Simple Journey

I want to know a song can rise from the ashes of a broken life... --Mike Donehey, 10th Ave. N.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Heart Changing

The other day I received a Word. Some of us like to talk about important, poignant messages as being a Word from God, and just call it a Word. This was one of those.

I've signed up for messages from a wonderful messenger of God named Kathy Butryn. Her "Heart Change Place" exudes peace and beauty and restfulness and shalom. I love to visit that "porch" and receive a Word. When I receive a Message sent out from The Heart Change Place, it is often as if those four gifts had been mailed through cyberspace and arrived right in my inbox in a nutshell. This was one of those. A Word.

"Mailer 21" had a devotional link, called "But Lord, I want what THEY have", and I immediately agreed. Eagerly I pressed the link and began reading. But soon my mind began to rebel, and I quickly found my way to this place, my own writing space, alone, where I am free to write anything I want in whatever way I like about everything I see or hear anywhere. I brought my rebellion to my Facebook Notes space, and I was eager to post it.

Buried in the middle of the devotion from "Mailer 21" was this quote:

Nothing so hinders us in what we are doing as to be longing after something else; in so doing, we leave off tilling our own field, to drive the plough through our neighbour's land, where we must not look to reap a harvest; and this is a mere waste of time. If our thoughts and hopes are elsewhere, it is impossible for us to set our faces steadily towards the work required of us.

-St. Francis de Sales

I whipped out a diatribe, a long complaint, full of reasons I should have a right to be whining, a right to be "ploughing through our neighbour's land" instead of tending my own responsibilities. And in this Note I wrote so immediately, the blame for every one of my complaints landed squarely on my husband's shoulders. If he weren't off ploughing in another field somewhere all the time I wouldn't be left to slave away alone through life, and would have no reason to have placed my "thoughts and hopes elsewhere". I railed at the world, at de Sales, at anybody who might be brave enough to read my Note. And I was sure gonna "tag" a lot of Facebook people on this one, so they'd come by and read it and leeeearn from me. (Picture eyes glaring here.)

I began to go down through my list of "Friends", looking for my victims. They were going to see just how deserving I was of another plough mate, they were. So that when my announcement came that I was leaving this field, they would understand why. Oh yes, I was going to lay the groundwork well for my escape. I chose some close "Friends" and some whom I was sure would understand. Then I closed the window.

But I closed the WRONG window! Without saving my Note!

I posted a complaint in the comment section in Facebook, under Kathy's "Mailer 21" post on her "Wall". How dare this happen to me! I had words of WISDOM to share with everyone!

Then I went on with my day, getting my daughter ready for college, went to bed and woke up extra early the next day (who knows why, just what we do at this age I guess). I came to visit my Facebook "Friends" again as usual, and saw my little post under Kathy's message. I re-read "Mailer 21", and it struck me that I had COMPLETELY missed the message the day before. I had been focusing on the fact that I look longingly at other people's lives and wish mine were like theirs, when really the message is about something else entirely. Envy of others is in there, but what I was finally hit squarely in the brain with was this: I have been focusing totally on my husband's dire shortcomings, and very largely ignoring my own. I have been working so hard to change him, or change this situation somehow, that I have given up tending this field altogether.

My home is in disarray, dirt and dust everywhere, items strewn on the floor, counters, in the garage, up in the bedrooms. No order in any room. I do not keep a schedule of cleaning or cooking or mending. I go about on every whim of my own, making sure always to be there for my children, but completely ignoring my husband's wishes, which I have seen as demands. Yes, he does have his faults, and yes they are a little dire. But it is evident to me now that in focusing solely on his I have neglected my own, and also neglected the gifts I've been given: "...and this is a mere waste of time."

I took a good look at MY field for a change: I do not sing (I am a professional classical soloist), except when I am in church or at choir, which meets only rarely in summer. I have not finished a needlework project since Christmas (I often give needlework gifts to bless), except the frantically stitched bookmarks I recently whipped out for my daughter and her friends as a send-off. I make no plans for activities for myself or my family. I have not touched the flowers I planted outdoors as an afterthought last spring. Basically, I have not been tilling MY field at all for at least six months, probably 1 to 2 years. And for several years there has sat above our bedroom window a bare, bay window-shaped curtain rod, hung there firmly by my husband at my bidding, his fervent wish to have window coverings in our bedroom ignored by me in my frenzy of self-centered activities years earlier, then altogether forgotten.

I've been ploughing through my husband's land, which has made it impossible for me to set my face steadily towards the work required of me. This thought struck all in a twinkling. I do not know why. Perhaps God just suddenly got tired of the carrot, and didn't want to use a stick like on a donkey, but decided to blind me with the truth for a change. I do tend to be a "hit me in the head with a 2X4" sort of person. But it was just a twinkling of a 2X4, so I had lots of chances to forget it if I chose.

But I didn't choose. And God chose not to let me either. This blinding with the light of truth occurred on Tuesday. On Wednesday we took our firstborn, incredibly amazing, somewhat nervous yet more excited that ever daughter to college. It's just up the road nine miles (so our neighbor who works there tells us), but it really is a separating that occurs when one puts one's first fledgling out of the nest and hopes and prays she really will fly, as you think you have taught her, but aren't quite certain until you see it happen, which you won't for several months yet.

This was a new experience for me and my husband. We were in process, metamorphosis, ourselves. So much thinking goes into the changes the little baby bird is going to go through, but the parent birds have a part in these changes as well. I learned the first day of our daughter's college life that if we remain the same as ever we will be guilty of "helicopter parenting". So we must change along with her.

Two days was all it took. No, not even that, for at the end of the first I knew it had happened. I did not know what, but I knew something had happened. For as we left the dorm room where our girl was busy settling in and getting to know her room mate better, and we walked away with only our son, there was a feeling of something parting, something not of our doing, something not just of leaving or taking, but also creating, giving, but something irrevocable occurring.

We took our son home where he didn't have to listen to any old, boring-to-any-15-year-old-boy-and-many-adults speeches, and suddenly we were a couple again, wandering the hills of southwest Portland in summer. What a beautiful day it was! Gradually, without saying a word, the two of us, ever so slightly, began to pull back toward each other. Something was gone, and something remembered. Neither said a word about it, I guess not to break the spell. We found our spirits meeting in this new, sort of scary, somewhat painful experience we were sharing. I stopped thinking about his faults. I stopped thinking at all. I just wanted to stay in this place where we were actually working together, alongside each other, for the common goal of launching our baby girl into the world.

That night when we came home, we shared a movie together with our son in peace and harmony for the first time in years. I sat and simply relaxed. Oh my feet were sore and there were some other very good reasons we sat quietly and relaxed!

But in my mind the clanging of alarm bells was silenced.

There was peace, impossible peace, shalom peace, whole peace.

And I remembered Kathy's "Mailer 21" and the words of Francis de Sales.

The second day was even better than the first. As we attended classes together without our son, while our daughter attended her own orientation activities, we drew together again, silently friendly once more. We were a couple again. Amazingly. Unbelievably. And I began to plan how I would plough this field that is mine by gift. The first thing I'd do was exchange my old, rusty, beat-up, out-dated plough for a new one: trade in my broken heart for a new heart. I'd got a new lease on life, really, a new outlook, and I was not going to be afraid to use it! At the end of that second day I marveled at the mere idea that I had seriously thought of ploughing in another field.

I looked around my home yesterday, and I decided it is time to get out of it. I don't mean move out, I mean get out where there are people during the day. I realized I have been stewing in my own juices for far, far too long; I've been wallowing in the mire of my own discontent instead of bringing my wounds into the open and letting them heal. I've been ploughing over the same plot of rocky ground for years and years, really, not wanting to get entangled in other endeavors, yet neither doing a good job of ploughing THIS field. I've been like a mule on the threshing floor, threshing the same wheat for so long it has turned into muck, especially as I've never quite cleaned out my own muck.

I look out now with a new purpose on the world. Anything I can find to do, that I am able to do, will do, and I will do it. My purpose is not only to keep us solvent, my purpose is filled with my heart's desire, which has always been to make this house a home. These two bright days in the middle of such a dark week of my life, darkened by my ingrown decisions, have become the hinge on which all my life turns. These two days were full of growth, leave-taking, reconnoitering, sloughing off the old, putting on the new, and promises. These two days in the middle of this week are bright and shining, so bright I can taste the joy and the life and the vitality to come.

But they were only possible because a tiny seed was planted by the words of a "Friend", whom I hope to someday truly call a Friend, who sent a Word through cyberspace in a thing called "Mailer 21".

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

Charles Wesley, 1738

My heart is changed. My eyes are opened. My chains fall off.

And I am thankful.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Late Summer

I feel like late summer in a Southern California city - when all the moisture's been sucked out of you and all your summer play has been done - before you remember there's anything good about going back to school.

I feel like the paved wash that runs behind the house I grew up in - driven over all day, nothing but dried concrete, no flexibility at all to my life, grey and old and unattractive, a place to collect litter, waiting at the backs of properties forever, separated from all the action by an ugly, dark, high fence, allowed a glimpse here and there of the old places through chain links, where there are orchards and horses - also old and waiting ...

It used to serve a purpose - water flowed down it, bringing life to the plain, by-passing the properties it would have eroded, carrying its tumultuous energy away from field and home. The wash protected and nurtured. Later another way was made to carry the water - or maybe the dam made it unnecessary. So the wash became a street, full of cement almost up to its edges, but not quite, in case there should still be need of it when the January rains fall. And there was, every year, behind my house the cars fairly swam down the sudden river that appeared when the California rain that "never rains, it pours" came pouring down for one entire day. Then the wash was a wash again, not just dried up old Peck Rd.

But at the end of summer, when we were all used up with our summer beach trips and church camp and family vacations, Peck Rd. was just a dumping ground for summer's cast-offs. There were no more activities at the church that bordered it for a space. The Mayflower Market held no more mystery for us as we'd visited it daily for 2 months. Besides we were out of allowance. The hot, dry, August sun beat down on its unrelieved greyness, intensified between the high fences, drying every dream to stillness. No friends came down that way that month if they could possibly get their mothers to drive them. The bikes lay unused around the back yard while we were at a friend's pool. All the fun was somewhere else.

Like me. All my life has passed out into other places. Nothing happens here. No music, no dancing, so sewing pretty things .... I am good for one thing and one thing only - money. I must take myself away from the center of my life - my home I have tried to make for this family, but which I've never had time to truly attend to - and go out into the hard world, where everything is as grey and as inflexible and as friendless as Peck Rd. in late summer.

Nothing but steam rollers pass over me now. I wait here to be used, by people or nature, and nothing comes here but trash. If there is hope it is only for the death of old leaves, the Fall, because then the Santa Anas will blow down the leaves and huge palm branches, and at least that howling music will fill my canyon of hopelessness. Then sometimes November brings rain, and sometimes the children have a day off and skate down my straight surface and I hear their precious laughter once again. I will see the foothills snow capped in December, until the January rains fill me up with would-be floods running down to the San Gabriel River and Arrow Highway, where the dead tumbleweeds will be carried on its crest, over the white flint rocks that lie waiting to be rolled. The rains come and wash away the litter. They wash away the dead leaves. They leave me clean again, ready for the spring in February, when camellia bushes near the high fences will bloom and drop their petals to be carried here by a February rain.

But it's a long, long day until that. For now the only activities to look forward to are the September fires, when people will gather all around and look up my clear view to see which foothill is burning and how much. Have the fire trucks made it there yet? Are there any homes threatened? And the smell of the smoke will be carried down my straight, unobstructed way and frighten a young girl in the house at the corner of the church property so she can't sleep, or dreams of fires trapping her.

I am a used up, old, paved over, unwanted, neglected, dried up wash. The only time I'm needed is in a crisis, and then - oh ho! - I'd better be clear! No one wants me for myself, a nurturer and an artist. My time is almost past. How will I remain in the future? For I am not made of concrete, am not fixed in this place. I am a human woman with a will and a way and feet to carry me the way I will. I have no cement stamina for sticking in hard places without a clear motive. I will one day up and leave.

And then what?

HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD:

Psalm 95

O come let us sing for joy to the Lord;

Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;

Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God,

And a great King above all gods,

In whose hand are the depths of the earth;

The peaks of the mountains are His also.

The sea is His, for it was He who made it;

And His hands formed the dry land.

Come, let us worship and bow down;

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker.

For He is our God,

And we are the people of His pasture,

And the sheep of His hand.

Today if you would hear His voice,

DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS, AS AT MERIBAH,

As in the day of Massah in the wilderness;

"When your fathers tested Me,

They tried Me, though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation,

And said they are a people who err in their heart.

And they do not know My ways.

Therefore I swore in My anger,

Truly they shall not enter into My rest."