Being deathless, Eden could never have an autumn. Somehow, a great beauty of the world was missing from Eden, and will, maybe, hopefully, someday be missing again. Autumn will only be our memory of it, as for eternity we remember the brief flicker of a world where there was tragedy, and it was beautiful.
Have also been thinking (prompted by this blogger) about how it works when your personal life happenings don't align with what you generally attribute to a season. More on this later, maybe?
Three weeks ago, I drove a young refugee woman to medical appointments all day. What I expected to be long, tedious, harrowing and full of awkward language and cultural barriers was completely inverted. This young woman, who has serious heart issues, had an incredible, positive and thoughtful demeanor. I want to write something especially descriptive and pithy to encapsulate the way her generosity of spirit and resilience blew me away, but (a) I'm never pithy and (b) it won't be accurate enough.
All this to say - I've carried it with me, felt flooded with waves of gratitude for how Providence managed to align the stars* so that I could spend the day with this particular young woman.
Also, I am making phone call after phone call - rushing hastily from and to waiting -one pop musak stream to the next. This morning I had to call an insurance company to sort out my brother's coverage options for seeing a counselor. I expected heinous, horrid line-holding and brusque conversation with a frazzled representative. Instead I quickly reached a local service representative. (I'm finding things in Kentucky to sometimes be blissfully small and personal right when I need it most.) I began by giving her my information, but then told her my brother's name and put my mom on the line to verify (as the account holder) that it was okay for me to get the details of his account.
True life story: the representative knew my mom...was a former student of hers. They chatted for a bit. When I hopped back on the call again, she told me she had heard about mom
asked me how I was doing and meant it (remember my rant from yesterday?),
asked a few questions about how our family was
- told me she was praying for us.
Flashback to another true life story: two point five months into this whole ordeal, and I feel so isolated. I've met others who've dealt/are dealing with care giving navigating the monster of dementia, etc etc. But, I remained desperate for someone who understood how surreal it is to cope at this juncture in life.
Three-ish weeks ago, I was at a conference for my grad program - sitting down to a nice dinner, and swapped tables to be nearer to an engaging speaker. Twenty minutes into a dinner where I'd planned to be gleaning insight from a woman who worked for a civil society organization in Afghanistan - I find myself engrossed in a conversation with the wife of one of my favorite professors.
Conversation with my professor is as follows:
conversation...conversation...get around to my mom (because he knows, because I had to tell them to get back in to UK) Prof: How is your mother? me: *lots of words...say something trite about how it's been hard but is getting better (fake smile)* Prof: you know that my wife's father had dementia and moved in with us when we were 26? me: *jaw dropped -agape.*
Then my professor switched seats with him wife, and thirty minutes later I've completed neglected my salmon, know nothing new about Afghani civil society - but have had the most timely, understanding, hugely-needed life-line-type conversation.
It changed the game - just in the knowing. And I carry it with me.
And here is a video of the good, good man I married dancing at a wedding last weekend - with our dear friend Nate (and Rachel chuckling with me in the background).
Sometimes, when I get home from school, he dances with me in the kitchen - just a few moments between tutoring Corey or cooking dinner. He drives me home after one too many drinks out with my classmates. He sends me emails that contain love notes from when we were seventeen, because he knows my day is hard - and he knows because he's standing right in it with me. And he loves me fully, even in my gross, emotional-blob-lump-heavyboots days.
Waves of emotion. As deep in the sorrow and even deeper and fuller in the joys, and the blessings.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm23.6
*I mean this differently, and more personally to my faith - but presently can't find a way to say it that doesn't feel -- goofy or trivial.
Of all of the things I could say, as of late, let me go with this one for tonight...
Do you know what drives me batshit-crazy?
When people look completely aghast when you reply "I'm feeling pretty crummy" after the perfunctory "how are you today?"
I'm not naive; I know it's a societal nicety, and that everyone always answers "I'm well" or "fine," particularly when it's in passing or when unacquainted with the asker.
However, I've made the (what now appears to be oafish) move of telling a local soul or two about how life is all heavyboots and kind of tough right now - even providing a few of the details. Annnd, I know that no one really understands another's struggles (i.e. how infuriating and debilitating it is to answer the same question ten times a day, how mindbogglingly numbing it is to navigate retirement paperwork and clinical trial options, how hard it is to drag yourself home after a long day filled with vacant, horrendous fake smiles and proceed to then slap on a completely different grin-and-bear-it, level of fake smile and positivity and muster up the energy to tackle social studies homework with a kid who's academically behind because he's been in the thick of it for years longer than you have).
I get that others don't get the depths of how hard some of the days are. I know that I've flippantly asked this same question to friends of which I am fully aware are battling some really tough demons/hurts/losses. Guilty as I charge others.
Still.
What I don't,
do not,
cannot fathom
are that people could miss that it's hard in general. That some days aren't going to be "fine." That when I say "my day is crummy" I don't need to be given the blank look of expectation, I don't owe you some lame back story about losing my keys or missing my favorite TV show this week. Think for just a second: you know the background, and it's not getting better overnight. (Not everyone, mind you, I'm filtering my desire to verbal process with every living thing. But I did confide in one or two people I thought might-could be supportive.)
And to you all: I don't need you to fathom the degree - but I want you to know that it's tough.
--> Not in a, "be impressed with me and place some epaulets on my shoulder" kind of recognition
--> nor in a vapid "my life is so hard, give me attention" kind of way.
...But more in a "I don't have many friends in this city and thus vulnerably confided in you that life is hell in order to get a slight feeling that someone understands/can support, can not ask a vacant, thoughtless'why?' when I don't have energy to pretend any longer and say that all is swell and thus answer 'completely crummy' when I'm asked 'how I'm doing'" kind of way.
Also,
I really don't want to be a one-upper, or obnoxious or self-involved. However, if one more of my classmates blathers on about howterribly and horribly busy and exhausting their life is (particular points docked from the few that I told bits about my heavyboots and have already kicked off the this stimulating conversation via the aforementioned aghastness/blank stare), I'm probably going to croak.
As in completely snap.
I have no idea how we as a society have come to deify and curse, toil for and run from, blather on and be silenced by a lifestyle of (often feckless?) busyness. I do know that a year ago, I was blundering on and on most every day with my cohorts about how 'my life is sooo busy' (and thus - important? valid?), and I hadn't a clue.
And I know that I still don't have a clue. I've never woken up for crazy feeding hours or to the cries of a sick kiddo. I'm sure I can't begin to imagine the depths of despair, illness, stress, financial burdens, and loneliness many are currently experiencing - and that are minutely universal, but mostly deeply personal and crippling and seem to weave in and out of different life seasons while no one else seems to notice.
Why do we compare suffering? And scheduling? And validity?
Why is busyness a rallying point? trophy? accolade?
So I am perpetually trying to check myself. And to no longer bring up how busy and tired and crummy I feel in conversation, as though they are a prize to be won. I'm trying to reign in the bitterness and resentment I feel toward my fellow twenty-somethings who can just be busy with middle-class American twenty-something things.
And I'm trying to be mindful and aware that in spite of this {totally obvious} enlightenment(?)/perspective, that I, like the rest of us, am completely immersed in the going, doing, racing, filling up every moment. Right now I can't stop it, but I am trying to name it - and knock it off the pedestal - and call it for what it is.
