the hardest year.

Here is what I have learned this year: trying to bring life into this world is a warrior's task. And I am not entirely sure that I am a warrior.

In December of last year, I learned I was pregnant. I began the year with all the hope and joy that comes of dreaming. A new child fresh and new. Everything possible. I would be a mother again, my greatest role so far, the one I cherish most deeply.

But by the end of January the dream was gone. I was bleeding, my womb and heart empty, a grief cutting so deep I thought I might not survive. I was a changed woman.

In May, a new life was planted. I was pregnant again. At first, I felt the rejoicing... But things turned so quickly. But soon I was sick and tired. Feeling a weariness in my bones I had never known before. Every day I am sick. Every day I can barely keep food down. Every day I feel hopeless. Almost every day I debate if it is worth getting out of bed and I would stay if there wasn't a toddler, a husband, a job, a life making demands that cannot wait. Nearly 6 months in and I am still sick, losing what's in my stomach in the middle of the night or the tiny hours of the morning.

To be honest, it makes me feel inadequate. So many women I know love pregnancy. Even when they were sick and tired it didn't debilitate them. They were happy and hopeful. So every day I face my not-enoughness. My illness feels like a daily failing.

And at surprising moments the grief of the life lost still sneaks up on me. The thin skin I thought had developed over the wound of the miscarriage, peels away so easily. What should have been the birthdate passed in August. I should be holding a child now, I think. I should be celebrating. Instead, I am sad and sick. It makes me want to curl up and cry.

I feel strangely unattached to the child living inside me. He is a stranger. I wonder if he feels my distance. I, unreasonably, feel I am already failing him as a mother.

"You're absolutely glowing!" the well-meaners say, as if I am as new and shiny as a lucky penny, or a prized jewel. As if I am not sick and worn and just a slice, a shadow of who I know myself to be. It makes me feel completely unknown and unseen. Am I invisible, I wonder? Is my pain obsolete?

"I don't know how you do it?!" they cheerfully say, as though I am some kind of hero. As though "doing it" were a choice. I am not heroic, I want to tell them. I am barely surviving. I do it by spending time nearly every day crying about all that I am not doing. Grieving all the joy and strength I do not have.

For me, in the end, there is likely to be wonder worth the misery. In a few months I will hold a slippery, crying babe in my arms and I will whisper, "welcome to the world." I will fall in love again. I will sing lullabyes at 3am for an audience of one. I will feed him with my body. I will be awestruck by the curl of his lips, the flicker of his eyelids, the openness with which he takes in the world. And I will think: I made him. I brought him here. I was a vessel for a miracle.

But for now, I am still in the hardest year. And it is terribly exhausting and terribly lonely. Perhaps, you are there too. Perhaps you have felt grief and pain that made you numb to the joy everyone else expects you to carry. Perhaps you too have been isolated by a weariness you couldn't even put into words. Perhaps you have born the weight of not being okay for months or years, and having to breathe and smile and live through it because there is no way to the other side except through.

Perhaps, we all just need to know we are not walking this hard earth alone.

a simple guide to love

You can love anyone
if you really look at them.
Notice the delicacy
of their eyelids
the unique color
and texture
of their skin.
Listen
to the rhythm
of their breath,
hear the longings
of their heart.
Study them
like a poem
or painting.
Look long
enough to see
the layers and lines,
crevices and curves.
Human-beings are
breath-taking works of art.
Fleshy machines, both
beautiful and complicated.
When you really look
how could you not
fall in love?

the revealing.

"And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed." -Genesis 2:25

I love the idea that in the beginning we were naked and unencumbered before God. For me part of the Christian life, particularly in the wilderness season of Lent, is about dismantling the careful walls and masks we've created to protect ourselves. Allowing ourselves to be seen by the Holy and by one another can be terrifying and painful. Discipleship and authentic relationships demand that we let our scars, our limitations and our flaws show. The divine challenges us to stop playing the game of proving ourselves and pretending. We are invited to vulnerability, intimacy, wildness and freedom. 


The Revealing
It hurts--
this uncovering
this laying bare.
It would be easier
to stay contained,
comfortably covered.
But piece
by jagged piece,
you reveal me.
You ask me
to be seen.
You uncover all
I prefer to keep veiled.
I can almost hear
you greet my
vulnerable form:
There you are, darling.
Aren't you beautiful?

the furious beating of wings.

"They wheeled in a wide arc
with beating wings and then
they put their wings to sleep
And glided downward in a drift
of pure abandonment
Until they touched the surface of the lake
composed their wings, and settled
on the rippling water
as though it were a nest. " -Anne Porter, "Wild Geese Alighting on a Lake"

We are furiously beating
our wings, always gasping
for breath as we seek
some imaginary destination
always further and further,
higher and higher.
So desperate are we
to make it upwards,
we do not see
the sky we fly in,
or feel the wind
the brushes our
radiant faces.
We never stop
to rest our weary wings
until they break and crack
and we plummet like Icarus
toward the hard earth,
despairing and weeping
that it was all for nothing.
What would it be to
unfurl our heavy limbs,
and let the invisible
carry us; to glide
and drift with abandon;
to open our mouths to
drink in the sweet air
and our eyes to see
the wide expanse of
sky and possibility?

The Dark Blossoming

This January, I experienced a miscarriage. It has been a season of grief, sorrow and pain like none I have known before. An unpredictable storm of emotions has accompanied this loss. There are moments of empty numbness and others of anguished weeping. There are flurries of shame and guilt and anger. This is a loss so deep and intimate that it can at moments feel debilitating and isolating. But what has surprised me even more than the depth of pain, has been the abundance of blessings of this time. Love, comfort, hope and healing glimmer like stars in the wide darkness of my grief.

People I hadn’t seen in years sent kind messages sharing their love and their own journeys of pregnancy loss. Countless friends offered their love, prayers and support through texts, messages, e-mails, phone calls and cards. Some brought meals or sent flowers. My tribe (some of whom I know well, and others who until now have been mere acquaintances) have held me with such tenderness. Even if they could not fully understand my grief, they were attentive to it. In the midst of the darkness of my pain and sorrow, I have felt seen, treasured and loved.  I have been reminded again and again that I do not walk alone. With each kind word and thoughtful gesture these dear ones have been acting as midwives, guiding me through this dark season of pain, to find rebirth. When I thought I would be washed away entirely by the ocean of tears, you held me and kept me from being swept away.

One of the ways that I seek solace and healing is through creative practice, and these last few weeks have been an outpouring of writing and making in my life. In the coming weeks and months I hope to share some of it with you here. But the first thing I want to share is this collage piece, made primarily of the many beautiful sympathy cards we received and a black and white photo from photographer Dave Heath (his amazing work is currently on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in KC). 

This is my valentine to all of you, representing the ways that through your love, hope blossomed in the midst of my darkest days.

This is for all of you who poured out your love. Every word typed or written was like bread sustaining me when I was starving. Every prayer, every kindness, every touch, was a seed planted in a barren place. Your tender care helped me not only survive the wilderness of grief, but to find deep rivers of resurrection and renewal within its landscape. Thank you, thank you, thank you: for walking beside me during this shadowy season; for loving even when you didn’t understand; for holding onto hope when I couldn’t carry it myself. You will never know the difference it has made. You will never know the way your love grew blossoms in the darkness. You will never know the beauty you helped me find even in the breaking.

Blessing for Anyone

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.' -Matthew 11:2-6

Blessed is anyone
Who is not offended.
But who could not take
Offense? When you tell
Us so bluntly to change
Completely. To give
Unsparingly. To seek
Eternally. To forgive
Lavishly.  To love
Unconditionally.
We are offended.
Our sensibilities, our schedules,
Our bank accounts, our desires,
Our politeness, our sense of propriety,
Our sense of self.
All Offended.
All Disrupted.
This gospel,
This good news,
This revolution
Demands so much
more than we think
we can bear.
So rather than claim it,
We find excuses
to be offended.
To critique, analyze, judge.
And there you are,
Grinning like a prankster,
Still offering with open arms
A blessing to anyone--
Anyone at all-- willing
To uncross their arms
Long enough to receive it.