Words Are Things

Words are things.  I am convinced.

You must be careful about the words you use, or the words you allow to be used in your house.

In the Old Testament, we are told in Genesis that in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God, and the Word was with God.

That's in Genesis.

Words are things.

We must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial perjoratives and sexual perjoratives and all that ignorance.  Don't do that.

Someday we will be able to measure the power of words.

I think they are things.
I think they get on the walls,
they get in your wallpaper,
they get in your rugs,
in your upholstery,
and finally into you.

~Maya Angelou

Some Things Right

Last week, I read Open House, by Elizabeth Berg.  (And I'll tell you right now, I'm in for everything she's ever written.)  In the first chapter of the book, the heroine is trying to convince her husband to stay, and in the second chapter, we find her on the first morning of their separation.  Ultimately, the story tells how she finds herself on the other side of marriage.

Our marriages ended differently, this heroine's and mine, but I identified with her on many levels.  Especially when she couldn't set the table without crossing paths with yet another wedding gift from the life she had once lived.

Anyway, she doesn't like her mother.  (I assure you, non-lovers of books and therein book reviews, these paragraphs are going somewhere.)  Her mother is shallow and ridiculously happy always, never willing to go anywhere near real emotions, and keeps everything an inch deep at all times. 

In a fit of rage, the heroine asks her mother, "When did you ever let anyone get close to you?  I mean, really close.  To the real you."

And in a page of brilliant writing, we see a crack in the mother's facade of happiness, and we readers realize that she has chosen to appear happy all along, thinking it was best for her children to never see her life's pain.

I stare at my mother's carefully made-up face, and suddenly I see that same face many years ago, shortly after my father died, when she came out of the bathroom after having been in there for a very long time.

"Now!" she said.  I was sitting in the hall, spinning jacks, and I looked up at her.  "I think that style is much better, don't you?" She showed me some modification she'd made to her hairdo, and I nodded, then returned to my jacks.

What occurs to me now is that what my mother had been doing all that time was weeping.  With astonishing quiet.  And that when she was done, she'd washed her face, fixed her hair, put on lipstick, and then gone out to the kitchen.  She turned the radio on low and made dinner so that it would be ready when it always was.  And then she smiled and chatted empty-headedly or fussed at her daughters all during dinner, preempting any kind of real conversation, preempting any questions, and then she put her daughters to bed, still smiling, still dispensing random advice about this and that, and her daughters squirmed and rolled their eyes and felt their love lessen year by year, eroded by embarrassment, by a terrible, defeating kind of resignation that told them she would never be different.

But what did she do after she put us to bed?  I wonder now.

And I imagine a mother who took a mask off her face, then pushed hard into a pillow to weep for the loss of her husband, for the loss of the life she was supposed to have, for the only man she ever -- I gasp, thinking this now -- loved.

And it comes all at once to me, it comes at this instant, that my mother simply lost too much and repaired herself in the only way she was able; that, in fact, she is continuing to repair herself, hour by hour, the pendulum of the cuckoo clock swinging in the light and the dark of all the days that have passed since my father died at this same brown wooden table.

I found such comfort in these words, in the idea that I'm doing the right thing by looking this in the eye, by talking to my children about the canyon that could have swallowed us whole, that I'm not preempting their questions and mine, that I'm not hiding behind a mask of any kind -- lipstick or otherwise.

I don't show them everything.  Because they shouldn't have to see it all.  But there's nothing I'm afraid of, no question they could ask that I wouldn't be willing to wade into.  And they can mention his name as easily as anyone else's.  Because he is as real to us as anyone else is.

It's great to read something and realize I might be on the right track, doing some things right.  That my boys won't look back and wonder who I was all these years.  That maybe I'm giving them the chance to know me all along.

Not to be Afraid

The God of love who gave us life

sent his only Son 

to be with us at all times 

and in all places,

so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles

but always can trust that he walks with us ....

Christmas is the renewed invitation 

not to be afraid and let him -- 

whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend -- 

be our companion.

~ Henri Nouwen

And so, it has been a Year.

Months ago, I began reading Henri Nouwen's book, The Genessee Diary.  

It is his published journal from inside a Trappist Monastery; he felt his life had become too mechanized, too secure, too predictable, too busy, too much writing about prayer instead of actually praying, too much thinking about theology and not actually worshipping, so he stepped away for a season.  He became a monk.  And he wrote about what this was like, what he learned.

In an ironic turn of the pages, he finished his seven months in the monastery just as I am finishing my first year as a widow.  Both he and I had sidestepped our lives as we knew them, reluctantly embraced a new season, and now together we embark on the end of the year.

(Never mind that he took his journey in 1981.  When I read your writing, your story becomes my present day.)

Henri, as I like to call him since we are now dear friends, wrote in his journal:

"I will have to ask myself what these months have meant to me.  I am still in it, but I see the end and the slow moving away to new experiences."

I set down the book with pause.  The same is true of me.  What has this year meant to me?  I am still in it, but I see the end.  And I see the turn of 2012 bringing new experiences.

I want to say I have learned nothing.  I want to say Robb's death was without meaning, these months have been empty, and I am bitter and angry because I got screwed hard out of everything I had planned for the rest of my life.  I want to say these things, boldly, with the strength that only comes from vindication.

But those things are not true.  I have learned much; these months have been sacred.  I have long said, if I will tell this story, I will tell the truth.  

So, here are my thoughts.

I have lived an entire year of winter.  There were sunny days that peeked through on occasion, but my heart stayed cold, bundled, protected.  Still, there are things to enjoy only in winter: good books, shorter days, enveloping blankets, and isolation.  I have relished in these.

In January, when I began speaking to God again, I made a deal with him: if he would just get me out of bed and safely to Starbucks, I would visit with him there.  I might not talk, but I would listen.  My mornings have been my sacred hours.  Starbucks has been my sanctuary. 

God has met me there.  My journals are filled with schizophrenic psalms, from temper tantrums to triumphant praise.  His companionship has been nearly tangible, certainly a presence I could feel strongly enough to know I wanted more.  In reading the Psalms, again and again, and again and again, I have let the psalmists cry out on my behalf, when I had no words left.

There's a reason why Psalm 88 made the cut into the final manuscript.

I have learned that there's no one way to be a perfect mother.  But there are a million ways to be a good one.  And, with God as my witness, his grace as my strength, I have been a damn good mother this year.

I have been willing to learn this year.  I have trudged ahead with my eyes open, insistent that this wrenching pain would not be wasted.  I have written a million words, unafraid of anything that might show up on the page.  I have found honesty and the beauty of saying things out loud.

A friend of Robb's recently wrote to me.  He said, "Tricia, when Robb talked about you, he always said you were an amazing woman who could handle anything."  My precious husband... he knew me well.  I never imagined the strength inside this frame.

I have learned firsthand that love is greater, stronger than the grave.  No matter what happens next, no matter the path I take or who walks beside me, I will forever love Robb Williford.  

This year has been the closing chapter of our marriage: I honored him, even after death parted us.

I choose to borrow some words from Henri, because great words should be shared, and because I can't say it better.

"For me, this is the end of a most blessed and graceful retreat and the beginning of a new life.  A step out of silence into the many sounds of the world, out of the cloister into the unkept garden without hedges or boundaries.  In many ways, I feel as though I have received a small, vulnerable child in my arms and have been asked to carry him with me out of the intimacy of [this place and] into a world waiting for light to come. 

Why was I here?  I don't know fully yet.  Probably I will not know fully before the end of the cycle of my life.  Still, I can say that I have a most precius memory which keeps unfolding itself in all that I do or plan to do.  I no longer can live without being reminded of the glimpse of God's graciousness that I saw in my solitude, of the ray of light that broke through my darkness, of the gentle voice that spoke in my silence, and of the soft breeze that touched me in my stillest hour."

Thank you, Henri.  You write my heart.

Thank you, Robb.  You hold my heart.

Thank you, God.  You heal my heart.

And so, it has been a year.

Let Every Heart

Joy to the world,

the Lord has come.

Let earth receive her king.

Let every heart prepare him room,

and heaven and nature sing.

I am realizing that I always thought of this lyric as my reminder to set aside the wrapping paper, shopping lists and bows, to slow down with the glitter and the ornaments, long enough to make room in my heart - for even a moment - to remember that this season is about so much more.

I know now: sadness will take up every inch it's allowed.

This Christmas could easily pass with my heart wrapped entirely in grief and gray.  As I listen to this song, it causes me to think differently.  

To make room in my sadness for joy.  

To allow my darkness to be soft enough to be aware of the light.  

To let sadness step aside sometimes.

To remember - for even a moment - that this season is about so much more than death, loss, and heartache.  

(Because I could very easily give my holiday to those three.)

May my broken heart prepare him room.

* * *

"May his light shine in our darkness and may I be ready to receive it with joy and thanksgiving." 

~ Henri Nouwen

And They are The Greats.

Ann Tyler says, "If I waited until I felt like writing, I'd never write at all."

Margaret Atwood says, "If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."

And so I raise my glass: here's to untimely imperfection.

Condolences

For a too brief moment in the universe the veil was lifted.  The mysterious became known.  Questions met answers somewhere behind the stars.  Furrowed brows were smoothed and eyelids closed over long unblinking stares.

Your beloved occupied the cosmos.  You awoke to sunrays and nestled down to sleep in moonlight.  All life was a gift open to you and burgeoning for you.  Choirs sang to harps and your feet moved to ancestral drumbeats.  For you were sustaining and being sustained by the arms of your beloved.

Now the days stretch before you with the dryness and sameness of desert dunes.  And in this season of grief we who love you have become invisible to you. Our words worry the empty air around you and you can sense no meaning in our speech.

Yet, we are here.  We are still here.  Our hearts ache to support you.

We are always loving you.

You are not alone.

~ Maya Angelou

Distinguished

Andre Malreaux remarks in his Anti-Memoirs that one day we will realize that we are distinguished as much from each other by the forms our memories take as by our characters. 

I am wondering what form my memory is taking.  It seems that this depends a great deal on myself.

I have little to say about events, good or bad, creative or destructive, but much about the way I remember them - that is, the way I start giving them form in the story of my life.  I am starting to see how important this is in my day-to-day living.

I often say to myself:

"How will I remember this day,
this disappointment,
this conflict,
this misunderstanding,
this sense of accomplishment, joy and satisfaction?
How will they function in my ongoing task of self-interpretation?"

~ Henri Nouwen,  

The Genesee Diary

Learned and Yet to Learn

I find it very difficult to let a friend or beloved go into that country of no return.  I answer the heroic question, "Death where is thy sting?" with "It is here in my heart, and my mind, and my memories."

I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything.  I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and what I know may not always be true. 

When I find myself filling with rage over the loss of a beloved, I try as soon as possible to remember that my concerns and questions should be focused on what I have learned and what I have yet to learn from my departed love.  What legacy was left that can help me in the art of living a good life?

Did I learn to be kinder,
To be more patient,
And more generous,
More loving,
More ready to laugh,
And more easy to accept honest tears?
If I accept those legacies of my departed beloveds,
I am able to say,
Thank You to them for their love
and Thank You to God for their lives.

~ Maya Angelou,  

Letter To My Daughter

Somehow

Someday soon
we all will be together
If the Lord allows.
Until then, we'll have to muddle through 
somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

~

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full on his wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
in the light of his glory and grace.


It is likely that I never would have wed these two songs.

And yet they are the perfect marriage
of my right hand and my left,
my heart and my mind,
my hurt and my hope.

Lonely Romance

Wes longed for the winter,
when it was safe to shut oneself away.
He loved waking up and going to school
and coming home in the dark,
the privacy of walking along in a twilit street in the cold,
the lonely romance of winter sounds -
wind whisking at the bare tree branches,
dry leaves scudding along an unswept sidewalk,
the muffling that descends before a snowfall.

What he hated was the summer,
things that were bright and open and shadowless.
He hated waking up in the sunlight,
the skimpy clothes,
the endless hazy twilights
that somehow made you feel less than wholesome
if you wanted to crawl into bed with a book
while there was still a warm, pastel glow in the sky.

~ Jesse Browner,
Everything Happens Today

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e. e. cummings

A Real Event

At times, writing becomes a real event.

It is a remarkable sensation to see ideas and words flowing so easily, as if they had always been there but had not been allowed expression.

Meanwhile, I become more and more aware that for me writing is a very powerful way of concentrating and of clarifying for myself many thoughts and feelings.  Once I put my pen on paper and write for an hour or two, a real sense of peace and harmony comes to me. 

Consequently, I feel much more willing and able to do little routine jobs.  After a day without any writing and filled with only reading and manual work, I often have a general feeling of mental constipation and go to bed with the sense that I did not do what I should have done that day.

It is good to become aware of all this.  This seems to help me to understand quite a few of my bad moods . . . during the past few years.

~ Henri Nouwen

Attached to the Signs

Being thankful is not telling God
you appreciate the fact that your life is not in shambles. 
If that is the basis of your gratitude,
you are on slippery ground.
Every day of your life,
you face the possibility
that a blessing in your life may be taken away.
But blessings are only signs of God's love.
The real blessing, of course, is the love itself.
Whenever we get too attached to the sign,
we lose our grasp on the God who gave it to us.
Churches are filled with widows who can explain this to you.
We are not ultimately grateful that we are still holding our blessings. 
We are grateful that we are held by God
even when the blessings
are slipping through our fingers.

~ C. Barnes

Because I Know What Flowers Look Like

"You must be Maggie," she said, tilting her head in Maggie's direction.  She put one hand on the railing for balance and held out the other one for Maggie to shake.  Blind, Maggie realized, and she shook the woman's hand carefully.  "I'm Corinne.  Come on in," she said, leading the way into a large Victorian house that already seemed scrupulously clean, and precisely organized.  In the entryway hall, there was a stark wooden bench to the right and a series of cubbyholes hanging above it and a pair of shoes in each cubbyhole.  A raincoat and a winter coat hung on adjoining hooks; an umbrella and hat and mittens were laid neatly on a shelf above them.  And next to the empty coat rack was a white cane.

"I don't think you'll find the work too difficult," said Corinne, taking careful birdlike sps from a cup of coffee in a lemon-yellow mug.  "The floors need to be swept and mopped," she began, ticking off the tasks on her fingers.  "I'd like you to organize the recycling, the glass and the paper in particular.  The laundry should be sorted, the dishwasher needs to be emptied, and . . ."

Maggie waited. "Yes?" she finally asked.

"Flowers," said Corinne, and tilted her chin up defiantly.  "I'd like you to buy some flowers."

"Okay," said Maggie.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I want them," said Corinne.

Maggie, who hadn't been wondering, said nothing.

"Because I can't see them," said Corinne.  "But I know what flowers look like.  And I can smell them, too."

~ Jennifer Weiner, 

In Her Shoes

State of Preparedness

The question is not, "Do I have time to prepare?"
but "Do I live in a state of preparedness?"
When God is my only concern,
when God is the center of my interest,
when all my prayers,
my reading,
my studying,
my speaking,
and writing
serve only to know God better
and to make him known better,
then there is no basis for anxiety or stage fright. 
Then I can live
in such a state of preparedness and trust
that speaking from the heart
is also speaking to the heart.

~ H. Nouwen

Creating Space for Glory

I have a speed-up slow-down relationship with the words of Henri Nouwen.  I want to read quickly to immerse myself in the beauty of his words, but it is so potent that I must slow down if I am to digest it all.

He has handed me a definition of glory, one that is shifting my thinking.

He writes:

We live because we share God's breath, God's life, God's glory.

The question is not so much "How to live for the glory of God?" but, "How to live who we are, how to make true our deepest self?"

Take this as your koan: I am the glory of God.

Make that thought the center of your meditation so that it slowly becomes not only a thought but a living reality.

You are the place where God chose to dwell... and the spiritual life is nothing more or less than to allow that space to exist where God can dwell, to create the space where his glory can manifest itself.

In your meditation, you can ask yourself:
"Where is the glory fo God?  If the glory of God is not where I am, where else can it be?"

Once you start realizing in this very intimate and personal way that you are indeed the glory of God,
then everything is different,
then your life takes a decisive turn.

I could go for a decisive turn, an uncovering of my truest, deepest self.

Here's to creating space for glory.

* * *

For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory
in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? 
Is it not you? 
Indeed, you are our glory and joy.

I Thess. 2:19-20

The Gift of Remembering

So much of my everyday brings a memory of Robb.  Errands, routines, songs, commercials, scents, flavors, recipes, restaurants - it's an endless list.  I love when people tell me something they remember about him; sometimes they spark a memory I haven't thought of in a while, and sometimes they tell me a story I had never heard at all. 

It's a beautiful something, that gift of remembering.  So many things I do 'in remembrance of him.'

I have begun to think about how empty my days would feel if I had a checklist of tasks required to honor the memory of him.

Light this candle. 
Look at this picture. 
Follow this recipe. 
Pour this cereal. 
Fill this gas tank. 
Listen to this song.

All of those carry implicit meaning for me, a natural memory.  But they would quickly become meaningless if I considered them a mindless routine to ensure I had honored him.

I think of those words from Jesus: "Take this in remembrance of me."

I imagine his disciples and closest friends had no trouble at all - their minds were likely flooded with scents and sounds and tastes that brought him to the surface again and again.  They couldn't keep from thinking of him over a meal of bread and wine.

Perhaps we have turned this tradition of Communion into an empty checklist, when all he asked was that we come together, eat, and remember.

***

"How odd would it seem to have been one of the members of the early church, shepherded by Paul or Peter, and to come forward a thousand years to see people standing in line or sitting quietly in a large building that looked like a schoolroom or movie theater to take Communion.  How different it would seem from the way they did it, sitting around somebody's living room table, grabbing a hunk of bread and holding their own glass of wine, exchanging stories about Christ, perhaps laughing, perhaps crying, consoling each other, telling one another that the Person who had exploded into their hearts was indeed the Son of God, their Bridegroom, come to tell them who they were, come to mend the broken relationship, come to marry them in a spiritual union more beautiful, more intimate than anything they could know on earth."

~ Donald Miller

In Every Good Marriage

What most people don't know is that Robb and I had just worked our way through a marital valley, a long line in the desert.  We had fought hard for us, even though sometimes that looked like we were fighting against each other.  We had trudged through the hardest conversations, and we were on the other side.

And it was good and healthy and lush and beautiful again, for the last two months of his life (that we didn't know were the last two months of his life). 

Had we not fought hard, he could have died in the midst of the season.  He could be gone with conversations undone, decisions unfinished, knots untied.

But by the grace of God, we were on the gracious side of the valley, the upward climb in the sunshine. 

How much harder this path would be, if we had not found each other again, just in time.

"Our love has been anything but perfect and anything but static.  Inevitably there have been times when one of us has outrun the other and has had to wait patiently for the other to catch up.  There have been times when we have misunderstood each other, demanded too much of each other, been insensitive to the other's needs.  I do not believe there is any marriage where this does not happen.  The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.  I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over.  Sometimes, these desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without it."

~ Madeleine L'Engle, Two-Part Invention

Even if I Didn't Hope for what I Hope

I am not moved, my God, to love you
By the heaven you have promised me.
Neither does hell, so feared, move me
To keep me from offending you.
You move me, Lord, I am moved seeing you
Scoffed at and nailed on a cross.
I am moved seeing your body so wounded.
Your injuries and your death move me.
It is your love that moves me, and in such a way
That even if there were no heaven,
I would love you,
And even if there were no hell,
I would fear you.
You do not have to give me anything
so that I love you.
For even if I didn't hope for what I hope,
As I love you now, so I would love you.

~ John of the Cross

"I have always taken these last words to mean,
Even if what I hope for is not what is going to be,
no matter what,  I would love the one who made me."

~ Madeleine L'Engle