Using My Words

The warm days have returned. Ahhhhh. I'm hopeful for mornings on the deck, and writing here again.

Words haven't been coming easily lately. Ideas float around in my head, but if they don't come in fully formed sentences, I have a hard time committing them to blog. Is it laziness? I don't know. Madeleine L'Engle often said things about how writers write, regardless of circumstances, feelings, etc., and that never compels me...it only makes me doubt that I am a writer.

Today I dust off the blog to record some of my thoughts.

I feel like the dark night journey I have been traveling through since Ben's death...how to say it? Am I emerging from it?  I have been wrong before.  Would it be accurate to say that I may not be through it, but that lately it's been infused with much more light? Perhaps. I have been lighter and more hopeful lately.

It's such a twisting, turning road, I hate to stamp it with a brief, unfair label. It is complicated and multi-faceted. Part of it over the last few months has been coming to terms with God's love for me personally and my inherent value to him, apart from what I do for him.  And I'm barely scratching the surface of it.  It's so deeply ingrained in me for two reasons: 1) having learned that the way to please God is to do for him, and 2) it being so much easier to do and check things off a list and get a break than to persist in the nebulous work of just being with him, which has little direction and no set limits.

I consider this every day, what it means for now and what it means for each step ahead of me.  It's deeply transformative, or has the potential to be if I can stop returning to the rut of performance & list checking.

A few weeks ago now, I came into the house from sitting on the deck and V started telling me some things that O had been sharing with her while they were playing video games.  It was nothing scandalous--some 2nd grader classmate stuff--but I was surprised to hear some of it, as he hadn't shared any of it before.  Even as I wanted to hear more, though, I realized that O was not pleased that she had shared it with me. He thought he was sharing with her in confidence.

So he was upset, but I was distressed that some stuff had been going on that he hadn't talked about. I want to build relationships with both of them in which we can talk about & through the events of their daily lives so I can help them navigate the emotions and the social interactions. That's the ideal, of course.  I know the reality is murky. But I want to promote this value anyway.

I invited O to come into my room so we could talk alone and I could promote openness in safety. He does not love to use his words, especially when he's mad.  I am learning over time how to validate his feelings and give him space to express himself.  I often screw this up and do it all wrong...but I am learning.  So I set it up for him to feel like he could talk if he wanted to.

Ultimately, he chose not to share.  He went from being mad to just being silly, avoiding getting into the topics which I wanted him to cover. I tried. I left it open for future opportunities. I'm not going to force.

It's just that I want my kids to know I've been where they are now. I know how catty and selfish and mean other elementary students can be.  I know how awkward socializing with kids from all kinds of families and backgrounds can be day in and day out. I know how fickle friendships at that age can be. And I always want them to know I am here for them...to help navigate these things and so they don't have to try to carry them alone.

But I can only help inasmuch as they will let me.  It's a complicated dance of love and pride, and we dance it in reality, not in a vacuum.

It took a couple of days for the metaphor of this scenario to "jump me," as David Wilcox says. Stirring in bed a couple mornings later, I thought maybe this is all God wants from me, to open up to him in the same way.

I've been listening to Bethany Barnard's "All My Questions" pretty much daily since it came out. It is in so many ways the only music I can handle right now, the only music that seems to understand and not upset me. But all the while, I've had trouble with one song, Tears On Your Face. 

She sings in the chorus: 

But You, Son of Man
Love incarnate
You don't see from far away
You come, sit with me
And grieve with me
And I see tears on Your face

I've just been struggling to relate to that chorus, as much as the verses deeply resonate. Because I've never felt that, in the last three years of overwhelming grief, that Jesus comes and sits with me and cries with me.

But then I realized after this metaphorical situation with O, that it might just be because I never invite him to come sit with me.  I have for so long been open to God when things are going well, but every time my heart gets broken or I get terrible, shocking news, it's like I hang up a "You're Not Welcome Here" sign on myself.  I see him as the cause of it.  He could've stopped it. So I'm certainly not going to ask him to comfort me in it.

O often sees me as the cause of his problems, too. He says that I talk to him in ways that I wouldn't want to be talked to. He gets in trouble when he shouldn't. Sometimes he's right; sometimes he's not. Of course, unlike God in the metaphor, I am fallible and prone to error. But in my fallenness, I'm still trying to find ways to do better with O, to maintain the connection even when I have to lay down the law. I want to build the foundation that I love him to the moon & back no matter what happens between us.

So I haven't figured this all out by any means, but I'm starting to decipher it. It seems that God has wanted me to understand that he loves me, despite all my protestations. How do I use my words with him to open myself up to (and stay open to) the possibility that he has his reasons for what's happened, and that what he wants is open communication with me, an open invitation to come and sit with me, for me to even give him the time, instead of slamming the door in his face?

O has a habit of slamming his door. I usually give him some time and then I try to breach the gap created by feelings of anger and injustice.  I try to get him to talk. He prefers silence (assuming I should know why he's mad), and then he'll resort to sign language.  Eventually he might choose words.

It's frustrating and sometimes requires way more patience than I have...but the other day, to my surprise, when I went down to talk to him in such a scenario, it only took a few moments for him to begin speaking the problems in full sentences. He whispered them...still some measure of self-protecting...but my gosh, it was tremendous progress. I made sure to commend him enthusiastically for using his words so helpfully. It was so much easier to understand and resolve the issues than it was trying to pry it out of him.

The metaphor's entangled throughout. I realized that I don't invite God in. I realized that I assume he knows so I don't tell him. (Of course he knows. As a parent, I often too already know. But there's still something in the telling, isn't there?) So this is the journey: to invite him in. To stop pretending that my lifelong faith in him has always met openness to him.

I have been through so much in the last few years and while I've cried/yelled/etc. my feelings about the aftermath, I'm not sure I've ever talked to him about the actual events. Like, "this is happening and this is what I feel and think." It's always been more like, "You let this happen and I know I'm supposed to feel this way because that's what Christians say," while I process my feelings on the side.

I don't have a manual and I daily still find myself resisting this kind of intimacy. But one thing I've started doing (in addition to a prayer journal inspired by the pastor of our new church, over the last few weeks) is that I just tell him things. I know he knows, but I state them anyway. Very straightforward, very blunt statements, in-the-moment statements. 

"I feel anxious because this thing is looming before me."

"I am feeling hurt because this person said or did this."

"I am mad because this happened in this way."

This is where I am and this is what is happening and I acknowledge his withness here, as opposed to accusing him of distance.

I don't know where it leads, but it feels revolutionary. And hopeful of progress.