I advise you to wait to click on the audio until you reach the part where I explain what it is.

Dear friends,

I am writing to you from my covid bed, dressed in my covid ensemble—stretch pants under sweatpants, wool socks and tall uggs; undershirt, shirt, fleece sweater. Topped off with the fluffy warm robe my mom got me 18 years ago when I was 40 weeks pregnant with my first child and we had nothing to do but buy things that made me happy and make cream puffs. Despite being worn over my clothes every day of every winter for the last 18 years, the robe can still be described as pink. Kinda. 

Many things have happened since I wrote to you last.

In the month of November, the tremor devolved developed into a true disability and I spent my days figuring out how to adapt, accommodate, and arrange my life around it.

Fine motor work became extremely strenuous. This impacted any sort of computer work—the combo of sitting upright and still plus focusing my eyes plus restraining my movements made computer work a true feat of mental and physical exertion and endurance. I lost my ability to write.

While fine motor movements have been difficult, large movements with my arms reduced the tremor and therefore its impact. So I spent the month doing a lot of cleaning. Hours and hours of scrubbing grime off of walls and baseboards and showers and floors. It was me, my collection of scrub daddy products, dawn and vinegar (mixture of champions), and The West Wing in my ears. I binged all seven seasons in less than a month. Hour after hour of CJ Cregg and all the gang doing their thing out in the world while I scrub scrub scrubbed things that nobody could see and nobody cared about.

I had to spend a lot of time laying down. Prob about four to five hours during the main part of the day. Recovering from exertion and overstimulation, mostly. 

I’ve watched so much TV while laying down for hours and hours. So much. K dramas galore, weeks and weeks of West Wing, some ill advised Christmas movies (I’m looking at you Lindsey Lohan and Freddie Prinze Jr). And then on Thanksgiving, Jorie offered me some “chutaney” and I about lost my sh*t so I had a solid two weeks of New Girl before it lost its luster.

I’ve been so so bored. 

It is hard to describe what the month has been. At some point, I realized that I hadn’t even talked to any of my friends about it because what do I say? My head shakes a lot and I can’t do anything but clean and I lay down a lot? 

But that’s not what it really is.

It’s the day that I was going to go sit in Kiri’s classroom and I couldn’t make myself go because I didn’t want her to be embarrassed of me. I didn’t want to be embarrassed. The kids are at a new school and they know everyone, and Devo knows everyone, but no one there knows me Before. 

Or the day I was at the head of the line at Marshalls and I realized I was turning away from the people behind me because I didn’t want anyone to see me. I made myself turn all the way around so that I was facing the line, I made myself sit in the fear and discomfort and grief.

I’ve made myself keep going out into the world even though the tentacles of phobia were pulling me in. I went to the school fall festival and hung on to Devo’s arm in a way I’ve never done before, but I went. I’ve sat in church, and at a wedding, even though people behind me can see me shaking. I turn my head towards, instead of angling away. I practice opposite action almost every day and it helps. It helps. 

I woke up one night crying because I felt that what I really needed was exposure therapy. For someone to hold compassionate space for me while we both bring our full attention to the tremor while I cry and cry. 

It is hard to describe what it is like to have ability stripped away from you. Loss after loss after loss. 

I wrote a blog post for advent and had to write a bio, but I didn’t know what to put because I don’t have hobbies anymore. Or work. “She lays down alot,” maybe. My kids would say that’s accurate. 

I’ve actually been pretty happy, thanks mostly to getting off the gabapentin/hell and back on the Wellbutrin. I’ve been deeply grateful for that. But there are definitely hard days where the only goal is to survive each moment with as little harm inflicted upon myself as possible.

I’ve become my own personal coach, therapist, and occupational therapist. 

I have a pretty clear idea of where I want to go with this—deep acceptance, creative adaptation, shining so bright everything else is faded in comparison. But at the same time, some days I despair that I’m just going to be all spirit by the time this is done—no mind, no body, just all these soul lessons of letting go letting go letting go.

There’s a lot of letting go. 

But you have to walk the line between letting go and giving up. And some days it’s about letting go and holding on. Tricky.

Where do I want to be a year from now, whether things stay the same or get worse. (I suppose they could also get better.) Do I still want to be stuck wanting and wishing and struggling against? No, absolutely not. First, because it sucks. Second, because it’s only a first step in the process, and I don’t want to plateau here. 

Integration. That’s what I have my eye on.

I want to make this path of integration the most effective and efficient possible. Use all the tools, not get caught up in dead ends or mucking around in self harm. But of course that also means letting things take their time. Very dialectical, everything.

So I’m tending to my mind. I can’t control its first response, but I can choose where we go from there. What is the path forward. 

I have a note on my phone where I write meditations in very specific moments of need, calling my higher self, my truer self out of the claustrophobia or isolation or panic or despair. Eye on the prize.

This is very “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” territory here. You can’t go under it, you can’t go over it, you have to go through it. Every freaking time the only answer is through. You have to go through it. Though it. Deeper. More embodied. More presence. No escape. Back in we go.

I put on makeup every morning as a talisman. Every morning I wonder if I will cry my mascara off today, but I put it on anyway, a stake in the ground saying it can be both. Both mascara and crying. Beauty and pain. And nothing seems as bad when you pass the mirror and you look fine. Or, fine, as the case may be. 

I shook my bootay to the three Lizzo songs I have on repeat bc, neurodivergent.

I went outside and walked around the block. (Walking = strenuous)(Sunlight = necessary)

I talked to people who love me.

And I spent a lot of time on instagram. I have been so grateful for instagram, it has been a true saving grace. I have laughed so much. So. Much. If all you can do is lay down and scroll with one hand, why not do some laughing?

So that was November.

At the beginning of December I had my first botox appointment with my new awesome neurologist. I went in with no expectations that the botox would help, since it hadn’t helped the last two times. I had spent the month of November really really deep into disability, and part of that was accepting that “tremors are tricky” and the new meds weren’t touching it and it was just getting worse. 

My previous neurologist would take the botox syringe and put some in here, and some in there, here and there, here and there, in the muscles of my neck that control the head.

My new neurologist hooks the botox needle up to a machine. It’s a very cool machine that senses the contractions of the muscles and makes them audible. Then, she uses the sound to help her target the injection more precisely, and to help determine how much to use. 

I recorded the last three injections for our listening pleasure. You may now click the audio above. :) You’ll hear the buzz of the machine, then, when the needle is inserted into the muscle, you’ll hear a harsh repeating sound. That’s the tremor. When the tremor sound begins to fade, that’s when she’s injected the botox so the machine can’t sense it as strongly.

I’ve only been able to describe the experience of the tremor as though it’s loud in my body, but it doesn’t actually make sound. To be able to hear it, to be able to send it to people and say this is what it is—when does that happen in life? Imagine other people being able to hear your cramps or your neck pain or your anxiety? Insane. Very very satisfying.

Anyhow, I got the botox on a Monday, and by Friday it began to make a significant difference. I had times of wondering if the tremor was actually even going. Of course, when I paid attention, it was still there, but the fact that I even wondered was incredible! The tremor has continued to change as the botox has settled in (it peaks at six weeks). Currently it seems like more of a wag, and it is once again responsive to whether I relax or tense my body. (In November, it didn’t respond to anything I did, ever, other than lay down. And for one awful week it didn’t even respond to laying down.) 

And all of that was great. But. 

The whiplash was real. I had just finally gotten my mind around things, I had just finally gotten the hang of a workable routine and accommodations, I had just made it through the big First is Worst part, and then…what? What am I supposed to do now? And what is the tremor going to let me do now? 

And then I got covid. 

Yay!

Not yay. Covid sucks. It sucks so bad. Wear a mask during the holiday season, and plan to do so every year indefinitely, please for the love of God who loves God’s vulnerable and suffering children. 

So I’m back to laying down a lot, which isn’t answering any of the big questions. But I am able to type. On the computer. Which is a bloody miracle. And I can’t even feel grateful for that right now, because I’m still reeling from the whiplash and I’m not sure what/how to trust, and it all kind of makes me feel sick to my stomach. 

Or maybe that’s the covid.

Or the propranolol.

Or the fact that I haven’t eaten lunch because covid appetite = zero and typing is so fun and I will never take it for granted again.

Update: I originally wrote this post on December 12, aka Day 6. Since then, I’ve been absolutely bulldozed by Covid fatigue. Hello, Day 14. The day I had to let go of my short, slow daily walks in the sunshine was a hard one. Watching everything I had cleaned with my blood, sweat, and tears get dirty and know that I’ll have to start all over again to get it back to maintenance level is irritating and depressing in turns. You can just call me Elsa, letting it go, letting everything go, and then letting more things go. 

It’s been day after day (after day after day) of being able to do nothing other than amuse myself by posting pictures of languishing Victorian women and laughing myself silly on my instagram stories. Also a lot of managing my thoughts and feelings with an iron hand and an iron will. So much isolation this fall. So much. 

Bracing myself for a return to dealing with the tremor—I haven’t had to deal with it because I’ve been laying down all the time. Grateful? So next on the list will be figuring out what I can and cannot do with the post-botox tremor situation and trying to scratch out an entirely new life for myself. Yay.

BUT, I think I’ve finally turned the corner on the fatigue, tentative glory be. Tentative booty shake. Tentative hop of joy. Hup hup hup.

So that is the short version of what’s been going on. I haven’t been ready to share. It was too raw, too new, too difficult. But now I am ready. And I thank you for holding this with compassion. 

Oh! Please do not send me any crying or sad emojis, they make me feel bad when sent in response to my life. I prefer hearts, dumplings, or other whimsical emojis of choice.

Today is my Grandma’s birthday. She would have been 94. She passed away two years ago this August, mid-Covid-lockdown. For her service, Devo and I crafted a video journey for my family of her remarkable, adventurous life from videos, photos, recordings, and letters—Ruby’s life in her own words. You can watch it here, if you’d like. It’s long but it’s really good and I’m very proud of it. The last few minutes are probably my favorite. And I just love that the final slide, the last letter from her, she signs it but somehow leaves a comma after her name, as though the story isn’t quite finished. 

Ruby,

What follows is what I wrote for my personal tribute—it’s at 1:28:50 in the video. The “dirge” is in the podcast section of this post. I still cry for her several times a week. It means a lot to me to share her with you.  ❤️  «red, for Ruby

Grandma

This is very hard for me to talk about. 

Grandma was there the day I was born. I have had her for my whole life. Almost 40 years. I was hoping for more. For me it was my mom, and Grandma, and Grandpa. They were my home. We lived with or near Grandma and Grandpa for most of my childhood. I was three when we moved away to Samoa and even though I was so little, I remember crying for Grandma and Grandpa because I missed them so much.

Grandma taught me all the most important things—how to read, how to wring out a dishcloth, how to make balanced meals the way grandpa Kahler has taught her—something about diabetics and 3 percents, but really it was just orange and green vegetables plus a carbohydrate and a protein. And probably a dish of black olives or a glass of V8 with ice in it and Grandma, Grandpa and I would sit around the table and swirl and clink our ice cubes. She taught me how to make nut butter and bread, and keep a house clean and organized, and how to always question the people in charge, and how to crochet, knit, cross stitch, and sew and make quilts. I can’t tell you how many times she unknotted the messes I made and rethreaded the machine. She loved to watch M*A*S*H while she did the ironing—she taught me how to iron using Grandpa’s cloth handkerchiefs. I can still smell them with the steam from the iron. 

I spent summers driving up and down the west coast with Grandma and Grandpa, visiting all the relatives and their old friends—they’d trust me to tetris all the luggage into the car and we made sandwiches from ingredients Grandma packed in a cooler or we stopped at Burger King for chicken sandwiches because that was my favorite. I’d sit in the back and read, or sit between them on the bench seat in front, and we’d play car games or Grandpa would get on his ham radio, or grandma would identify the crops or wildflowers or geology we were passing, or she’d tell me what was in the big trucks we passed based on the numbers on those triangular signs because she knew all the codes. We visited all the family cemeteries and she told me all the stories about the people I come from.

She taught me to love theology—her approach seemed to be a perpetual glee in sticking it to the man—because God is always bigger and more loving than we think. She liked being a heretic. I got that from her. Thinking back, she didn’t have much of an escapist theology—she didn’t talk a lot about the great hope of a blissful trouble-free heaven. I wonder if she thought that would be a little boring—I wish I’d asked her that. She was more interested in “occupy till I come” and feeding and educating and clothing and caring for the people that God so loves. 

I was one of the people that she loved. Everyone should be so lucky. 

When I was two, she and I were in the accident and her legs were crushed and she was knocked unconscious. I was in the backseat. When she came to, I don’t know when—maybe after they used the jaws of life to get her out?—her first words were, Where’s my baby, where’s my baby? That’s how she always told the story and they way she said it—where’s my baby, where’s my baby?—you usually had to read between the lines to know what Grandma was feeling—but the way she always said it when she retold the story—where’s my baby, where’s my baby. You were my baby, she’d tell me.

Usually connected to the story about how when I was little I’d sleep in their bed at night and always end up laying across their pillows and kicking them in the head. I have a distinct early memory of Grandma and Grandpa coming into my darkened room at night all concerned. Grandma had a big spoon with honey and lemon juice she’d squeezed out of the plastic lemon. I must have had a cough. 

Grandma loved all of us in a way that is very rare—she managed to think all of us are endlessly interesting and fascinating. I didn’t ever hear her speak negatively about a single person in the family. It wasn’t that she was blind to our faults or choices or struggles, it was more like, well first, like she had faith that we would figure things out. But even more, she could see through to what is most important—that we are all of us worthy of her interest, worthy of her fascination, worthy of her heretical all-accepting love. She loved us. Everyone should be so lucky to have someone like Grandma in their lives. We may have lost this voice, she’s not around anymore to think we’re awesome, but we have had it and we are so lucky.

If she were alive, I’d apologize for singing a slow song for her—she never liked dirges. That’s what she’d call any church song that went too slow for her. But I know she’d overlook it and think it was very well done and be proud of me anyways. 

There are two stories that we’re telling here today. One is her story. And one is the story of what she means to us. 

So, to sum up —she’s my Grandma —she is a part of me at the deepest level— and I’ll miss her and cry for her for the rest of my life. 

Written and recorded Jan 25, 2021.

I can’t do it all.  

There was a Facebook thread a couple of years ago. Someone was asking for tips on meal planning. Everyone was chiming in and telling what they do and then one comment caught my eye. This friend listed the meals that she had on rotation. Her meals were all frozen and canned and packaged and processed and we all felt shocked that she was opening herself to the possibility of being trolled for her poor nutritional choices and she finished off her comment with, “and I’m fine with it because I can’t do it all.”

I couldn’t tell if this was a resigned, “I can’t do it all.” Or if was a battle cry of empowerment. 

But I do know that when she said she can’t do it all, what I heard was “I’m not alone in my failure.” And oh that felt good because misery loves company. 

Can we just pause here and note that I have never once heard a man say, “I can’t do it all.” It’s only been women. Maybe we should think about that.

I typically hear women say, “I can’t do it all” in two ways. The First is sort of a resigned, I’m giving up, sort of way. The other way has a definite stick-it-to-the-man attitude. A battle cry, a middle finger. Or it could be a hybrid, like looking for a way to explain yourself to all the people in the Facebook thread who cook dinner from scratch every night and freeze leftovers for future meals. This is why I do what I do AND I’m proud of it.

I can’t do it all says, “there is an expectation to do it all, and you’re falling short”

I can’t do it all says “I’d like to do it all, but there is a flaw in me somewhere that makes it so that I can’t.”

And then we begin to perpetuate a culture among women and especially among mothers where we prize productivity -  we encourage each other to get up early to get things done “it’ll change your life!”, and stay up late to finish your work because that’s what working moms do. If you try harder you’ll get closer to getting it ALL done. 

“I can’t do it all” turns the conversation to what I can and I can’t do. And we’ve been told that we can do anything we turn our minds to: If I try hard enough and work hard enough and want it bad enough, I can do anything and everything I put my mind to. But that’s a lie. 

I have a fair amount of life experience and it’s given me a pretty good handle on what I can and cannot do.  No matter how hard I work, I still fail. No matter how hard I try, I still fall short. 

You remember in the movie Sing where the elephant loves to sing but is too shy to get on stage? And then once she gets on stage and gets going, she’s just amazing? That all she needed was courage and passion and some animal friends? No, that’s not how real life goes! If anything, it’s closer to Mia Thermopolis where she has to learn things like how to wear pantyhose and walk in heels and speak clearly and deliberately and then she gets up on the stage and it’s half everything she practiced and half a mess. 

But we really want to do it all so we try really hard. And what happens is that we are overwhelmed and overworked and there’s always a sense that the things you’re can’t do are things that you try to hide from your friends or, if you can’t hide them, flaunt on Facebook.

If the paradigm we’re operating under says, “I can’t do it all, but I wish I could do it all”, we’re locked in an everlasting cycle of being slammed up against our limitations every day and fed the message that we’re failures.

The paradigm is fundamentally flawed. 

It is so flawed that I say we should throw it out all together. We should stop telling ourselves “I can’t do it all.”

We should stop telling each other” I can’t do it all” like it’s a badge of honor or a joke to distract each other from our shortcomings. 

Let’s make a pivot. 

Instead of saying, “I can’t do it all” let’s say, “I choose not to do it all.” 

I choose to let my car host an uncurated collection of ephemera and missing necessary items.  I choose to let my refrigerator descend into organizational anarchy.  I choose to reply to emails and texts haphazardly.  I choose to let my children go into public self-styled and possibly unwashed.  I choose to have walls that are blank, and not in the pretty, minimalist way, but in the I-can’t-find-or-afford-anything-that-looks-nice way.  I choose not to carry snacks and water bottles for my children.  I choose to let dust gather on fan blades for years at a time.  I choose to not strive for noteworthy academic prowess from our children and I will never have a bumper sticker that says my child is an A student in your local school.

This is the way we can take back the ordinariness and contrariness of real life where my dirty car is not a sign of weakness but a sign of action. 

Because we can go a step further and say, “Here is what I choose to do.”

I choose to keep my house clean enough that it promotes good mental and physical health for myself and my family. I choose to feed us food that keeps us alive. What it comes down to is that I choose to spend time on the things that are important to myself and to my family. 

And so does everyone else I know. And if you say to me that that sounds very nice but you have to do a great many things that are not important to you, but you are expected to do them and do not have the freedom to fling off the burden of unreasonable expectations, then I would suggest that you are, in fact doing what is important to you, which is to please the people who are putting those expectations on you. That is what you are choosing, and that is okay.

When we realize that we can choose what we do and what we don’t do, we free ourselves from the pressing prison of expectations that society has put upon us. A sense of autonomy is one of a human’s basic needs, and if we can stop the perpetuation of an “I can’t do it all” culture and shift it to a “This is what I choose to do” culture, just imagine how much better we’ll all feel.

Language is power and “I choose” has more power than “I can’t” any day of the week.

So, look, when I come over to your house and look up at your dirty fan blades, I will say, “Wow, good choice.” And you can say, “I know.”

I know we’re onto the Passion week, but I’ve still got Lenten thoughts in my drafts folder. 😛

Lent is a call to weep for what we could have been and are not. Lent is the grace to grieve for what we should have done and did not. Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not. Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now.

Lent is a summons to live anew.

~Sister Joan Chittister

I’ve been wondering about the Church’s history with personal penitence. Is it warped theology? Is it a vestigial remnant from an earlier time that has outlived its original context? 

Was there a time when people were generally unaware of their sins and also willing to acknowledge them when someone pointed them out? Was this ever a particularly effective method of mass and personal change? I can’t imagine it. Certainly, that time is not now. 

Nowadays, a lack of penitence is really not a problem. At least, not among the people I know. 

We don’t need a season of penitence because we live in penitence all year round. We swim in it. We bathe our children in it. We are veritable Queens of Penitence.

+

I don’t know about you, but I know what I’m doing wrong. To be more precise, I know all the things I’m doing wrong. I’m everlastingly sorry, often with heavy draughts of guilt and shame, for what I’m doing wrong. Also, I’m sometimes terrified that what I’m doing wrong is going to cause the world to collapse. The stakes feel unbearably high.

Between the web of internalized racism and misogyny, climate change responsibility, and participation in capitalism, I literally can’t do anything right. Ever.

Engage in a little self and social awareness and no wonder we’re hyperpenitent.

+

If, presumably, people’s problem used to be a paucity of penitence, now our problem is a penitential overabundance. Both have proved to be equally adept at mucking up our ability to live in the ease, acceptance, and freedom of God. 

Lent, perhaps, could use a bit of an update. Same goal, different method.

3 Antidotes to Penitence

Antidote 1

Kids People do well if they can. -Dr. Ross Greene, alteration mine

Antidote 2

Amazing grace, how sweet the soundThat saved a wretch someone like me.-Chris Oberg, alteration hers

Antidote 3

Wild Geeseby Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesFor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —over and over announcing your placein the family of things.

Prayer of the Recovering Penitents

Do not forgive us our sins.

If you are going to do something with our sin, Might we ask That you make us okay with it.

Originally published on La Sierra University Church’s 40 Days Blog. Lent, 2018. This is a reflection on the book Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren, Chapter 11, titled “Sleeping: Sabbath, Rest, and the Work of God.” All quotes in italics are from this chapter.

Bedtime duty. Currently a multi-hour endeavor. Kisses, chattering, hugs disguised as full body tackles. (30 minutes). Currently, two out of four fall asleep easily and quickly. One child is willing to sleep only under precisely managed and negotiated conditions--dark room, one drink of water, one parent, preferably of the mommy kind. (30-60 minutes).  One child has been recently initiated into existential anxiety via the fear of nuclear annihilation. Physiology and psychology, deep breathing and essential oils, I use all my hard earned knowledge and summon all my Mother Presence, then I release my child into the lonesome valley. Repeat process as necessary. (15 minutes-3 hours. Varies by night). 

My husband falls asleep as soon as I turn the light out. Then it’s my turn. The moment between falling asleep and being asleep, every night, is a brief fling with terror. 

Things to-be-done and left-undone grow into threatening, gigantic marshmallow-ic proportions. Tomorrow’s worries, my own and that of all the heartache and fear I carry for others, loom and frighten. Almost every night, I am shot through with a streak of wild terror that I can’t remember the last time I talked to my mom, that I can’t remember what she looks like. I crack open my eyes but can’t orient myself in my bedroom. 

And then, I'm sleeping. Fear of letting go becomes the gateway to rest.

By day, we masquerade as Atlases holding up the world. But by night, the illusion falls away. We fall asleep and for a few hours, we're good for nothing, useless and worthless. 

We aren’t often forced to confront the illusions of our work-a-day identity until old age or chronic illness comes upon us. Then, crisis of identity. What are we without work, without productivity, without participation, without trying hard? 

Every day, the coming of night gently reminds us of our true identity in God as Beloved. Beloved beyond what we do, Beloved beyond what we have to offer the world. 

The cycle of work and rest that we mark from Sabbath to Sabbath is echoed in every day and night. Work and rest, work and rest. Do and be, do and be. Rhythmic reminders that we are valued not only for what we do (day/work) but for who we are (night/sleep). Beloved.

On Fridays, our family doesn’t gear down for the weekend, we gear up. (The popular usage of “TGIF!” accompanied by a sigh of relief and the promise of weekend waffles is not a useful sentiment in a pastor’s house). I run the Sabbath morning gauntlet like a runner to the race. Four kids up and out the door (clean-and-shod, preferably, house-not-a-shambles, ever hopefully) and a morning full of activity before arriving in our pew. 

Tish's words about the worship hour struck me straight in the heart:

When I first began to attend a church that worshiped with historic liturgy, I cried every week. I hadn’t realized it, but for most of my life my worship experience had been marked by my own striving to get to a particular emotional or cognitive place—a place of joy or crisis or emotion or ardent doctrinal affirmation….

But as we stumbled into a small, stone-walled Anglican church one Sunday, I felt too tired and weak to work myself up—my heart or my head—to any emotional climax or intellectual achievement. So I sat in church and followed the script and said my lines. 

Worship starts and I sit in the pew and put on what I think of as my 'resting church face'.

I’ve worried for years that I will be criticized for sitting, immobile, when I should be standing. For being silent and stone-faced when I am supposed to be singing. I started this ritual out of sheer exhaustion when I had babies and toddlers and there was no extra wherewithal for smiling, or singing, or standing. It was enough to have arrived. 

I’ve always thought that we have the premise of the invocational prayer backwards. We do not need to say to an omnipresent Spirit, “Please be here”. We are the ones who are capable of being present in body but not in spirit.

I cried each week in the worship service. I was learning to rest in a new habit of worship, a way of approaching God that was less reliant on my own energy, effort, or emotional state.  

Nowadays my arms are not full of babies, but I've held onto my ritual. I sit with my resting church face and recover from the onslaught of the morning. I allow myself as much time as I need to let go of the compulsion to wrangle a spiritual experience (worship as work) and open myself to the work of God  (worship as rest).  

And what happens while we rest in sleep or rest in worship?  Who cares for the things-that-have-been-undone and the things-that-must-be-done and the things-that-should-be-done?

Rest becomes a spiritual exercise of trust that God is at work. A cyclical release of our identity as mover and shaker and do-er and Person on Whom Others Depend. A repeated realization that God's work does not depend solely on our work. It is safe to surrender our work into the care of a God who doesn't slumber or sleep. 

Included in this chapter are the words of the Compline, the prayer to be spoken at bedtime. My favorite memorized prayer, it is as appropriate for the hour of worship in which the Body of Christ rests together, as it is for the hour of sleep. 

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Work in God, rest in God. Day and Night. Beloved.

Lent is a call to weep for what we could have been and are not. Lent is the grace to grieve for what we should have done and did not. Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not. Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now.

When I’m asked when I’m going to sing for church again, I say, “Either when our children are older or my husband finds a new job.” I tell myself that it’s just not the season in my life for singing. But as the years (did I say years? am I old enough to say years?) slip by, I am beginning to second-guess myself. That maybe all the hard work and blood and sweat I put into overcoming my terrible case of stage fright might just fizzle and disappear. And so I’ll be a 40 year old soprano who can’t be taken out in public. Which would really be too bad.

--Me, October 14, 2009. I’m 28 years old and the mother of a five-month-old, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old. I am also, it would seem, a fortune teller.

What could I have been.

What could I have been if I had been a different kind of mother, one for whom mothering and singing could have lived in symmetry. 

What have I lost by the choices I’ve made—the big choices to quit jobs and leave opportunities, and the little choices that accumulate over days and across years until we get to here and I’m a forty (one) year old soprano who can’t be taken out in public.

Which really is too bad.

Last week, I found this recording of myself. It’s 2001, I’m 20, and it’s my Senior Vocal Recital. I am, for a few—too few—months, the most myself I have ever been. 

This, I think, is worth weeping for. I am worth weeping for.

Maria Wiegenlied 

Parenting the last two years has been an extreme sport—if by extreme you mean shoving you down an unrelenting path of fear and grief and a complete and utter routing of everything you think you know, every value you thought was immovable, every structure and milestone you assumed was part of your future, and everything you hold dear. 

It’s been very phoenix rising from the ashes, minus the phoenix.

Lindy has been in charge of the church signboard at All Saints Episcopal this week.

Never underestimate the power of God in a well-placed pun, my friends—this one lured us in to our first Ash Wednesday service. Thank you to my mom for sponsoring this outing by stepping in as a literal last minute companion and smoothie maker for Levi and Kiri.

—

I have long been interested in thin places — those moments ‘where the distance between heaven and earth collapses’. Thin places seem to require an alchemy of intention and attention in order to happen. 

There was intention and attention on Wednesday, but it was the moment in the homily when Mother Kelli said “gender” that the thin place opened and I began to cry and cry.

The Lenten journey she described has been my experience of the last eight months. I have done all those things. I have been to all those places. I have learned all those lessons and it has changed me. I am different. To have all of that living inside of me, largely unseen and unshareable—to have all that suddenly, excruciatingly reflected, articulated, affirmed, and blessed as a spiritual journey that I did not go on alone, but in the company of generations…well…I have no words. 

In fact, I have no memory of words at all past the word ‘gender’. I kept thinking, dimly, “I want to remember this” and I keep thinking I should go back and listen again to the video recording and jot down the words that sliced me open. But maybe I’ll just leave it. As someone who exists in words and through words, maybe I’ll grant myself the peace to let it exist beyond words.

But if indeed, I have been on a protracted Lenten journey, I am not to Resurrection Sunday yet. I have wept, and grieved, and changed, but I have not yet entered into a new life. I’m definitely in a liminal space, neither here nor there. Not the same any longer, reaching back to my roots to find a way forward. 

I am at one with the Disney princesses, one moment wondering when will my reflection show who I am inside, and the next I don’t know if I’m elated or gassy, because for the first time in forever there’ll be music, there’ll be light, and I’m finally getting to use my 32 dinner plates, so open up the gates!

I could hope for myself a Lenten journey that ends in new, more abundant life. I could. And I could hope that for you, too.

The scale doesn’t lie, they say, but it doesn’t tell the truth either.The mirror will tell the truth, but it waits until I’m not looking.It waits until I rub the soap over my upper arm, over my breasts,Over the spot where my hip meets my thigh and I squeeze.

Here are truths to hold on to: I am soft in places where I used to be sharp, And round in places where I used to try so hard.

This is what comes of feeding myself when I’m hungry,This is what comes of asking the days to make me fuller and wider,This is what comes of pain and joy,And letting them both live in my body As friends.

As you might imagine, this has caused some problems.I don’t know where to put the blush on my cheekbones anymore, And I can’t fit in to my old, tight life.