Tag: enlightenment

Finishing

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“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

About six years ago I had coffee with a childhood friend. At the time he had been separated from his wife with whom he shared three teenage kids for about three years and though he said he knew it was over (his wife had a boyfriend), they hadn’t gotten divorced yet. He explained it was of the health insurance but he seemed a little angry and unresolved as well. As a newly divorced person who’d spent some time in that in-between place too, I told him, he had to get divorced. “Why?” he asked. “I can’t explain why” I said “but it matters.”

I was thinking of that conversation the other day when I was unloading the dishwasher. I had done the bottom rack and the silverware but was interrupted by the chaos and flurry of the morning routine with my kids and didn’t finish. When I came back to the sink, there were dishes there, I went to put them in the dishwasher, couldn’t because I hadn’t finished the job and it made me chuckle. A half empty dishwasher is no good to anyone!

Why is it so hard to finish things? Maybe we often get distracted by the noise and the flurry. But I know also with me there’s also the impulse to hedge my bet just in case I change my mind. Or the finality comes with a lump that is hard to accept. I know that was part of my hesitancy to finish the legal filing to get divorced when I went through it – I didn’t want to accept the title and the failure that I felt it conveyed. And now looking back on it ten years later, I see that it wasn’t a failure, but a catapult. I’ve never built one myself but I understand that catapults work when someone cuts the cord.

In the Sound of Music, Maria says, “When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.” I’ve come to think of these alternative doors like an air lock. The next door won’t open until the first is fully closed. The Universe does not know how to help until we clearly commit to the path we are on. Our spirits cannot embody two half lives.

About six months ago my childhood friend wrote me an email that he had gotten divorced. After nearly 10 years being separated he had finally finished. And then about three months after that, he wrote me again to tell me about the new woman he was dating. I felt his happiness and applauded him — and I was also so gratified to know that even when you delay finishing the cycle for so long, it still works once you do.

Miracles

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“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

Back when I was engaged to the man who is now my ex-husband, there was one memorable hike that we went on with my parents and we discussed miracles. This conversation happened almost twenty years ago but to the best of my recollection, my soon-to-be husband wanted my dad’s professional opinion as a Presbyterian pastor on why God didn’t do miracles any more. He was sure he’d believe in God if He did some grand gesture. And from what I remember, my dad mostly asked questions like what country would this miracle appear in? And would it have to be certified as a miracle by a recognized authority like the Pope? And what was a gesture that was big enough?

There are so many conversations that I wish I could have with my dad in the six years since he died but recently I’ve been thinking about that one. Because two things have happened recently that I think of as miracles. First is that my refrigerator was leaking water about every 4 days. I looked it up on the internet and came to the conclusion that my defrost evaporation tray was overflowing. The how-to article suggested that I might make sure that the default vent wasn’t covered. I moved some things around, never quite identified where that vent was and it still was leaking. And then it stopped. Miracle, right?

And then my car was leaking oil. It’s 14 -years-old but relatively low mileage. I’ve kept up the maintenance pretty well so I’ve had very few problems with it. But recently a ball rolled under the car and when I fished it out, it had oil on it. So I took the car to the shop where I’d last had the oil changed and they said it was just leftover from the last oil change because someone didn’t wipe it down – until I told them my last oil change was 9 months ago. Then they were confounded. I was never quite convinced that the friendly guy helping me knew how to solve it but he changed out my oil filter for free(!) and not very confidently said that would fix it. It leaked for about a week more. Then it stopped. Miracle, right?

I can suggest more miracles. The birth of my two children. The fact that a COVID vaccination was developed in less than a year. That my clients sometimes pay early just when I need them too. And just overall that as I look back on my life, I’m certain that I get exactly what I need (not what I want which is whole other thing) but just what I need. And of course, even that I can reach out to you, dear reader, over space and time, and talk heart to heart.

I have a guess what my dad would say. That belief doesn’t require proof. He’d acknowledge, as do I, that all of those things have plausible explanations but that miracles are a matter of one’s heart not one’s head. He probably said some version of that almost twenty years ago and I didn’t quite understand it. But I do now and that is a miracle!

The Journey of Obedience

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“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or the life of another.” – Helen Keller

My daughter came home from school yesterday with a story about a kid in her class. She said, “Jimmy almost got kicked out of Hutton Hawks.” Hutton being the name of the school Hawks being the school mascot, it sounds way more serious with both together. I asked what Jimmy did. He drank water in the classroom and spit it out on his desk – twice. I assume that’s a no-go in regular times but in these coronavirus times where the kids are wearing masks, aren’t allowed any food or drink in the classroom and their primary activity is to wash their hands, that’s definitely not going to fly. In these first weeks of in-person Kindergarten, my daughter is fascinated by the behavior of other kids. Like Natalie didn’t do her work and pouted. Also Jimmy ran into the zone on the playground designated for 1st graders. And the big one – Jimmy almost had to go to the principal. (Names changed to protect the young).

This story reminds me of the word obedient. My dad used it frequently when talking about his journey through life. As in “I just knew I had to be obedient to what I saw as the Truth in God.” And slowly my understanding of obedience in the sense of the word that my dad used is developing. For much of my younger life, I thought of it in terms of Jimmy. The need to obey the school rules or else suffer the consequence of not being a Hutton Hawk. But now I see it as more of integrity – the integrity to marry myself and my values with the Divinely inspired path that I’m on. The act of listening to that small God voice within to find my way. The continual search for how to love and serve in my life and work. All of that pretty much boils down to my dad’s definition in my own words, a translation of wisdom between generations.

There is no chance I would have spit water on my desk like Jimmy when I was young. I feared the principal too much not to mention what my parents would have said. But now that I am middle-aged, there aren’t too many authority figures that influence my behavior. Trying to grow, learn and do the right thing have become part of my system and I suppose that’s one of the key parts of growing up. We are held externally accountable until we can develop our own internal accountability. Hopefully Jimmy can figure out obedience until he grows up too.

There is so much in my daughter’s story that is emblematic of how strange this last year has been. We haven’t had much chance to observe people that are strangers to us. Kids, especially those as young as my daughter who haven’t ever been in school, are having to re-learn how to socialize again after a year apart. Teachers are having to enforce COVID rules on top of all the usual school rules. Parents are having to help bridge the gap where all of these things come together. I have so much empathy for all the parties involved – this is hard. So I hope and pray we can use all our skills to listen to each other and obey while we navigate these choppy waters.

Unplugging the Chain Reaction

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“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” – Rainier Maria Rilke

Yesterday as I was meditating, my daughter came downstairs and interrupted me. She said she was scared about school. Given that it was only her 3rd Monday since in-person school started, it’s not a surprise. But my meditation time is sacred to me. I’ve found essential in helping me fill my pool of grace for the day so after I held her for a moment, I told her she could snuggle on the couch while I meditated. After a couple quiet minutes, she asked what I was reading. I didn’t answer. After a couple more quiet minutes, she said meditating reminded her about the small greenhouse they made at school. Instead of finding my calm, my whole system was on overdrive. I felt protective over my space and time that have so little of. I felt angry that I’d gotten up early and couldn’t even control my own experience for a few minutes. I couldn’t believe I let her be there in clear violation of the rule to wait until her clock turns yellow and then she made it about her.

And then when I reached that last feeling, the one about her making it all about her, I realized I had just lit up like a string of Christmas lights as my meditation teacher, Deirdre, likes to say. I connected a single experience with a whole chain reaction that had mostly to do with my ex-husband. He was a master of taking something that I wanted to do like hiking and make it all about him. He’d say “Let’s go!” But then he’d say we couldn’t drive to far so he could be back to watch a golf tournament on tv. And then he’d dilly dally getting ready because he couldn’t find his favorite socks. Then we’d finally get into the car and he’d need to stop so he could get a double-tall latte. When we finally get hiking, he’d go about half a mile and say he didn’t want to go much farther because he didn’t want to be sore the next day.

While I assume it’s completely natural for a 5-year-old to make things all about her, it was a tiring for a 30-something man to do the same. But what interested me about yesterday is that nine years after I ended that relationship and many years since lost its hold on my heart and mind space, that something simple could light me up like those proverbial Christmas lights. AND that it could do that while I was meditating to restore inner calm is the ironic icing on the cake.

The only fix I have is to unplug the string. To see the trigger and in recognizing it, steal its power. My daughter and I have been reading Harry Potter. They have an incantation, “riddikulus” that turns something scary into something funny. And maybe in doing that, I can reach a new level of meditation, one where I can do it when everything isn’t calm and quiet but even a little unsettled as well.

A Comedy of Errors

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“We are here to live out loud.” – Balzac

Yesterday as I was loading the car for a special Palm Sunday drive-in show for kids at our church, I accidentally knocked my toddler down the two steps leading to the crawl space. We were going to the event with my mom and her friend, both over 80-years-old so I had gone in the crawl space to get camp chairs for them. I didn’t realize that my toddler had followed me up the little step stool and was just outside the door so that when I opened it to come out, it knocked him down. My five-year-old daughter went screaming into the house because she was sure he was dead, somehow the bike next to him also fell over (but I don’t think that was any significant source of pain) and fortunately when I went and gathered him in my arms, there was no obvious injury and he only cried for about 30 seconds.

But I still needed to get some pillows out of the crawl space so to make sure we didn’t repeat the same thing, I let the kids play in the car so that he wouldn’t follow me. After I got the pillows I got in the car with them, my daughter in the driver’s seat, son in passenger seat, me in the back. My son locked the doors and then pulled the door handle which set off the security alarm. I didn’t have my keys on me so I couldn’t turn it off and every time we tried to unlock the doors, it would automatically relock them. The horn was honking, the lights were blinking, the kids were crying – it was a fiasco! But I managed to get a door open, get them out of there and the horn stopped blaring.

It’s no wonder that I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I’m so busy taking care of everyone else’s moods that I don’t care of my own. Until after they go to bed and then I watch TV I don’t even care about, drink a glass of wine or spend too much time surfing the Internet. Those feelings – the horror that I knocked my child over, the frustration that I can’t do something as simple as getting things out of my crawl space without unleashing a whole chain reaction of undesired events, the relief that no one was hurt – they just sit in my gut and bubble all day long. Instead of being able to exercise, go for a walk or meditate, I just put them aside where they sap energy. And I know that I’m not alone. Everyone sitting at work with their boss and co-workers watching can’t exercise their emotions when they are frustrated. Any care giver or health care worker can’t show their emotions as they carry out their jobs. No one with any celebrity can make a parenting mistake without someone catching it on camera for everyone else to comment on.

But as someone who no one is watching, I wonder: Am I doing this right if I can’t take a moment to feel things through once I’ve taken care of making sure the kids are okay? Should I be parenting differently so that they see me take care of my mental and physical health? Because actually the most important audience of two is watching me after all.

I have a long history of being a caretaker, working very hard to be prepared so that things go smoothly and finding my inner sunshine and optimism. Which is to say that change will not come easily but I’m hoping awareness goes a long way to help get me started. Because I’m not sure that I knew how much I wasn’t expressing on the day before yesterday that wasn’t nearly as dramatic. That is the miracle of living out loud for me – that naming things has real power to shine light on doubt, wounds and habits and to start them healing. No doubt I will make plenty of other mistakes and the process will have to repeat but I hope to at least share the story along the way.

Postscript: We finally made it to the Palm Sunday event yesterday – it was cold and rainy. My daughter and my mom got out and danced while the rest of us huddled in the back of the car, enjoying both the warmth of being close and opportunity to be in a crowd, albeit a small, socially distanced, drive-in crowd. The chairs were not necessary because it was too cold and rainy to be sitting out in the open. But I had them just in case.

Affirming Ourselves

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“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” – Buddha

I bundle my son into the car and off to preschool and when I return and sit down to work, I find that he’s removed the mouse from my laptop – the small pencil-eraser style mouse that sits between my G and H keys that is my favorite way to navigate. I look all over the floor for it, I search my office for my replacements but I’ve hidden them too well so that my kids won’t get them and now I can’t find them. Young kids are such a hindrance to getting things done. I was going to say “can be” but pretty much at this age, it’s not that they can but they are.

There is the big picture view that I am working in order to support my precious children so perhaps I should just take a deep breath, picture them and all aggravation goes away. And that is true, but it is also true that I really like to get things done. For my own sense of self and esteem.

I read a story in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening about Dr. Elkhanan Elkes about how she survived the Holocaust. She always kept two things with her: a small crust of bread and a broken piece of comb. The bread was for when she met someone who needed it more than she did and the comb was to comb her hair twice daily as it affirmed her person.

Applying her wisdom to parenting — the crust of bread is easy. I don’t know of any parent of small children that doesn’t keep a little snack just in case with them. In pre-Covid times, we even shared these with other people’s kids that needed it. But the daily affirmation of myself and my humanity is a harder. Dr. Elkes story tells me it is something we all need for survival and it’s a daily practice. I am a person and not just a role that I perform at home and work. For me that affirmation comes from a meaningful communication with another adult at least once a day — writing a card to a friend, writing or commenting on a post, or checking-in with someone who’s going through something big.

So I borrow the pencil-eraser mouse from another computer, write this post and find that my son really helped with my affirmation after all – he gave me something to write about. That’s one thing done for the day!!