Vacillation to Education

I am heading towards a new phase in life, that of school aged children. I am going to get them up, pack lunches, drive them to their new schools and kiss them good-bye. Then I will pick up first my three year old and I will spend the afternoon hanging out one on one before collecting the 5 year old, making dinner. The hard part is preparing for a life of rigidity. While I long for routine, it also terrifies me. My mom role requires some type A traits and my time with David is cut shorter and shorter.

The ideal version of me would have the fridge stocked, the house cleaned, the clothes organized and a wake-up song ready to stir the house an hour after I am up. The pessimistic me wants to rebel and be let off the hook, have a legitimate reason to focus elsewhere, to be rid of the pressure of being a great provider. If only I could pile on a few classes, part time gigs and anything that will allow me to be ok to fail at all of it. The pattern will then look like this: me doing it all, me frantic, me surviving through in reactive mode but finishing with some adrenaline rush and crashing without as much guilt.

I am told that I need to pretend my internal life is important and matters. That being aware and speaking up for myself to myself must come first. Then I can be in my life rather then trying to play other roles for other people who have needs I can take on to let me off the hook. So I am afraid of things that feel like hooks, yet I can't manage alone. When I sat at church on Sunday I thought, if I could only just bask in God's glory, all the rest would be less urgent.

So according to HowWeLove.com, I am a "vacillator" and my work is to become a "secure connector," with a list of things to work towards, in becoming balanced, healthy, open to self and others and better able to thrive in real relationships.

In this journey, I pray for clarity of purpose, for a way to fight distraction, to lean into a schedule and to create spaces where I can engage with myself and kids first thing and last thing and in between as we open ourselves to public learning.

Writing My Own Job Description

I found that when I sat down on the laundry room floor midday yesterday, I couldn't convince myself to get up. We were set to hit a local water park in Yspilanti and I couldn't figure out how to tackle the basement stairs. Rewinding to understand how I got there, between Monday and Sunday, I flitted from community meeting, to packing for a friend, to CPR/First Aid training, to Kindergarten registration, to visitors and game nights and a weary husband, just after my last houseguest departed, I crashed.

Contrasting last week with now, I am sitting at the library, listening to trucks drive along the highway overhead and no real plan. I am struck by how calm the world feels here feel. This is the time to get perspective. In my case I am supposed to create a job description for myself that will guide me towards a healthier way of engaging, deciding, etc. I have ideas for what I want to be doing, like knowing and be known by my family, listening to friends and loving and delighting in relationships. I am convinced more and more that loyalty is critical to being free. The other one that is hardest for me, is choosing to believe God can do the work. I habitually hold onto the hard stuff of other's lives, like I did last week and their crisis created my own. Instead I want to be the person who says, "We just have to ask Jesus to do something BIG here."

So how do I change? My friend is reading a book about decision making and one thing she shared was that empathy has to be pared with judgement for a good decision to be made. I think I feel emotions around someone losing a house or having a hard time, and waver between ignoring the situation or doing the work to solve their problem and ignoring my kids, husband and other tasks. These frequent situations (almost daily) trump everything else. Or maybe they distract me from dealing with everything else. Moving someone or having inviting someone in or acting as chauffeur is easier then making a meal plan for my family, or mopping the floor.

A guy named Ian Walker has an amazing article in The Art of Manliness about why we do some things and not others, called, Self Efficacy and the Art of Doing Things . He mentions that the big task are made of a bunch of smaller ones and when each is completed it feels great. The best advice is to do things task by task and that great satisfaction can be found in doing what one sets out to do.

My wise friend mentioned above,  also mentioned that we should be loving our future selves and trying to provide for them now. This means handling today so that I will be equipped for tomorrow, rather then striving to save the world right now only to be laying on the laundry room floor the moment I sit down.

So I have a new job description to post up on my door, my window, my blog.

Job Description for Being Myself:
Available/listening to self and protecting own space for better functioning with others
Direct line to a Powerful Boss who can manage crisis (God)
Strong reliance on a calendar as a filter for booking tasks, connecting with people and ordering schedule for efficiency and balance
Communication of priorities and saying no to taking on other's jobs/priorities as if my own
Interdependence with others to manage all needs (theirs and mine)
Able to stay in each hour I have - delighting in beauty, empathizing with sorrow, laughing when appropriate, etc
Experience the world as a creative space in which to delight
Considering future needs and love the future self through dreams and provisions necessary for her to thrive

Maybe the wife, mom and friend come out of this description. I pray that I can live my roles well and work with loving intention, in the light of a compassionate God, who has a much wider view!

One Day I Will Sing on Stage

Last night at 7:15 pm in front of my very own blue house, Jen Hajj (from CA) and Dave Hawkins (from OH) set up mikes and amplifiers to sing to our neighbors, themselves and the mosquitoes. Jen's soprano notes rose high and sweet on the topics of birds and friendship. Dave has a more surly personality, with stories of drinking and history and the drama of daughters and granddaughters who break your heart in a good way.

We were maybe 25 sprawled over a quarter acre and I wondered if it was worth their time. Maybe they would be twiddling their thumbs or practicing or they just know that singing is about each person, and finding the one that connects with their mission, their gift, their energy. Dave's 50 years shows in his 7 albums, grammy nominations, itune sales and his regular pitch for support.

My sons and I lay in bed, then each kept saying, "I can't see, I can't see," and we had to sit up and look down from the bedroom window until the last song ended. I believe they would have gone all night if we had let them, but it became to dark to see.

When it was quiet, my son said, "You go to lessons, right?" When I nodded he said, "You want to sing like them when you grow up," and I said, "I hope so!" I want to sing out loud to the night, but do I have the skill to bear my soul and ask for attention. They wanted us to know their history, to agree with their choices, for us to know them intimately, and somehow we did, without even knowing their names. I don't know if I can believe people will listen to my stories for as long as the audience did, about raptor bird obsessions and song writing classes and drunk audiences at football games, but I imagine I will try.

My story is. . . I was a lonely child, fighting for food with my six siblings. My school lunches were dry homemade brown bread peanut butter sandwiches with a gushy apple that I almost threw up as I tried to get down. When I met my husband, he appeared as loyal and grounded and he participated with me in my story. As I consider options, write, sing, run a marathon, build a community house, help with my dad's wedding, apply to MFA's, teach, parent, or sit on my hands, I sense myself grabbing onto things to find safety, while also longing for an extreme adventure.

I am challenged in the daily tasks to find meaning in folding laundry or scrubbing the bathtub. I live with people, I am responsible to meet basic needs, but I care most about my family being showered with God's love/knowing. I watch my friends adventure in the city or backcountry and though I pretend they are crazy, I envy their determination to live on some edge, where they must fully focus on the task ahead. In this season, wanting those adventures in nature and urban living become distractions (though later, I hope to lead others their), as my task is that of being where I am and listening to the rain. I am the observer of kids changing heights, their facial expressions, their words, their daily epiphanies about themselves and the world and I want them to experience God within the spaces we dwell, be content within their own skin, not matter what the circumstances are elsewhere.

So we lay down and listen to sounds, laughs, and then run circles up our hill around the raspberries and back down, imagining ourselves to be dinosaurs and lions. We take pauses to ponder the head sized hornet's nest just past our front porch, that we have played under for months, without seeing, knowing that someone has sprayed it for us, and its inhabitants are dead. Maybe I will write a song about the hornets, or the music or the kids, or maybe the Blue Heron that soared just out out of our reach, showcasing it's long slender neck.

I Need You

On a recent camping trip in Sleeping Bear Dunes, I noticed several times that kids close to my 5 year olds age would stop and stare at him and his friends in a tranced or longing way. Then they would move closer or head off, but for a moment, you could tell they wanted to connect.

On Tuesday night as I ran down Park Ave past a fastish looking woman, I did the same thing. I eyed her, almost turned to go along with her and thought of how I might find out who she was so I could ask her to run with me. I eye neighbors, church visitors and want to know their stories. I stroke my boys forearms and cheeks when they lay down to sleep and want to hear their day's stories, what they are thinking about, believing and hoping for and always wish I could engage them better.

My best friend decided to live on a boat again, and she made the comment that we would not have much time to talk after her move. She is in a great place, heading to Haystack, writing amazing stories, getting responses from literary journals and now taking a leap of faith as she literally casts off! She doesn't have many minutes on her cell plan or consistent reception and I panic inwardly knowing I can't spontaneously access her.

I also realize as I sit in the library to write on a Sunday afternoon that I only write when people send me off. An hour ago my husband said, "Why don't you go off and write now?" I said, "ok," and here I am. On Monday the babysitter comes and I write. I rarely work in the early morning or late at night and wonder if I need to focus or accept that this is how it is right now.

I seek external direction for the internal work of studying human change. Now I look at impending Fall, my boys both signed up for their first ever schools, and I turn my gaze to anything that might prod me on (or distract me from losing time with them). I read about the program InsideOut, teaching writing to kids in Detroit and long for the task, I comb through Eastern's Creative Writing Classes and want to be in conversation with students. I notice my neighbors and consider a Community Bible study on relationships, art and Jesus. I pray that God will lead me into the right spaces; that my ears will crane towards what is lasting.

The Process of Becoming Alive

There is something profound in reading stories you have read before but seeing them as a changed person. To read To Kill a Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye as a child makes me think of possibility and as an adult, I feel a bit more regret, envy, or fear, that I have missed an important moment.

Sitting at my coffee shop table there is a poem that I keep reading, thinking that with each new look, it will give me the answer. Here it is (no author is quoted):

If we wait to foil

A BANK ROBBERY

or rescue someone ties on the railroad tracks
We will never be a hero. We probably won't

even come across a cat stuck in a tree. As
long as we sit at the bus stop waiting for

OUR GREAT MOMENT

we will miss our real chance at the heroic.
the infinite number of tiny, daily acts

inspired by the great. Our actions may seem
insignificant, but their results will grow

and multiply.
They are radical: they are

A SMOLDERING FIRE.

My best friends are off on new adventures. One is taking the long road to Alabama and camping along the way. Another is literally living on a sailboat, without a real plan for how long or whereto, just being there. My sailor talks through wind and water and I feel life is happening inside her and I want to be there.

My family and close friends went camping in Sleeping Bear Dunes, climbing and swimming and sitting around a fire and it was good. One one hike up Pyramid Point, most of our crew decided to climb down a steep slope to touch the water. The way down was easy, but the scaling the dune back took many over an hour. They sat down white faced on top and we all felt the relief of their being ok. As I sat watching and half wishing I had experienced the struggle, the water looked liquid glass agave. Like God was hovering just below the surface. I consider how He met people on mountain tops and wrestled them in the valleys of the Bible and I wait and wonder where he is in with me.

My impulse is to jump into a new class at Eastern, work as a creative writing teacher with InsideOut in Detroit and trying to complete a publishable novel in a week.

Instead I write my three morning pages about my dad's upcoming wedding, my neighborhood, and how I want to be, in my own skin. All the while I know that I'm not going to make it to the mountains of NH, or cruise (sail) the coast of Maine, but I am still me, without doing anything. That in this next two weeks, people are coming to me and that I will write and each day watch for God showing up in my life.