Tension

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have a problem – with word art.

Last week I went to IGA and almost walked out with five – count em, five, pieces of word art. I slapped my own hand before I got to the register and restrained myself to one. It said:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

For heaven’s sake.

The worst part is, I. Loved. It.

If I get the opportunity to grow old, I will be the crazy cat lady with no cats and one thousand pieces of ridiculous word art. (It could be a Saturday Night Live sketch, if I was clever enough to write it.) At the very least, my kids will tell stories about their barmy mother who never saw a cheesy inspirational quote-on-stretched-canvas she didn’t like.

At least they’ll always know what to get me for Mother’s Day.

This year, Mother’s Day began with brilliant fuschia gerber daisies and the smell of coffee and sausages.

I read John Green’s Paper Towns as I got ready. I spent time with people who remind me of the joys of motherhood. I ate slightly-too-spicy Thai food with my own wonderful mother.

David ushered me out of the house for coffee and shopping with one of those people who – in good and bad – want.. mostly… to hear the whole truth from me.

It was truly a picturesque day, until…

I returned at five o’clock with those special kinds of bargains found only when shopping with friends. David had installed three more stairs of floor while we were gone. The girls played quietly in the living room as I stumbled through my kitchen, wondering what to make for dinner.

All was tranquil.

Too tranquil.

Twenty minutes later, I heard David’s – alarmed – voice.  Elliana. Elliana! Where. Did. You. Find. The. Scissors?

I shut the fridge door and stepped around the corner. My youngest stood with her hands on her face, dressed in her sister’s former ballet costume and sporting a brand-new, devastatingly-horrible mullet with shoulder-length side burns.

She looked from David’s horrified face to mine and erupted into tears.

I just wanted it a little bit different.

I abandoned dinner to leftovers and found the scissors she’d discovered, which, of course, had been tucked away on top of our fridge.

(This was not the first time Elliana has cut her own hair, after all. )

(This was also not my first day of motherhood, either.)

I frowned and poked and prodded at her not-so-little head. One thought turned over in my head -

I liked this day the way it was.

These past weeks of tearing down, painting, and renovating our house have both exhausted and energized.

I’m getting things the way I want them.

I’m liking things the way they are.

I’d like to call it contentment, but as I trimmed and sheared Elliana’s hair into a somewhat-styled shape, I realized it was nothing more than

… (sigh) Control.

A year ago, my family was a mess. Our marriage, our lives, our jobs, our children, their education, was all out of control. We poised on the edge, frail. We tried to hold it together but both knew we were primed to break into a thousand pieces.

Sometime around November the tide turned. I saw the things others saw. I saw the most important thing, which was that I spent too much time imagining what others saw – and I started to talk. We started to talk – to each other, and to wiser and steadier friends around us.

Together we admitted defeat and pulled ourselves back to function.

Piece by piece – emotionally, physically – we’ve rebuilt our home, and thursday night, in our new, cozy, tidy (yay me!) basement, perfectly set up for snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug-movie-nights, we watched as our favorite TV show ended.

I wish I’d known I was living the good ol’ days when I actually lived them.

My chest got tight in those final Office moments. With Andy’s surprisingly poignant reminiscence and Pam’s gentle, there’s beauty in ordinary things, I remembered why I loved this show so much.

David caught my eye and smiled.

Nine years ago, we were very different people with very different ideas of how to have fun. Thousands of time we’d asked ourselves how did we get married and what did we have in common and seriously, how can you be so different from me? Everything I enjoyed – in music, TV, books, in anything, it seemed – David detested. Everything he loved I thought was boring.

Then came The Office.

My brother had handed us a copy of the first season with the words, you have to see this.

One night while I was at work, David watched the entire disc. When I came home the next morning, he said, spend twenty minutes with me on this. If you don’t love it, I won’t make you watch any more.

From the moment we heard the words, absolutely, I do, we were both hooked. Offbeat, irreverent, awkward, horrible, outrageous, and brilliant, The Office made us laugh at ourselves and our lives in ways we desperately needed.

Slowly Thursday nights became Office nights. Just-learning-to-walk ten-month-old-Noelle bounce-danced to the theme song. Once she started to talk, she’d end bedtime with, you watch Michael-Pam now, Mommy?

We couldn’t really explain to other people why we loved this show. We just knew it was the first time we had both loved something – together.

And if we loved one thing together, maybe we could love other things together too.

So, as I watched the closing moments of this first thing that David and I had loved equally, as I let the truth of beauty in ordinary things sink in, I almost didn’t hear David say,

We’re living the good ol’ days right now, you know.

The thing is, I haven’t been so sure.

A shift emerged in our family these last weeks. Change is coming – and not the change we expected. Just as we’d learned to make peace with most things, another string pulled, and our path turned again.

These strings pulled in my mind as I shaped Elliana’s whack-job into a marginal pixie cut last weekend.

I liked this day the way it was.

I liked my life the way it was.

Friends, let’s be honest.

Most of us don’t like tension. We resolve it as quickly as we can. We pursue resolution with the mentality of an athlete pursuing a prize. Our medals are peace and quiet. We revel in the it’s over now and I can breathe moments.

But those moments don’t last long. And when they’re over, we wonder why all the bad things happen to us when in reality,

It’s never really over

and

It never really should be.

At least, not yet.

I read a story to Noelle this week about a man who tried to resolve something too quickly. He’d been told he would have a child. He became too old to have one. His wife was also too old. Both tired of waiting, he eagerly agreed to her suggestion to have a child with her maid instead.

Forced resolution often brings disastrous results.

How many times have I tried to move the strain before it was ready to be moved? How many times have I gnawed at the pressure in my heart, my brain, my chest, trying to make it over before its suppose to be?  How many times have I made horrible decisions because I just didn’t know how to wait?

Somewhere along the way, we’ve come to believe that easy is good and difficult is bad.

What if we’ve got it all backwards?

What if the reason we don’t recognize the good ol’ days when we’re in them is that

the good ol’ days always have a bit of tension?

Here’s the thing: I need the tension.

It’s not good for me for everything to go right.

Perfection breeds expectation of continued perfection;  continued perfection invites a Baby WaWa tantrum the moment something goes even the slightest bit wrong.

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension. – Joshua L. Liebman

What if we weren’t so quick to resolve all our tensions? What if we let them simmer? What if we let patience work a different kind of perfection in us? What if we grew to understand that

We can’t grow without tension, nor can we truly live without it.

And I hope when the moment comes, you’ll say, I-I, I did it all. I owned every second that this world could give. I saw so many places, the things that I did. Yeah, with every broken bone, I swear I lived. – One Republic

I learned so many things about Elliana that day I cut her hair. I’m tired of being the baby, she told me. I want to grow up. I want to look older. I want to be different.

Sixty minutes of shaving and shearing and fixing and mending molded tears to laughter. I hugged her tight when it was over.

I think you got your wish, girl.

I’ve watched her in the days since. She’s begun to reinvent herself. She’s facing frustration head on. She’s becoming new.

So am I.

I liked my life the way it was.

But, thank God, it won’t stay that way.

The good ol’ days will become new good ol’ days.  We will laugh and cry and worry and laugh some more.

Which leaves me to hope we might know just a little

when we’re living it.

Increment

“Contemporary middle-class women seem prone to feelings of inadequacy. We worry that we do not measure up to some undefined level, some mythical idealized female standard. When we see some women juggling with apparent ease, we suspect that we are grossly inadequate for our own obvious struggles.” – Faye J. Crosby

“Increment: something added or gained; addition; increase; profit; gain; the act or process of increasing; one of a series of regular additions; growth.” – Dictionary.com

If any of you have been looking for me, I’ve moved to Home Depot.

Such lovely people at Home Depot.  Such kind souls in their orange aprons. This is what you need, right here, and Make sure you don’t forget to do this.

My house – nay, my marriage – is forever indebted to you, Home Depot.

Except for last weekend, of course, when my brother had a better idea to fix our pierced drain pipe than you did. But that’s besides the point. I’m merely explaining why I’ve been estranged from my blog these past weeks.

I’ve spent these past hundred days in a blur of paint, power tools, grout, and sandpaper. I relegated my computer to a rarely-seen shelf in the collection of things we don’t know what to do with right now.

Computers have internet. The Internet has Pinterest. 

And Pinterest does nothing but make me feel like schmuck.

Seriously, Pinterest, what is your deal?

Do you people have slaves that do this stuff for you?

Do you stick your children in hyperbolic chambers while you carefully arrange the supplies for their afternoon art projects?

Or are you all just Martha Stewart in disguise, exacting revenge on the homemaker world by turning us all into

quivering

masses

of

insufficiency?

Of course, it was Pinterest that first gave me the design idea for my beautiful living room I type in right now. It’s my favorite room in the house. Unfortunately, during the renovation process, I made the mistake of going back on Pinterest to look for ideas for little pieces – lamps, shelves, fireplaces, artwork. And every single time I wound up feeling like everything we’d just done was

just. not. good. enough.

This… wonderful feeling was, of course, pressured by my choice of TV viewing as I chalk-painted and sanded my grandmother’s 100-year-old, never-used-before-we-got-them, Victorian dining room furniture.

It’s official: Downton Abbey is my crack, Julien Fellowes my dealer, and Dan Stevens the middleman who tampered with the supply.

Seriously, Dan. Couldn’t we have all had a little chat about this… GLOBALLY impacting decision of yours? Oh right. You and your refusal to become a ‘sensation.’

Maddening intellectuals.

But in the painting and the sanding and the Downton of it all, I had two thoughts:

1. I can not stop watching this crazy show and I. HAVE. NO. BLOODY. IDEA. WHY.

Yes. My thoughts started to sound British. I was high on sanding fumes.

2. We need servants.

I’m sure most of you have never even dreamed of having others do your dirty work for you. If so, you’re obviously better than the rest of us. (Anyone who’s seen an Alex Burrows post-game interview, repeat with me, in a quasi-French, I’m a bit of a punk, accent: Obviously.)

I admit it. I fantasize about the good life: days spent not on laundry or dishes but in pretty clothes looking at pretty things with pretty people.

Except that doesn’t sound much like me, does it?

It might sound like the old me. Obnoxious 21 year old with two university degrees and nine thousand tons of attitude. I was going somewhere. I was going to be somebody. I was doing important things.

I wasn’t just a musician. I was in ministry, thank you very much.

(Excuse me while I grab an airplane vomit bag.)

I wasn’t just a nurse. I was just putting in my time before they’d consider me for management – er, leadership.

(Seriously, WHAT. WAS. I. THINKING?!)

I didn’t know it then, but I had bought into the philosophy that being the peons’ boss is so much more respectable than being a peon. Anyone can be a worker bee. Not just anyone can organize said worker bees without getting stung.

But one marriage, two kids, four family deaths and four years with leukemia later, I’m very sure that

I had everything backwards.

Everything I ever did that was ever worth doing was on the list of things I thought just anyone could do.

Take my job, for example.

A year ago, I was more than ready to quit. Everything about what I’d once claimed was my dream job had morphed into something I barely recognized as something I’d ever wanted to do. Everything was hard. Nothing felt right.  The thought of continuing as I was for another thirty years dwarfed me in a sea of

inadequacy and

fear.

I can’t do this anymore.

It’s the thing that all moms say at least one point in their labor. I’m done. I can’t. I’ve got nothing left.

Most times I tell them let’s just do one more contraction like this. Then we’ll switch. Switch positions, switch pain relievers, switch ideas… something. You can do just one more, right?

Just one more.

Just one more, just one more, until they get to the place where it’s done and I did it and I’ve got everything left.

One by one, these victories, these stories of babies that come out better than we thought they would and women that do things they didn’t think they could, have stockpiled in my memory until I can’t imagine walking away.

But none of these moments would have happened if the women involved – and their partners, their caregivers – had looked at everything that had to be done and tackled it all at once.

The nasty thing about home renovation projects is that they breed when you’re not looking.

Painting leads to new flooring, new flooring leads to new furniture, new furniture inspires you to keep everything cleaner and more organized, and before you know it, you’re spending most of your hours swinging a rubber mallet at impossible-to-install IKEA organizers and swearing in Swedish.

We started the renos to make room for all the books.

(Fellow homeschool families will know what I mean).

We kept going to make room for all the quiet. The stillness of an organized, peaceful room is worth every ounce of energy we’ve put into it.

If I’d known I would be doing this much when I started, I might have chosen to light a match and start over instead.

But most things can be done in increments.

Even – especially – soul things.

I didn’t learn that the good life was in doing the things anyone can do in a single epiphanous moment. I was beaten off my high horse by repeated blows from a rather painful polo mallet.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us. (We) were subjected to futility, not willingly, but in hope that (we) would be set free from our bondage to decay…. We groan and suffer in the pains of childbirth together until now… waiting eagerly for (our) redemption.  – Paul

Thank goodness for pain.

Thank goodness for hardship.

Without pain I’d still be that miserable, obnoxious, thousand-pounds of twenty-one-year-old attitude – stuffy, boring, nauseating. A facade. Unreal. Obtuse.

Ignorant.

I say this because I know many of you are in pain. Some of you think it can not possibly get any worse; others think they can not possibly continue this way. Others wonder what happened to their promised rose garden.

I say to you what I’ve learned to tell myself, what I’ve learned from childbearing women:

Nothing worth doing is done without difficulty.

New life is not delivered without pain.

All of us can do the things we are supposed to do – in increments.

Correction: In our own increments. Not Pinterest’s increments. Not our best friend’s increments. Not our obnoxious Facebook friend’s increments.

Ours.

Find your increments. Get them right.

Eventually, you will find yourself victorious.

Even if only for a moment, because

the next increment is coming.

Living Light

Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong. – Leo Buscaglia

He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do – the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, ‘I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.’” – Marcus Zusak

Shall we accept good from Him and not trouble? – Job

It has been a week of tears.

Not all tears are bad.

Wednesday’s tears were beautiful. The girls happily ensconced in their dance teachers’ capable hands, I enjoyed a built-in pause in the middle of my day at Tim Horton’s, sipping steeped tea with one of those people who gets me better than most – someone I feel just as comfortable crying with as laughing.

And we laughed.

Then we cried.

How did the world got so much darker than it used to be?

Why do we know so many … stories?

I’m only two years into my thirties, yet I can think of more people than I could possibly count – people I knew, people I loved, people who could have been me – who have been ripped from this earth far sooner than they… should?

(Actually… I’m not sure if I can say that anymore. What is… should?)

But my friend and I aren’t the only ones with these stories.

Tuesday night proved this. Discussion of our latest book club read turned to musing about loss. We all had a hard… episode or two, or three… to tell. Some of us haven’t told it quite yet. One of us was good enough to bring up my story for me so I didn’t have the weight of doing so.

An aside: Telling someone your story can be heavy. You never know how they will react. You never know how shaken up they will be. If I’ve held back my story from anyone, some of them people who probably deserved to know, its because I just couldn’t bear the weight of telling it and then comforting them through it.

So Wednesday my friend and I sat with our coffee, our thoughts, and our tears, awed at the number of people who’ve had life ripped from them so much sooner than we’d expect, fascinated that some pass so well and others so… broken.

Not that any of us are anything but broken.

It’s just that word, we realized, just one word, that made all the difference.

Not broken.

But expect.

When did this word start to pervade our daily vocabulary? Was it in the 70′s, an era of heartache and prosperity, when our parents decided that their kids should never be without… anything?

I just finished reading The Book Thief.  I won’t spoil it for you, because I believe all of you should read it at some point, and several of you have told me that you are about to, but I warn you it is one of the more thought-provoking books I’ve read in the past few years – or ever. I used a lot of Kleenex through this book. I had a lot of tears. Sad tears.

And good tears.

I forgot how great my life is.

I forgot how good I have it.

Those of us who’ve lived most of our lives in peace, those who’ve managed to escape the draft of ’14, the crash of ’29, and the horror of ’39-’43, the confusing war of the late 60′s, those of us who only vaguely remember our parents or grandparents stories about those years,

we forget the gift those parents and grandparents gave us:

the gift of expecting.

Let that sink in for a moment. Those of us in the recent first world, those of us who’ve lived without threat of war or famine or having less than anything we’ve ever wanted,

We get the opportunity to expect things.

Those who’d lived through a World War – or two – didn’t get that luxury.

But in the years of peace since, we’ve over-corrected the suffering our ancestors once saw. We’ve widened the gap between rich and poor. We’ve ignorantly poised ourselves for a class-based system in our fight for more, more, and more for me, me, just me. I’ve earned it. I deserve it.

We say this not only about money. Not only about stuff. Not only about experience or quality of life.

We say that about death – and loss – too.

We shake our head as we lose loved ones here or there. No matter how distant they were to us in life, we feel so close to them in death:  They were too young to go. They were cut down in their prime.

Let’s face it – we say these things anytime the world doesn’t give us exactly what we’d expect.

Instead of accepting these shorter – or harder – ends – or moments – as possibilities that any of us could have at any time, instead of lightening our steps on this planet and taking each moment with grace, we’ve started to grab our due – and then some. We tell those with timelines, with prognoses to not go gently into that good night.

We tell them to fight.

And sometimes they need to. But sometimes the fight is for us. We want to feel better. We want to believe that if we just will it so, it will be.We hope that if we just do the right things, eat perfectly, exercise… live well, we will escape tragedy.

Yeah.

It doesn’t work like that.

Of course, if it has worked for you like that, so far at least, then you are free to think so.

But there really is an element of mystery to all bad things that none of us are immune to, no matter how much we’d like to control it.

The only thing we can control is how we receive it.

(Warning to my friends who are not from faith backgrounds: the next part isn’t meant for you. So you may want to skip it. Or not. It might make you laugh.)

The church is not immune to this revolution from gratefulness to expectation. Too many of us from so-called ‘faith’ backgrounds are more likely to exercise our ‘faith’ by demanding a better lot from the One who we believe will keep us from all trouble . This kind of  ‘faith’ disturbs more than comforts in affliction, since it feeds the compulsion to waste at least a few phases of catastrophe wondering what we did wrong and why God was so ‘mean’ to us.

Please. My seven-year-old is more mature than that.

No wonder the rest of the world thinks we’re ridiculous.

Confession: I think we’re kind of ridiculous too.

Faith does not grant us a refund on tragedy.

Oh, I believe in miracles, alright. I’ll tell you some till I’m too tired to keep talking (and that takes a long time).

I believe in the unexplained.

But I try not to limit good things to the inexplicable.

Sometimes good things come in small packages. Some of my best things come in little white pills that keep me alive another day, and another, and another.

They give me another moment of victory. Another day I wasn’t promised. Another pleasant surprise.

Of course, sometimes the surprises aren’t so pleasant. The trick is to receive both the good and bad with … grace. Peace.

Gentleness.

Yeah. I’m not known for being gentle.

Gentle implies nice. It doesn’t co-exist with conflict.

It implies accepting.

Gentle doesn’t push back, override, or aggravate.

Huh. Yeah. Not really me. (Not yet).

The job I’m ridiculously grateful for has taught me a thing or two about gentleness.

Wait before you laugh. It’s not what you think.

It’s not what I thought either.

In fact, the word so often quoted to us as humble or meek isn’t even remotely summed up by the English word gentle. Part humility, part grace, part ridiculous, courageous trust in Someone or Something so much bigger than the struggle, the meek are merely

those who stubbornly choose to believe that Someone, Something knows that

whatever comes our way

is for our good,

no matter how bad it seems.

And those who can do that… ‘inherit the earth’ – Matthew.

I’m starting to see why. Those who can accept all things in grace – those I’m learning to be more like – walk a little lighter than the rest of us. They are not weighed down by grief. Despite more than adequate reason for being so, they are no Debbie Downers. They live in what they’ve been given. And they smile. They laugh.

They don’t just survive. They thrive.  They live light.

At work I see, that in labour, as in life, those who embrace the process with an appropriate amount of surrender do it well.

These gentle ones are no doormats. In fact, doormats may lack a spirit of bravery that the gentle exude in spades.

Rather, these courageous souls swim upstream in a culture of expectation. They refuse to believe they shouldn’t have to work hard or they shouldn’t have anything bad ever happen to them or they’ve already had their fair share of trouble.

(They know nothing here is fair.)

So they gather themselves together and say, slowly, but surely, shall we accept good… and not trouble?

They know heartache is a part of life.

They know they will come out different – better – on the other side. 

They know they are never alone.

A new season is upon us. A change – or two, or three – awaits our family. We hardly know if it will be pleasant or painful, but -

We know it will be good.

We know we will be okay.

We know we are not alone.

My friends, if there’s one thing I could wish for us this week, this day, it would be that we could all live like this… lightly. Gracefully. Gently.

The thing is,

I think we can.

So for those of you on the brink of change – who feel fall’s first breeze when you expected spring’s first sun – I say the same thing to you that I say to myself:

Don’t carry that change alone. Don’t tie it to you like a burden.

Receive it.

Trust it.

You will be different.

You will be better.

You will be okay.

Not in spite of it, but 

Because of it.

 

Restraint

On Janus, there is no reason to speak. Tom can go for months and not hear his own voice. He knows some keepers who make a point of singing, just like turning over an engine to make sure it still works. But Tom finds freedom in the silence. He listens to the wind. He observes the tiny details of life on the island. – M.L. Stedman, ‘The Light Between Oceans.’

I know. I’m behind on blogging.

I could give a variety of  excuses:

1. Our winter homeschool activity schedule.  The girls love gymnastics, but it may have been the thing that tipped me from happy homeschooling mama to off-kilter, crazy lady. Considering the encouragement I receive from steady, faithful, fellow homeschooling mamas while we watch our children learn to tumble, though, I’ll be sad to see these ten weeks be over.

2. Elliana’s demand to start kindergarten early. Teaching two children is very, very different than teaching just one. Refer back to #1. Those mamas teach at least three, each. And they smile. Wow. Watching Elliana read, however, makes it all a little magical.

3. Living room renovations that take far longer than they should.  Who knew, for example, that my dining room table would take four coats of paint to get it right? Oh, that’s right. No one. Because the fourth coat was all my fault. Yes, in a stroke of genius, I accidentally let my wet paint brushes sit on the table top and seep extra satin finish into the smoky mountain gray. The plus side? The distressed effect I achieved was the one I wanted anyways.

4. The flu from… yes. Down under. And I’ll have you know, people who swear by the flu shot, I only get the flu on years when I get the flu shot. So… there.

5. NHL Gamecenter. Laugh away, mockers. I love my new toy.

6. A growing stack of books I just have to read. Oh, who am I kidding? That’s always a problem.

But the truth is, none of these are the real reason for my recent interweb silence.

The real reason is a growing understanding that the world doesn’t really need my opinions on everything.

I know. Shocking, right?

It’s not like people are sitting out there thinking, oh, if only I knew what Lana would do! I will live my life just like her!

Because, they’re really not.

And that’s a darn good thing.

This grace revolution is changing the way I see everything. I no longer feel the need to be right. All. The. Time.

Being right is exhausting.

Tenuous.

Obnoxious.

Not to mention ignorant.

Liberating myself from the need to be right is downright ethereal.

Instead of formulating counterattack arguments in my head for each moment another person is talking, I get to… wait for it… actually listen to what my friends are saying.

I know. This is just, so… brand new information.

Right?

Except it is. At least for those of you who, like me, suffer from the long-term compulsiveness to inform the world of your innermost thoughts. Transparency is good, we say. Get yourself out there, we urge. Don’t be a doormat! we cry. Stand up for yourself!

And while all of those things are true, the very, very old maxim is also true:

Everything in moderation.

We can stand up for ourselves to the point of becoming the one who needs to be stood up against. We can put ourselves out there to the point of persuading no one at all to consider what we have to say.

But in one well-timed moment of silence…

I’m realizing that my preoccupation with inflicting my thoughts on everyone really comes from insecurity in those thoughts. If I need to throw them at others, I’m likely still testing them out.

If I really know something to be true, I can keep quiet about it.

(Well. Not always. There were a few moments over the holidays that my restraint failed. Majorly. I assign that failure to the mind-blowing experience of reading Not For Sale and Seven. I can no longer keep my mouth shut about child slavery, women’s rights in third world countries, or the growing disparity between rich and poor.)

That’s not to say I’m right on all these issues. No. In fact, I’ve been very, very wrong about them for so, so long. My ignorance has unwittingly contributed to them, and I’m downright angry about it. So angry, in fact, that I forcefully inflict these infant thoughts of advocacy on anyone close enough to hear.

The thing is, people don’t need to be lectured. They don’t need to be told how to think.

People need to be heard.

How many discipline issues have been solved merely by hearing my child out? How many times have I calmed down solely by telling someone close to me how I feel?

How much more peaceful would our world be if we just let each other speak? How much more satisfying would our relationships be if we just heard the other first, even – or especially – if it seems so different from what we think?

If we could let a beat or two of silence pass instead of saving the world with our well-reasoned arguments…

We might start a real revolution.

So, friends, like the character quoted above, let us find freedom in the silence. Let us observe the tiny details that the noise of our words usually veils. Let us give real connection a try – apart from competition, debate, and speculation.

We might re-learn the ancient virtue of restraint.

Grace

I am conflicted.

Last week, mainstream media exploded with the tragic story of twenty-six people who lost their lives to a – literal – madman.

Social media imploded with a smorgasbord of response -

Shame on him. Shame on his mother. Shame on all those who said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Shame on guns.

Shame on all you who carry guns.

Shame on gun control.

Shame on the President.

Shame on all of you who voted for the President.

Shame on all of you who didn’t.

Shame on all of you who don’t feel shocked.

Shame on all of you who don’t feel anything.

Shame on all of you who feel anything different than I do.

That’s a lot of shame.

Notice we’re casting it on everyone but ourselves.

Which leads me to wonder – what if we are more to blame than we realize?

And by we, I mean you and me and everyone who pokes their nose a little too far into other people’s business.

And by too far, I mean, just far enough to pronounce judgment

but not far enough

to know the heart, the history, and the humanity of those we’re judging.

Eighteen months ago, I awoke to clenched teeth and aching heart.

Not only had my beloved Canucks lost another chance to bring the Stanley Cup home to the city who actually has a statue of the Lord Stanley for which the Cup is named -

Oops, I’m sorry. I forgot this one wasn’t about hockey.

But really, where is hockey? Every day since October I’ve woken to an alternate universe. My TV screams American football. My husband cries, oh the humanity!  I giggle indiscriminately at cartoons mocking Gary Bettman and company. And no, those of you ready to cast the you-shouldn’t-wish-someone-harm-shame-bomb – to quote my friend Karina – I don’t mean any of those giggles seriously. They’re giggles, for the love of … Lord Stanley.

And, in case you’re curious about my mental state, trust me when I say that this is a sport. A past time. It’s supposed to be fun. If there’s one thing cancer taught me, it’s to believe in fun.

But, by all means, please judge my fun. That is what fun is for, after all.

Ahem.

Back to the point.

Not only did my favorite team lose that night, but the rest of the city decided to destroy our beautiful downtown core in their rage.

Did I condone it? No.

Did I like it? No.

Was I embarrassed? Yes. 

But, more than that, I was angry.

Not at the score (okay, maybe a little),

not at the game (except really, Canada needs to be able to win once every few years, dear Mr. Commissioner),

and not at the people who destroyed the city.

No. Really.

I was angry at the media.

In the weeks that followed the ides of June, 2011, these talented, educated, insightful and very visible people used their very visible world stage to cast epic shame-bombs. Coast to coast, from Baffin Island to the Florida Keys (okay, maybe to New York, because despite housing two NHL teams, we’re still not sure how many people in Florida care about hockey), they showed footage after footage and pronounced opinion after opinion of how bad we were (and ‘we’ extended to every British Columbian and Canuck fan, not just those caught on camera), how they couldn’t understand it and

how they would never dream of doing something so despicable.

To that I say:

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Here’s the thing.

We are all capable of despicable things.  Humanity is messy, a collection of frail, broken creatures with potential for great beauty -

and great evil.

Pretending we’re immune isn’t the answer.

Exploiting the shock value isn’t either.

Despite our reckless subscription to the guilt culture, shame on you’s just don’t work. Shame begets shame. Anger begets anger. Judgment begets judgment.

Only grace breaks the cycle.

For ten years I’ve been stuck on a scene from the Liam Neeson version of Les Miserables. I’ve talked about it at parties. I’ve shown it to friends. I’ve used it as an illustration for speaking engagements.

You who’ve seen it know what I’m talking about.

At the beginning of the story, Valjean, a thief, is released from prison but not from convict status. Unable to find lodging anywhere else, Valjean finds mercy at the hands of a priest who takes him in for the night. Unable to see a better future for himself, Valjean steals the priest’s silverware and escapes into the night.

He is caught.

When returned to the man whom he attacked and burglarized, Valjean expects nothing but judgment.

In fact, judgment would be appropriate.

Right?

But Valjean does not get what he expects. Neither does the audience:

For years I’ve been scared of grace. I’ve seen it perverted. Twisted, uncoiled, re-packaged, this permissive anti-grace says not only its okay to be you, but everything you do is okay. Uncomfortable with the collision of ideals and reality, jarred by their inability to live up to the standard, those who espouse this truth-less grace hold themselves and others to no standard at all, except one: you can’t judge me. Everything I do is okay, even if it means I hurt you doing it.

I’ve heard this version of grace throbbing in my ears to point where I became scared of the word itself. I surrounded myself with those who believed in high standards and truth. I’ve poured myself into the lives of those who continually strive after high standards even – or especially – after they fail. Just because we can’t meet the standard, doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant.

Perhaps our failure to meet it makes the standard even more relevant.

But in this pursuit of justice, I’ve wandered to the left – or right – of a pendulum that was never meant to be so polarized. Our current populace polarizes issues in ways that remind me of my seven-year-old: There are good people. There are bad people. That is all. No Venn Diagrams. No crossovers. No shades of gray.

(Except for a book trilogy whose appeal I have yet to understand.)

But maturity – nay, adulthood – demands we grab those poles and keep them in tension.

We don’t tend to do that because we don’t like tension.

It’s un-comfortable.

We like being comfortable.

Tension has kept me ‘quiet’ on this site for weeks.

I am changing. I am not the woman I was. She was horribly imbalanced. She did not understand grace.

I am… beginning to understand.

Grace does not permit all things. Grace loves, even in horrific tragedy. Grace knows we are all capable of causing others great harm. Even me. Even you. Even your friends, your parents, your kids.We are all capable of great evil.

But we can’t just leave it there.

As we see in Les Miserables,

Grace also demands change.

Only grace broke Valjean’s past. Only grace will break mine. Only grace will break yours, and Adam Lanza’s, and every other person who stumbles around on this fallen planet.

This grace is neither truth-less or powerless. This grace is revolutionary.

This grace demands a response. To be better, to be different, this grace will motivate us in ways guilt never could. This grace will overflow to those around us. This grace will so consume us we will not ever be the same.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, I hope – I pray – you see it very soon.

And I hope at least some of you will see it from me – at least some of the time.

And when you don’t, know that

I’m still changing

and

I think I’m on track to a better place – of restoration and growth, joy and laughter, tears and peace.

That is what I wish for all of us this week – not presents, not trees, not music, not lights, not shopping or Santa, not family togetherness or Hallmark cards, not Norman Rockwell paintings.

I wish you grace - 

For all of the things that miss the mark in you and me and everyone else.

I wish you peace -

That though you are not where you should be, you are heading there.

I wish you love –

A truthful, intimate love that knows you as you are and not as you pretend to be on Facebook.

I wish that you, like me, are becoming something new.

Because that’s a reason to be merry.

I am still conflicted about what happened last week. I have no answers, only questions. But I’m realizing that’s okay.

Conflict demands a commitment to balance.

It also demands a commitment to grace.

Peace, my friends.

 

 

Great

There’s a light in the darkness, though the night is black as my skin; there’s a light burning bright, showing me the way, but I know where I’ve been – Hairspray

Nine days ago, I sat in a crowded oncology office,

Waiting.

The patient in front of me took longer than usual. He was young, tired, gray.

I knew that look.

Sick.

Do I look sick? I said to David.

I messaged a friend who was also waiting. Waiting for specialist results. Waiting for answers. Waiting to know if there was a big reason why all these little things wouldn’t seem to go away.

They’d not heard anything yet.

An hour later, the doctor called for me. Here we go, I thought.

Some people might wonder why I still bring David with me to these things. Honestly, its because I’m scared. When I’m scared, I’m half paranoid schizophrenic, half manic control freak. I need another person to ask the questions I’m not thinking clearly enough to ask. I need someone outside the vortex of I might die soon to tell the difference between

really bad news

and

mere bends in the road.

The door clicked shut. The doctor asked all the usual questions.

Then:

Your MRD results are back. They’re at -3.15.

My eyes shut. David sat up straight.

That’s good, right?  David asked.

It was good. They’d wanted me below -3 for years now – and in this equation, a bigger number is actually lower. The past eighteen months I’d flirted with -2.8, -2.7, -2.92, -3.01.

-3.15 is the lowest its ever been.

David and I walked to a nearby fast food Mexican restaurant. I ordered a burrito – because, let’s face it, this is a celebratory lunch – and I complained through the whole thing.

The salsa’s not hot enough. There’s too much cilantro. The tortilla is soggy.

David tried to placate me.

Sorry about your lunch. You want to go somewhere else?

I grinned at him.

Nope. I’m just happy that my biggest problem right now is this burrito.

As three years of surgical nursing taught me, if you’re healthy enough to complain about it, then you’re not that sick.

When I got home I realized I’d not heard back from my waiting friend. I checked in – only to find she didn’t get such great news that day.

Celebration; grief; heartache – intermingling extremes compete for my attention. Thousands of miles from here, another friend fights for her child’s life. Not so many miles away, another loses one she barely got the chance to know.

How is any of it … right?

There’s a cry in the distance; its a voice that comes from deep within. There’s a cry, asking why – I pray the answer’s up ahead, yeah, ’cause I know where I’ve been.

Ten days before my trip to the oncologist’s office I collapsed into one of the hospital atrium couches during my lunch break.

A man sat down across from me, oxygen tank in tow.

You work here?

Yes, I admitted. I guess the alien green scrubs were the giveaway.

Where?

Maternity. I smiled and prepared myself for the thing that everyone says when they discover my specialty.

Oh, that’s lucky. You’re on the good side of life.

This man couldn’t know that that very day was one of the most harrowing of my career. He couldn’t know that every delivery has a moment of panic, and some of those moments last longer than others.

He couldn’t know that I see far more heartache at the beginning of life than I ever saw at the end.

Somehow, when we know its the end, we prepare for it. But who prepares for the end at the beginning?

Why should those who could be the best parents ever also be unable to conceive? Why should those who have no energy or resources for children conceive so easily?

Why, why,should any baby be lost before we even get the chance to know them?

It’s just. Not. Right.

Even for those who do get their happy endings – who prepares them for what it takes to raise these little people? Who gets ready for the fears and frustrations to follow? Who learns ahead of time how to deal with the people who know more than you, have better behaved kids than you, and who think they’re doing a much better job than you?

It takes being a parent to learn all of those things.

We don’t know how to grieve with someone until we’ve grieved ourselves. We don’t know how to cry with someone until we’ve carried the burden of pain alone. We don’t know how to encourage until we’ve been in need of courage ourselves.

We don’t know how to celebrate until we understand just how awesome – and rare – good news can be.

Just as some women have hard pregnancies, others hard deliveries, still others hard babies – there are others who don’t get to keep their babies at all, because -

We’ve all got our thing.

I recently reconnected with a friend I’d not seen in fifteen years. I was only half looking forward to meeting her. I wasn’t sure we’d have much to talk about. All I saw from her blog and Facebook was happy, perfect, not a care in the world.

Then she started to talk.

Friends, don’t believe the lies you see on social media. We all know loss. Anyone who says they don’t is lying, boring, or just too afraid to talk about it yet.

We all have our thing, and fortunately -

Our bruises make for better conversation. – Train

This week we celebrate our firstborn’s seventh birthday. My first thoughts the moment I first held her were

oh no, she’s going to have to do this horrible thing that I’ve just done. 

She’s going to know pain.

But as much as I wish I could rescue her from that, I also know

it’s pain that makes us great.

December is right around the corner. We bundle up and cozy in for what promises to be the busiest holiday of the year. We decorate. We shiver. We smile. We sing. We hum.  We add twinkle lights to the darkest days of our calendar.

We brace ourselves for cold, white winter by knowing that warm, green spring will surely follow. Sometime in March, April, or May,

Everything that’s new (will) bravely surface, teaching us to breathe; what was frozen through (will ) newly purpose, turning all things green. – Nichole Nordeman

Branches crack; glass frosts;

Joy cometh. – Beth Moore

I am not the woman I was on January 7, 2009.

I know how to cry with my friends now. I know how to celebrate with them too.

We all have our thing – and it’s our thing that makes us great.

So dear friends, I cry with some of you now, but I also believe that joy cometh.

I’m already planning that party.

There’s a road we must travel, there’s a promise we must make; but the riches will be plenty worth the price we have to pay. There’s a dream in the future, there’s a struggle that we have yet to win… I know it, I know it, I know where I’m going, Lord knows, I know where I’ve been. – Hairspray

Brave

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. – Helen Keller

Some days, I just don’t know what I’d do without my friends.

Well, maybe I do. Maybe I don’t want to think about it. Maybe I don’t want you guys to know that. Maybe there’s a tiny part of us that is unfit for any other human to know, see, or understand,

even those we trust the most.

I firmly believe in the power of community.

Nothing hard is conquered in isolation. Nothing painful is endured so well as within a safe community.

But even the safest community can be – at times – dangerous.

I remember the first time I learned this. Over a decade ago, unsure of my own abilities – and immersed in the lie that I was only as good as my successes – I feared failure above all else.

And then I failed. In public.

Instantly I knew. I knew I’d failed. I knew others knew I’d failed.

One of the others – someone I believed to be a friend – wouldn’t let it go.

Someone I’d trusted not only believed things of me that were untrue, but they spread those things to others. Trembling by the stark reality of being talked about in the worst way I could think of, I fought it by judging my friend back, unleashing my fury over the phone. That fury only increased when she pointed out my inconsistency: she couldn’t say bad things about me, but I could say whatever I wanted about her.

For six months, we could barely be in the same room together. Then one day, a mutual friend approached me and said they thought it was time I apologized.

Me. Apologize. Just me. Um, what?

- You weren’t the only one hurt by what happened.

My stomach sank. How exactly was I supposed to go about apologizing to someone who hurt me so deeply – especially when I knew they had no intention of apologizing to me?

I took a deep breath – or thirty. I asked my very best friend for advice. He told me to listen to the advice I’d already been given.

What?

- You’re responsible for your own actions here, Lana. Not theirs. Best to get your slate clean – no matter their response.

Smart man I married.

The next day my old friend was waiting for me at my apartment. Unprepared, I rushed around, trying to make small talk. She didn’t let me. She wanted to know if we were ‘okay.’

Eyes closed, I took a breath, then said the hardest words I know:

We’re okay. I’m sorry.

I didn’t feel sorry – not then. But somehow saying the words made me believe them.

As soon as they were out, I felt a weight lifted. I opened my eyes to look at this person I could barely look at for so long, and I saw her as she was – frail, human, scared of losing a friend. And I felt sorry.

It was a full year before I heard her say the same.

We were both new people by then, and – dare I say it? – Friends. 

Much stronger friends than before, too.

It doesn’t feel good, but sometimes good things come from conflict.

I look back on that first major conflict I’d had with a confidante and I see now how I could have prevented it all from unfolding. I see where pride blocked my view; I see where fear of pain kept me from seeing my friend’s point of view.

And I see where I failed.

But I’m okay with that.

As Jim Morrison said,

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Humanity is frail. Flawed.

Precious.

But the pain of having failure woven into our DNA is worth it.

Too often, we shut down in response to betrayal – to everyone. We think, if I can’t trust this person, then I can’t trust any person.

But even the best of friends let us down. Even the most gracious of companions will at times misunderstand. Even the safest and best of people will sometimes judge. I know that because I do all of those things – even though I don’t want to.

That doesn’t mean we stop trying.

Some of our favorite people – some of those who’ve taught us how valuable friendship can be – pointed this out last night.

One of them said,

I don’t know how to be anything but transparent, but I’m not sure I want to be anything else.

My ears perked up. This was me. I don’t know how to be anything but transparent.

But do I really want to be something else?

There is great privilege in being there for someone else; there is great strength in relying on each other. And withoutvulnerability we do not know any of that.

Without weakness we do not know strength.

Without vulnerability we do not know victory.

So perhaps, then, the bravest thing we can do in response to pain is to keep going. To still be us. To feel anyways, hurt anyways, risk anyways, trust anyways.

It doesn’t ensure we won’t be hurt again.

But it does ensure we maintain our capacity for joy.

So…

Risk, brave ones. Cry. Laugh. Smile.

Some day – if not now – it will be so unbelievably worth it.

Until then, know this:

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill

Be brave, dear friends.

Be very brave.