I'm not sure why, although he did have a stuffed baby bear when he was little. But his truest love when he was a toddler was a video. And one day as his older brother rocked his big bear named Tooker, the middle brother did not fetch his baby bear but this video and sat and rocked it. It is a small illustration – the young lad, rocking his video – of the peripheral aspects of what it might mean to raise a son with Asperger's Syndrome. High functioning, sharp as a tack and obtuse to anything relational. I could tell of the struggles to implant memories within his brain, to teach him to reference others, to move into the awareness of what it means in our world to process differently, to accept non-neuro typicalness and to try to learn a second language of how most others think and relate. The tears, the melt downs, the loneliness, the aches. The gradual coming to acceptance.

Four months ago at 11:30 one night, my phone buzzed, letting me know I had a new text. I found my glasses, picked up the phone, and read – I just want you to know I love you.

What's up bear? I texted back.

Well a friend is kinda open about having Asperger's and I got curious and looked it up online. I used to have like every symptom. All that shit you did with me when I was a kid was to help, and it did. Im just realizing now how lucky i am.

You've come a long way. You've learned how to be you in a foreign world.

I think so too. I mean its not perfect but I'm still working on it. But I dunno all the things I remember about myself that were little quirks were symptoms. And thanks mom just thanks.

You're welcome. I love you.

Thanks more. I think im on my own path now and I can handle it, but I owe you so much.

I can't remember what I replied to this text, although you can surely understand why I have his texts locked on my phone and hidden in my heart.

I dunno I could never just accept what it really meant. I just wanted to let you know I realize the truth now, and im grateful.

The beauty about texting is you can have a conversation with another, listen fully, and be totally in tears the whole time. Without the need to lessen the force of one's passion or worry about negatively impacting your son who struggles with Asperger's Syndrome. I'm sure he knew I was in tears, I doubt he understands how telling it was that he picked a medium to communicate with me that fits who he is, and how he relates best.

This year has been a slow good-bye. Good-bye to where we have lived the last eight years, and good-bye to the little boy who could not look at my furious face and understand I was angry, who could not bear my loving touch when he was over stimulated, who set as his goal for his high school years to conquer the world of social interactions and who accomplished that goal with such panache that he was asked to four high school proms. Yes, he still monologues to me in our kitchen, but now he knows and acknowledges with a wry smile his monologues, his obtuseness. His hugs are still a bit stiff, and I sense the realness as he offers them.

It is a rare precious gift that I have been given with his honesty and his truth. I am so pleased with the man he is becoming.

 

the calls

WORST - Of clerking. Of moving. Of tending to the 16 year olds pinky fingers lacrosse injury. Of tending to getting my new meds approved, co-ordinating insurance and doctors offices because last time I waited it was two months without meds. I only have one ear, no hands or wrists that are pain free, and I feel as if I am a member of the Star ship Enterprise, with an ear piece permanently attached to my head. I always hated Star Trek.