What Misery Loves

They say misery loves company.  Personally, life has befallen me only a few times with circumstances that seemed insurmountable. When I compare my own trials with those of others I sometimes wonder how they keep going back and forth in these deep-run ruts of life without collapsing in exhaustion and frustration.  

I suppose that's what I've done, isn't it?  I've collapsed under the weight of all the strange things my body is experiencing. I'm no wimp. This year will be my 9th on dialysis, and when I look back over those years, the starting dialysis year is like a little hiccup now. It seemed so monumental in 2013, but really it was just a new thing, and new things take time.  I'm happy to report my dialysis is still working well and I am still hopeful about transplant in the future (still saving and looking for the right time).  COVID slowed things down a lot for everyone, and I wonder at times if I would be as sick as I am now if all our hospitals and doctors weren't so overwhelmed with COVID patients and precautions. 

Without too much detail, I'll tell you that I started getting sick in April.  At first I was having skin issues and saw a plethora of doctors, none of whom helped.  Over the past couple of months I've developed a foreign object sensation in my throat and nasal area.  Doctors have, for the most part, dismissed my concerns and sent me away with no help at all.  I finally broke down after 7 months of battling this on my own and called Hannah in melt-down-mode from work one day.  She and the rest of my family have been very kind and helpful to me through this, but I don't think they even see how miserable I am.

Miserable.  It's one of those words that people throw around a lot, so it loses its meaning somewhere in the tossing of it from one to the other.  Miserable is a word that pops into my head almost as soon as I wake up in the morning.  Miserable, as I lay down at night. Miserable as I survey the mess in my house that I have no energy or inclination to clean. Miserable, as my 15 year old, for the 500th time "forgets" that the trash has to go to the curb on Thursdays, or when he acts like he didn't understand that the kitchen trash was supposed to go out too.  Miserable, because literally no one I've spoken to throughout the duration of this strange illness has any degree of understanding of how it feels to BE so miserable.

They say misery loves company because we want someone to complain with, right?  

I think they got it all wrong.  Misery loves empathy.  Misery loves thoughtfulness.  Misery loves knowing someone cares and at least WANTS to understand.  Misery loves having a good friend or a kid, or even a dog to cuddle up with on its worst days and just forget all the miserable things for a while.  Misery loves sleep.  Misery loves anything that relieves any of the suffering--any of it at all. 

I hereby declare that I am Miserable.  I am alone. I don't think I'm getting better this time.

The Right To Choose

Y'all, the world isn't falling apart, I promise.  I know it seems bleak--what some see as protests others see as riots.  What some see as personal responsibility, others see as a violation of their personal rights.  Some claim to not see color, even though our world is endowed with every shade imaginable.  Others see color before all else, and judge it as good or bad based solely on internalized misperceptions.  None of these things are new.  None of them mean the end of the world is at hand.

A few weekends ago a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook and one thing she said stuck in my mind.  Basically, she said that for a lot of people under 50, the COVID-19 crisis and the current civil unrest between races is likely the first major life challenge they've faced.  In light of that, I think those of us who have gone through significant trials owe the younger generations some grace.  I think about my own life and the way I responded to the seemingly insurmountable problems I had to overcome as a younger me.  I didn't always act with decorum, didn't always take the high road, didn't always know exactly what to do or how to feel or even where to place the anger and frustration that comes with change.

And that's what all of this is, by the way.  It's change in progress.

Lately, during all the staying at home, I've picked up my guitar again and started practicing in earnest.  I learned a few chords years ago but never stuck with it much.  This time, I vowed I would learn some actual songs that I enjoy, and so far I've done okay.  I'm not ready for a concert or anything, but I get a sense of peace and even connection to people I loved and lost.  People like my father and my uncle Maurice.  I sit with my guitar at times, strumming random chords, trying to think of THAT song--the one I want to play and sing from the depths of my heart, but it never comes to me.  It feels like something I once knew but have forgotten.  While my mind reaches and reaches for it, I spiral deeper into myself, past myself, to the esseence of who made me what I am now.  Still, the song remains hidden.  Tonight I remembered all the spiral notebooks that were bequeathed to me by a family member after my uncle passed away.  The notebooks are weathered with time, hundrededs of pages of neatly written lyrics in pencil and pen, some with chords scribbled above the words.  They are filled with songs that resonated with him in some way--songs that found a home deep in his heart, and made him sit for hours scribbling lyirics on lined notebook paper.  I went in search of those books hoping that somewhere in them, I'd find that song for myself.  I had no luck finding them.  I know they're here, but to find them I would need to tackle my storage room.  I'm not ready for that.

See, we moved here three days before Chrsitmas last year.  Three months later COVID-19 hit, and my job and life became very compicated.  I am not a stranger to complication, so for the most part I've taken it it stride, but I know my limits and digging into that storage room is something that would stretch me beyond them very quickly.  It's cluttered, dark, disorganized, full of unpacked boxes and things I intend to give away or donate to charity.  If someone forced me to unpack everything in there I might find myself struggling to make sense of it all, even though I would probably also find treasures, like my uncle's notebooks packed away in a box.  

That's how change often works though, isn't it?  It comes when you're not expecting it, when you dont't want it or you're not ready for it.  It's messy and it seems nonsensical and disorganized.  We have a hard time processing it, making sense of it,  discerning the garbage from the truth.  This stuff is never easy.  

One of these days, I'll find myself neck deep in the pile of stuff from that storage room because I'll go in search of one little thing that lies buried in the clutter.  My search for some object of meaning to me is not unike what is happening to us now as a country.  We are looking for that rare quality that makes us a nation undivided but in the process we are unable to look away from the ugliness and messiness of the past and the present.  How we choose to use or discard the stuff we find inside ourselves through this process will ultimately define who we are, deep inside.  It will either bring out that long-lost song that we've yet to find, or extinquish the spark of humanity that longs to burn bright in us all.  

I hope you, my friends, find your song and fan the flames of love, peace, acceptance, and liberty that longs to light your way.

Every One Struggles With Something...

Struggle is relative.  I realize this.  Still, recently I find myself having little sympathy for the kinds of struggles about which I hear people complaining.  Sure, we all need hair cuts.  My feet could seriously use a pedicure.  I'd love to shop for Spring clothes and wear makeup to work, instead of a mask and face shield all day.  For now though, those are our realities and they are realities we all have to endure together.  We can either accept them or try to fight against them, but either way, the virus COVID-19 will not relent.  It cares not about your opinion.

Until now I suppose I never realized how many people in the world have never actually dealt with struggle or uncertainty.  It became part of my life while I was relatively young, so struggle and uncertainty joined the bandwagon with me as I traversed through all the stages of my life.  For years I lived witht he threat of impending renal failure, so when it finally happened, my doctors were surprised at "how well" I took the news.   I explained to one of them that being surprised that my kidneys had failed would be akin to being surprised you're having a baby after you've been pregnant for nine months. I expected it, it happened, I adapted.

But unexpected changes happen too, and I expect to some degree we all experience that.  Job losses, breakups, deaths of loved ones all take us on a ride of unknown self exploration.  I've lived through those types of things too.  I had a friend who unexpectedly committed suicide.  I lost my parents.  I've lost my material goods, like my home and livelihood.  Some of those things you recover from; you can always make more money and buy another house.  Other things, you seem to spend  a lifetime trying to comprehend.  Like why would a 27 year old take his own life?  There's just not an acceptable answer to that one.

Globally, COVID-19 seems to have thrown a lot of people for a loop.  Adapt, Improvise, Overcome are concepts lost on today's society.  Our inability to band together to help one another has been magnified by this pandemic.  When I was jobless a year ago, I had to resort to finding odd jobs to make ends meet while I looked for work.  A few people pitched in to help me out, threw work my way, etc...One employer had me do hours and hours of work for her but never paid me a dime.  I sold a car to a friend who was in a pinch, offering to let her make payments to me for it.  She ended up only paying me the inital two hundred dollars.  Let's be honest, many, many people are selfish, and that selfishness is blatantly evident throughout this pandemic.

People are out of sorts about wearing masks because they're uncomfortable.  They are "tired of staying home."  They're worried about the infringements on their civil rights.  I've always been a firm beliver in basic human rights to make choices for ourselves that are right for us.  I've also always been a firm believer in considering the rights of others as well.  For instance, if you want to own a dog that barks, that's your perogative, but if your dog barks all night and keeps me awake, your rights have officially infringed upon my right to have a good night's sleep.  Likewise, your refusal to wear a mask in a public place infringes on MY right to stay healthy and NOT DIE froom COVID-19.

Don't mistake my post for something political.  It is not.  I believe strongly in medical science.  Medical science keeps me alive and has done so for 8 years so far.  Medical science will no doubt keep you alive at some point in your life.  This has nothing to do with conspiracy theories or who gets voted president.  It's about doing the right thing with respect to human life.  You cannot call yourself pro-life if you are okay with sacrificing the vulnerable and the elderly to this disease in order to cultivate "herd immunity."

And if you go out in public without taking precautions, you risk your health and the health of those you love.  As someone who lives with a disease over which I have no control, I can tell you that you are a fool to risk your health over a disease that you could avoid getting by practicing social distancing, wearing PPE and using good hygiene skills.  It's that easy.  Learn to be content at home.  Learn to enjoy your own company. Learn to respect life--not just yours but everyone else's too.


And if you are going to spend a day praying, pray that God will give you compassion for others, because that seeems to be what society lacks the most these days.

From now on let the politicians hash out their differences and listen instead to what the health experts are telling us about this disease.  My life, the lives of people I love, and the lives of people YOU love depend on our ability to lay politics aside and listen to common sense from people who know what they're talking about.  This isn't about who is right or wrong from the political spectrum, it's about saving lives and sparing people from an illness they don't have to endure.  Can't we agree, at least, on that?

Mindful

This afternoon I took out my garbage.  Big deal, right?  I mean, it's one of those mundane tasks we all have to do.  Sometimes though, I'm amazed at how in the midst of a fleeting, seemingly meaningless moment, life finds a way to teach me something. 

As I walked around to the back of my car to pop the hatch, the "trash man" walked past me and said, "Good afternoon!" quite cheerily. 

"Hi," I said back, a little surprised. 

Then, as I came around the front of the car to put my dialysis boxes in the recycler, another man stopped to let me pass and also said hello to me.  "The people at the dump are really friendly today." I thought to myself. 

As I made trips out and back to my trunk, another car pulled up beside me, windows down, music blaring.  He backed into the spot next to my car and left his car running while he emptied the trunk.  Like me, he seemed in his own world.  He wore a scowl, seemed less than thrilled about this Thursday chore. 

I wondered how often I walk around with a scowl on my face, how often do I neglect to acknowledge people. 

My friend Kori told me that when I first started my job at The Cascades she disliked me because I frequently passed her desk and didn't speak or acknowledge her.  I never realized until then that I can often get lost in my thoughts and forget that I exist in a world with other people all around me.  Since she told me that, I've tried really, really hard to jar myself out of my inner world when I'm in the outer world.  Kori is a dear, loved, valued friend now, because eventually we got to know one another, but had time not afforded us that chance, I could have missed out on a beautiful friendship because I stayed too far inside my own head.

I won't say that I've completely conquered my inner lost-ness, but at least now I know that I do tend to isolate myself from the world too much, especially when I'm stressed or sad or just overwhelmed with what I'm trying to accomplish. 

It seems odd to say that for a lot of our lives, we just check out, we aren't present for all the depth and love and beauty that surrounds us.  Lately I find myself thinking back on my girls' childhoods and wondering where all that time went, and why I don't remember more of it.  I know, though, that for many of those years, I stayed focused on too many of the wrong things.  I worried over what people thought of me, I fretted over money, I obsessed over making all the right decisions and beat myself up whenever I got something wrong.  Maybe we all stay too often focused on things that in the long run, never really matter.

Mindfulness is all the rage nowadays, but how many people really understand what that means? We used to call it, "stopping to smell the roses."  Even then, few of us took the term seriously.  It gets thrown in to conversations about our job fatigue and life's demands and our need to take a break from it all; but how often does anyone really pause to take in a moment, feel grateful for it, appreciate being alive?  I don't mind telling y'all, that has not come easy for me this year.  Since January one challenge after another seems to have chased me down and tried to defeat me.  I find myself hiding inside my house sometimes, hiding from my own emotions, and hiding even from the people I love.  Losing my job became one of the most emotionally hurtful things that has happened to me in recent years, and I stayed lost in thoughts of that injustice for a good month before I could start putting the hurt behind me and find some gratitude for it.  Yes, we can find gratitude in even the worst of circumstances if we really try. 

But first, we have to step outside ourselves and find some objectivity about life.  I lost my job in a horrible way, by no fault of my own, and the injustice of how my seniors were treated truly breaks my heart; but they are some strong over-comers, and in their determination, they've found a way to stay together over the summer.  I've been able to let go more and more, and start focusing on what I want for myself--how I want to spend the rest of my life.  If I'd never lost that job, the status quo would have been the rest of my life.  Now I get to actually explore other avenues, use my skills and talents, find my own little happy corner of the world. 

True blessings often come in disguise and at first, seem like horrible circumstances.  This break from the daily grind has given me a chance to reevaluate myself in relation to the world around me.  I want to learn to stay fully present in the moment with the people around me.  I want to truly feel the damp evening grass under my feet, appreciate the sounds of hummingbird wings and crickets trilling as the sun sets over the hills.  I want to curse the invisible little bugs that bite the crap out of me while I'm watering the flowers and marvel at the butterflies that swarm my Zinnia garden.  Someday, when maybe I can't walk anymore or I can't water the plants on my own, I want to be able to recall those moments with the same joy I have now.  The only way we can appreciate the lives we've lived is to fully, presently, gratefully live them now. To me, that is mindfulness. It is peace.

Whatever has you tied up in knots today, whatever has your mind lost in the past or wound around the outcome of the future, I hope you can let it go for awhile.  Take some time to breathe, find some little ray of joy in every day, and lie down at night with a thankful heart. 

We only get one life.  Let's live it well.

July Fading

I ran across a picture of me and my dad this morning and it made my heart beat harder. 

Lately I find myself in a state of chagrin, with much of my life seemingly so out of my control.  I doubt my every decision, all the way down to the simplest of every day things, like what to eat for breakfast, or whether to do another load of laundry before when the last load stil sits wadded up in a basket at the foot of my bed.  You can imagine how tough a big decision must seem. 

I wish for a path of less resistance.  I remember my old lover who used to say, "Expect the best, but plan for the worst."  I think of my dad, and wonder how he made so many tough decisions in his lifetime without creating a wealth of huge regrets deep in his soul.  So, when I ran across this picture today, the memory attached to it suprised me.  It should have lightened me, but somehow I feel heavier in my shoes. 

My daddy had several rehab stays in a nursing home.  During one of those stays I lived only minutes away, and dropped by to see him almost every day.  Looking back on that time now, I treasure it, though at the time, I often felt tired and weary of sitting by his bed as he nodded off.  The best days were the ones when he was alert and conversational.  He was confused much of the time and didn't understand where he was or why he was there, but one day in particular, I hold so close to my heart.  I sat on the bed beside him, my head on his shoulder, just the way we'd sit at my house after Thanksgiving dinner, both of us falling asleep to the sounds of football on the TV. 

As a child, he infused my life with music.  I fell asleep many a Tuesday night listening to him and my uncle Marice playing their guitars in the livingroom.  He taught me guitar chords, bought me a piano, gave me the courage to sing in public--something it seems, is a skill you lose when you stop using it often.  But this particular day, I started singing an old hymn he taught me when I was a kid.  He listened, smiled, said he'd never heard that before but he liked it. 

We talked about old times for a while, and I reminded him that he always lived a full, happy life. 

"I didn't spend enough time serving the Lord." He said, tears welling in his eyes.

Tears welled in mine, too. 

My dad wanted nothing more in life, than to serve God, to be a good man, to do what was right.  His imperfections no more deplorable than the worst in most of us, he could not abide the thought of failing, or more succinctly, of failing God.  Despite his dementia, I struggled to believe that he could ever feel righteously inadequate.  I rattled off a list of all the things he spent his life doing in the service of the Lord, but he shook his head and said, "Yeah, but I could have done more."

Last week I picked up a sweet gentleman in Travelers Rest and took him to Slater Baptist to be with the seniors there.  He lives a far piece (a fur piece if you're from these parts) out of the way, but is isolated, lonely and hemmed in by his living situation to the point that he doesn't even really have room to get up and walk around.  Someone said to me, "You sure are going to a lot of trouble."  Someone else said, "I can't believe you're going so far out of your way to do this."  What they meant was, they couldn't understand why I'd put myself out for someone when I'm not getting paid for it.  I did have to stop and take inventory--why was I doing it? 

Tired and hot and so stressed, I walked beside Phillip as he slowly made his way from my car up the ramp to his back door.  I thought to myself, "I don't know if I can keep doing this.  I don't know if I should."  Then, like a film in my head, I saw my dad pulling up to the back of Blue Ridge nursing home in Easley, then disappearing through the double doors for a few minutes.  I saw him making his way back out again, pushing Harold through those big doors in his wheelchair.  I saw my dad opening the front passenger door of the church van, pushing the wheelchair up just-so, helping Harold pull himself into the seat.  This had been our Sunday morning routine for all of the childhood I can recall.  The realization hit me, I do this because it's what I was taught to do.  Because it seems like the right thing to do, even if it also feels like too much sometimes.

 Phil's dogs barked madly at us as we approached the door.   I fished his key out of the little pouch attached to his walker and unlocked the door for him, stood back and waited while he shuffled inside. The air conditioning from inside pushed its way through the heat a short distance before it got cut off by a blast of humidity.  Inside, it was dark, empty, like a tunnel of sadness waiting to swallow him up.  Part of me wanted to shut the door and run for my car, and part of me wanted to tell Phillip to turn around, just come home with me for a couple of days.  We could watch TV together and maybe go get a hamburger one day. 

Some part of me knows I can't save the world.  I know I can't work for free, I can't help every single elder-adult I come across. I know that I often am just as in need of help as those I'm trying to help, I just don't like to admit that.

And that's probably why I feel so heavy inside; like maybe I will never measure up to my own expectations, much less those of my father or perish the thought, The Lord.

My dad did the best he knew how.  I say that, knowing him so fully, his weaknesses and strengths, his inequities and virtues.  I envision him often with sweat dripping off the end of his nose as he worked the garden in July heatwaves.  The way he could turn up a glass of ice water and dump it down his throat, then hand it back to me and say, "Brng me some more."  This thirst of his, seemingly contagious, I would take a sip of water from his glass on my way back outside.  His thirst for life so fierce, I think it must run too, in my own veins.

I longed for summer to arrive this year.  To run outside in a sundress and bare feet, to grow tomatoes and Zinnias and take the kids swimming.  I never saw the troubles coming, so focused I was on glorious sunshine and lazy mornings with my boy.  It's already the middle of July and I only now am starting to feel the sun on my shoulders and see some light peeking in from the dark corners of uncertainty that seemed to cover me over for a while.  I don't know if I can ever feel good enough, if I will ever feel the assurance of living life the "right" way.

But July is already fading away into August, where yellow-hot days will singe the Earth and time will march on.  A new school year will start.  New milestones for my family, a new job for me and the realization that I must let go of what's behind me if I'm ever to reach for what's ahead. 

Getting Over Me

Let me be real for a moment...Not that I'm ordinarily dishonest in what I write, but I want to just directly address a misnomer about me that seems to have permeated the minds of practically everyone I know.

I do not hate myself.  I do not think I am less worthy of love and acceptance than anyone else, and at the same time, as my parents taught me, I am no more worthy than anyone else.

My earlier post on this blog today referred to the vastness of the universe, and in comparison, my smallness and how in reference to how enormous everything is around me, I am very small and insignificant.

It really bothered people.  It had the opposite effect of what I intended and people who sincerely care about me responded by assuring me that I am worthy of love, that I am not insignificant, that they'd give me more if they had it to give.  Thing is, I don't remember asking for anything.  Not in that post, anyway.  I think perhaps in the flurry of fundraising and talking about transplant and my own worrying over my lack of income due to circumstances beyond my control, I've given the impression that I expect folks to just give me things, or give me money hand over fist.

That is not who I am and it's not what I want.

I appreciate the generosity of everyone who has given money to my fundraiser, my friend Alison who has come up with clever ways to raise money, my daughters and my sisters who have worked on the "transplant campaign" for the last few months more than I could ever express.  I also cannot tell you how indebted I feel to all of you already.  I couldn't ask you for more.

I appreciate everyone who prays for me, who sends me their love, who offers help or a thoughtful gesture.  You all enrich my life so much, and I only wish I knew how to repay your kindnesses to me.

When I say I am small, I mean we are all small.  We are all just specks in a huge mind-blowingly incomprehensible Universe.  To me that thought is comforting, to some it is troubling.  It took a long time for me to find comfort in my smallness, but if I stop to remind myself of it, my heart rate slows down, my hands stop trembling, everything seems better, if only for a moment.

Sometimes I wonder (and this is not a criticism of anyone's faith) if we let our own narcissistic view of the world influence our spiritual beliefs.  If I'm small to God, I must not be very important, right?

Wrong.

Bees.  Bees are small to us, but we need them all the same.  Sometimes they hurt us, but we still need them.  Sometimes they show up where we don't want them, but we still need them.  Sometimes they're deadly to humans, but we still need them.  You can crush one underfoot, and as long as you're wearing shoes, never know it.  The bees from its own nest might have to work harder when one bee dies, but they continue on.  Bees have a job to do, and they do it, no matter what.

We are small and many of us, myself mainly, do not know what exactly we're doing here, so I guess you could say the bees have one over on us.

Really, I was going to go smaller, but on the other end of the "Universe spectrum" are billions of creatures so small you can't see them without some high-powered magnification.  Dust mites, for instance, which sleep with you every night, but you don't even know they're there.  But then, there are creatures even smaller, deadly ones, if they end up in your body....

People are just part of the cycle, part of the program, a small player in the cast of Life itself.

So all I'm saying is, I'm trying to get over myself.

That's all.

Perspective

Did you know that the observable distance of the Universe is 93 billion light years?  See, even though I tell you that, neither of us can comprehend it.

But beneath that vast star-scattered sky, eight planets (Pluto, a planet no more) rotate around the sun, all of them different.  Among those nine planets, Earth.  It's in just the right spot, the perfect distance from the sun.  Since ancient times, humans understood that the sun gets credit for all life on Earth.  If our planet were closer to the sun the heat would eradicate life.  If it were farther from the sun, the cold and darkness would make life impossible.  Scientists still search though, for signs our planet isn't a fluke of nature.  They look for even the most microscopic signs that any living thing can exist elsewhere.  Glimmers of possible life-forms pop up now and then, but nothing so far, to get really excited about, has been discovered.

All most of us ever know of the Universe comes from science class or episodes of TV shows narrated by Neil Degrasse Tyson.  We only think about it when, on rare occasion, we step outside to look up at the night sky.  There we stand, beneath it, in awe of it, with no ability to fathom the vastness of it.  In fact, most of us don't even think about the existence of it until the sun goes down.

We are small.  The smallest of small things, nearly, when you put into perspective the vastness of what exists around us.  I forget sometimes how small I really am.  I forget that in the grand scheme, my problems, my very existence is pretty much insignificant.  I am one of over 7.5 billion people.  Even that number is more than most of us can fathom.

I am one mother with one son, sitting at a red light in front of a middle school at 8:14 a.m. handing a tissue to her kid so he can blow his nose and wipe his tears before he goes inside.  I am one mom who woke up overwhelmed and stressed and had a full-on meltdown over three $3.95 plain t-shirts she bought at Wal-Mart yesterday, even though she was afraid to spend the money.  I'm one mom with one son who is outgrowing his clothes and had no short sleeved shirts in his dresser.  One mom who just lost her shit when that son didn't want to wear any of those $3.95 shirts, despite that they were all he had that fit.

It all seems so silly, doesn't it?  That two tiny beings would get all worked up over three cheap shirts.  But it happened today, not just in my small house on my small patch of grass underneath a big blue sky with the sun rising over us.  It happened in other places too, I'm sure of it.  With Seven and a half billion people--most of them struggling with something every day, you know some other kid cried over shirts this morning, and some other mom cried over feeling alone in her struggle.  With seven and a half million people on this planet, how can anyone feel alone?

I do.  I mean that, not to chastise anyone for not supporting me.  In fact, I thought to myself this morning that I wish I could stuff all of this year back into the bottle and start over again.  I wish I could give all the money back and forget about the transplant.  I wish I'd never told anyone about losing my income, or the mix up with Social Security or well, any of it.  I wish none of you knew that I am struggling and I wish I had never started down the transplant path.  I regret it with all my being at this moment because I realize how insignificant it really is, rightfully so, to most everyone besides me.

Someone once said, "The difference between a big problem and a small problem is whether or not it's YOUR problem."  And there's the rub.  None of this is anyone else's problem and honestly, I need to learn to keep my problems to myself.

So I offer my apologies to all of you, my friends, for feeling hurt or neglected because I felt forgotten or not valued.  Frankly, it was wrong of me to expect everyone to forget about their own battles to come help me fight mine.  The only reasonable thing to ask of anyone is their kindness, and all of you have been nothing but kind to me.  I understand that my problems, well in consideration of all the problems in the world, they are very, very small.

I'm sorry for not being more grateful for what I have.  I'm sorry for expecting too much.  I'm sorry for asking for more than I could even begin to repay.

This is me, trying to gain some perspective on life this  morning as I conclude this little rambling mish-mash of thoughts and get back to the minutia of handling things.  I'm filling out applications for help online, printing pay stubs and tax returns, putting together files and making copies so I can prove things to people whose job it is to help people like me.  Maybe I'll get somewhere, maybe I won't.  I guess time will tell.

Meanwhile, I wish you well as you navigate your own struggles today, and always.

My Religion

It's late (for me) and I'm tired, but as a friend told me recently, I have things to say.

Life has brought me through so many strange and terrifying and amazing experiences.  Some of them spiritual, some of them detrimental to my spirit, and some of them led me to now, where I sit on my couch feeling quite at home with what resides in my soul. 

Though my previous life thrust me deep into church-work and showed me both the beautiful and ugly sides of ministry, I am not that religiously church-devoted person anymore.  Yes, I witnessed and felt hurtful things many times, but I learned emotional resilience from those things, and I learned that God judges me much less harshly that fellow Christians do.  In the long run, this lesson serves me well, even when I witness the unfairness all around me, as I hear every day, people judging one another instead of loving one another as Jesus commanded.

I am not spiritually wounded.  I do not resist organized religion because of bitterness or deep hurt or any other reason for which anyone should take pity on me.  I resist it because I simply do not believe in it.  Period.

So although my father had me on a church pew from the time I was an infant, and I served in churches well into my 30's, and although I can quote scripture and argue doctrine with the best of all those Bible College scholars in leadership positions at church, I simply choose not to.  I choose something else.

What I choose might not make sense to you.  It might seem like I've turned my back on everything my father ever tried to teach me; but trust me, it's all still part of who I am.  My dad taught me more through the way he lived his life than I ever learned while sitting on a church pew listening to a preacher shout and spew at me about how low-down no good filthy sinners like me weren't worthy of God's consideration. 

See, I don't believe that I or any other human being is born inherently evil.  I don't believe that an innocent baby suddenly comes to an age that they lose that innocence and become sinners by default, who must humble themselves and admit to their evilness in order to receive God's love and thus, acceptance into the Kingdom of Heaven once they die.

Hold onto your hat, because I'm not even sure I believe in Heaven.

Listen folks, since I was very young, I knew I would not live to be old and when a person knows all her life that life is SHORT, and time can't be bought or bartered or even made up-for once you're dead, she starts to question the whole idea of an after-life and what purpose it even serves.  What purpose would it serve, exactly?  We believe even the best we can do here amounts to "filthy rags," but we want to also believe that a life of eternal reward awaits us in the life beyond.  Because of Jesus, right?

Jesus means many things to many people.  To me, Jesus is the spirit of love and acceptance.  To me, Jesus is a symbol of the kind of grace you and I should extend to one another.  God uses many symbols if we open our eyes to them.  Certainly, the life of Jesus gives us an example of Godly love that we can only hope to live up to. 

Last summer I inadvertently offended a minister with a poem I wrote--not about him in particular, but about the drive of religion that makes people think they should possess the power to solve all problems and alleviate all suffering in the name of Jesus.  The reality is, no matter how much you might want to rescue me from a moment's anguish or even a lifetime of affliction, you can't.  None of us possess the power to heal or even, in some cases to help.  Sometimes showing Christ-like love comes by way of accepting our limitations and allowing the people we love to find their own path to spiritual wholeness and healing.  I find comfort in the Earth--the feel of damp dirt in the palms of my hands, the smell of it as I pull weeds and bury seeds beneath it.  I find wholeness in a summer breeze, the whisper of trees in the wind, the flicker of fireflies in the twilight air.  I am grounded by the tickle of grass between my toes and the way an evening's dew can cool the ground that a few hours before scorched my bare feet under the heat of an August sun.  A breathless preacher with the weight of the world on his shoulders could never give me the kind of peace I find in the all engulfing joy of nature.  It reminds me that I still am, and that all that's around me has been, long before I was even a twinkle in my mother's eye.  It will all outlive me, and somehow, long after I'm gone, I'll still be part of it.  These things feed my soul in a way church never could.  Nature reminds me that I am powerless over many things, yet full of faith all the same, enough to plant a seed and water it in hopes that flowers will eventually bloom. 

Yes, I have faith, although it might seem unconventional to others.  It gets me through even my toughest days though, and that's saying a lot for someone like me, who often wants to just quit.  I'm grateful for all the ways grace presents itself in my life, in the form of friends and family who love me, a community of support that so many folks wish they had.  I hope that in some small ways here and there, I afford that kind of grace to the people I encounter every day. 

Dancing

Thirty years later, I sit by the fire after a long day feeling rather alone in my battle against life's sharp arrows.  The radio plays softly from the kitchen as I finally put down the day's work and prop my feet up.  Just as my head hits the curve of the chair back, the sweet call of an old song conjures another dark evening, in another dark living room where two young, gullible lovers stood in embrace.  Roy Orbison was crying, and we were swooning.

My husband worked and attended college, I worked days and rarely saw him at night.  His schedule, ever-changing and mine immovable, we almost existed in different dimensions.  Perhaps absence made our hearts fonder.

"You're making a foolish decision!" His dad boomed at him one Sunday afternoon.  "You're too young to know whether she's the right girl for you!
Look at her family! You want to marry into that?" Red-faced, he stormed off as my future husband stared at his feet, too intimidated to talk back.  

My heart ached for him in that moment, and it ached for me, too.  Was I so unlovable and so wrong for him?  Was I right for anyone--what with my family and all.

Others implored me, "Don't you want to wait until he finishes college?"  

No.  I was sure.  More sure than I ever was of anything before or after the day I married him.  I knew we were meant to spend a lifetime together. 

I knew it on Saturday nights when we made out on my sister's couch and then felt guilty about it later.  I knew when his bumbling, awkward ways endeared him to me, pulling him ever-nearer to my heart.  

We did love one another.  We loved wildly and fiercely and yes, even foolishly.  People even told us, "You're being foolish!" while we planned our wedding and started a joint bank account to save for the honeymoon.  My parents seemed to think of my choice as sound, a "marrying up" sort of deal.  His parents, well they never lost any love for me.  

We loved as hard as we could, despite the binds of religion our church imposed upon us.  It was there we met and there that we fell for one another, sitting side by side passing notes during mind-numbingly redundant sermons, spewed from the pulpit in shouts and stomps.  We reveled in our sentimentality so much that somewhere, those notes lie, still tucked away for someone to find and read, and not understand.

Independent Baptists, that's what we were, and how we were raised.  His dad a preacher, mine a deacon.  There our fathers' similarities parted.  We didn't know it at the time, but we were a 1980's big-haired, white sneakered version of Romeo and Juliet--with a Southern drawl.  Never allowed to dance or drink alcohol or go to movies, we, even as teenagers, never tried to buck the system.  We followed the rules as closely as we could--except on Saturday nights of course.  We prayed extra hard on Sundays for the strength to endure temptation, and we loved.

We loved with abandon of all reason, with a kind of insanity that could only come from unspoiled hearts that never considered the pain of being broken.

What is love though, if not the most foolish of concepts known to man?  Yet we yield to it so easily.  We let it wrap around us, pull us close, make us believe in forever.

And so, we stood in our dark living room in Six Mile, nearly 30 years ago holding one another close, gently rocking from side to side to the sweet falsetto of Roy Orbison's  "Crying."  My husband said softly in my ear, "I wish we really knew how to dance."

"Me too." I said back, as Roy Orbison faded into the background and we remained tangled together,  obliviously still swooning to the music.

Breakfast At Tiffany's

We drove towards the beach, evening sunset giving way to gray skies around us, the radio blaring as we sang along.  "Breakfast At Tiffany's" was the song, and I sang it with such joy and abandon in that moment.  He's not around anymore, but every time I hear the song, my mind reaches for that instance of pure joy again.  For a long time, I let the poison of how things ended spoil the memory, but I try not to let it anymore.

You learn to see things differently when you live most of your life thinking you don't have much longer to live.  Every struggle and failure and triumph seems to take on deeper meaning, sometimes interpreted so inaccurately by a mind too caught up in preparing for the end to truly remain present for what comes in the middle.  Even an Oreo knows that the stuff in the middle is the sweetest, so what's wrong with me?

Yesterday I listened to music from my iPod, something I rarely do.  I even scrolled to "songs" and had it shuffle all of them.  With nearly every song, I could identify a person or a place or a time that brought the melodies to my world. Ben Harper made me think of Joey and riding in the car with no AC during the summertime with the radio turned up loud.  Uriah Heep made me think of the old high school pal who never outgrew being a hippy and a pot-head.  U2, well, some memories aren't all that great, so I skipped most of those songs.  Then there was Johnny Cash, who made me think of my dad and all the Saturday evenings we watched Hee Haw together, and especially the one episode where Johnny rode up on a horse singing a song about a traveling preacher.  My daddy said, "There's the man in black!" And I never forgot that one, brief, fleeting, seemingly meaningless second of time.  I am frozen there, and so is Johnny Cash and my dad, all of us sharing in a moment of joy.  Lady Gaga made me remember when Sylia was in middle school and thought herself  "emo-ish."  The Mamas and The Papas brought back an afternoon in the car with my girls, trying to harmonize "California Dreamin'" together.  Fiona Apple, driving around in Greer with Tony Viola, who was the only man I ever knew who liked Fiona, singing "Parting Gift," while he listened close to see if I could hit all the low notes. 

Sometimes the smells and tastes and sounds around me trigger memories so deeply ingrained into who I am that I rarely take notice of them anymore.  So often as an adult, I have felt like someone watching a parade go by, never really getting to march with it;  but perhaps what I fail to accept is that the parade has run through me.  Every character who wore a mask or danced a jig or ran around in a crazy costume left something of themselves with me.  The parade composed me, with its music and laughter and even tears, it brought joy to my doorstep. 

Spoiled relationships and sad endings took my joy for too long.  As I listened to "Breakfast At Tiffany's" yesterday morning while I shopped for blouses, I decided to let go of the bitterness for a while, and instead try to hold that place of joy where a sweet memory exists.  I tried to remind myself that some people live their whole lives without a moment like that one, so instead of clenching my fists because all of life didn't give me the kind of joy that moment gave me, I should perhaps just feel grateful it happened.  That's just what I did, I stood there remembering, smiling to myself, thanking the Universe that even when life seats us beside a steaming pile of poo in the passenger seat of the Toyota Echo, it also loves us enough to create a moment we can cling to--a moment before we realized we were riding in a car with a steaming pile of poo. 

With so much change disrupting my world, and with the realization that dialysis won't work forever--eventually I will need that transplant, I get fairly gloomy these days.  Change is difficult for everyone, or at least that's what we tell ourselves when we are struggling.  The truth is, change isn't always hard, not all change.  Sometimes we lay out the welcome mats and throw parties for Change.  So I suppose the changes that come with suffering leave us feeling alone and in need of some fellow human to understand our internal turmoils. 

Human beings were made to reach forward.  From birth, we begin to reach milestones and throughout life, we keep reaching.  We reach for knowledge, for experience, for love and family and a chance to redefine home to our own broods.  We reach for empty nests and retirement parties, then long vacations and slow, steady years of just enjoying all the things we accomplished in the middle; but I feel un-tethered, for the reaching also keeps us anchored to this world, and I feel time running out.   So many things I longed for in life rest proud and full inside my chest.  My babies, my grandchildren, the friendships and even failed attempts at love, they all bear witness to my being.  I hope that somewhere, someday, I will pop up in someone's mind as they listen to a song and recall a moment or two of pure joy, shared with me. 

The Parade forever marches on.