The storm is beginning to rage outside. It sounds so far away from this protected world in my room. The rain is hitting the window with a fury, beat by the wind here and there against our house. But it's not much different than the sound of the water on the glass when you take your car through the car wash.
I've had a long weekend of new experiences and full adventures. I'm stepping out on a limb now, trying new things with new people. I'm seeing myself apart from my community for the first time in a long time--as just a single individual making her way in the world. It's interesting to describe myself, as if for the first time, to a stranger. It's interesting to hear myself describe my family, my decision making, my school life.
Some of it sounds boring.
Some of it sounds quixotic.
I'm not embarrassed by any of it, though. It's all me--I feel like I can truly own my decisions-like they were authentically formed and purposefully carried out.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
These Legs; Look at the River!
Some weeks ago, my favorite coworker, Becca, pointed to my knee and asked me what was wrong with my vein. She said, Veins are supposed to be straight. That's not straight!
Imagine, if you will, a gnarling, green-blue river that snakes and winds its way up and around the knee to the inside thigh. Had I noticed it before that second? I guess I did--but it didn't really look like that, at least I don't remember it looking like that. It wasn't twisted, for starters, just closer to the surface and really dark. Now that Becca pointed it out, there aren't any moments when I don't know it's there; I'm constantly aware of the tightness and the slow, dull ache of bad circulation in my lower leg.
In case you don't know very much about varicose veins, here's a little lay-medical snippet:
Healthy veins pump blood back to the heart with a series of one-way valves that prevent the backward flow of blood and the build up of pressure. When we are standing there is a lot of pressure pushing blood back down towards our feet. If these one-way valves are not working, blood can pool in the leg veins causing the veins to enlarge. Varicose veins are dilated veins just under the skin.
Ever feel like you just can't catch a break?
Ugh.
Double ugh.
This really messes up that picture of myself at 45 that I have in my head--the one of me in an elite yoga outfit stretching in a mountain range under an expansive blue sky at 6:00 am. A grateful, wise head above me and a strong, capable body beneath me.
I'm doing whatever I can do--elevating my legs when I'm sleeping or sitting for long periods of time and doing funny feet exercises to flex lower leg muscles and increase blood flow. And of course, there's my daily exercise to increase circulation and raise my blood pressure for a small moment each day.
But it's official: I'm going to be that woman--the one who has to have special assistance at parties; chairs & cushion props always nearby.
Pffft. I've also started doing weird things that feel like they might make a difference, like massaging the vein upward toward my heart, not really knowing if it's helping or hurting. I'm even cutting down my salt intake.
Less salt?
{Insert groan}
I love my salty sunflower seeds from Trader Joes.
I love my salty Snyders of Hanover pretzels.
I love salty eggs.
Buuuuut, I really do like having usable legs, too.
At the end of the day, there's only so much we can do to stave off bodily decline. I'm trying to incorporate every possible healthy lifestyle habit that I can into each 24 hours that I've been given, in an attempt to hold at bay the eventual decay of this delicate vessel I call home. But after all the hard, responsible things have been done, and these unsightly, unfriendly reminders of the fallen world are still snaking in dark rivers across my leg--it's time to make my way through the crowd and and call out for some intervention from Christ, the Healer. It's time for me to reach out and touch the hem of His garment, as it were.
There is hope of deliverance {an awfully big word for such a small need}-there is hope for me that He can and will restore health and bring life and newness to these damaged pathways.
And that brings me to the bigger picture. One thing I did learn last month is that a person can't ignore body issues.
Remember when you were a child and you covered your eyes to hide yourself from a person, thinking that once you couldn't see them, they couldn't see you, either? Well, death and sickness can see you, even if you put your hands over your eyes. It's foolish to deny the need for help and healing; to hope that it will all work itself out, even when you feel death chasing you and changing you. You have to face these things.
Dad's final surgeon told us that the biggest cause of the heart problem that Dad had was denial. There were things he could have changed or done; help he could have gotten. But he didn't even acknowledge the pain. Somehow you have to acknowledge the sickness before you receive the cure. And no, denial isn't a cure.
I've got to face this pain/ this damage/ this decay/ this brokenness. I've got to pray about it, seek wise advice about it, change my ways.
As my friend Dixon often says:
Pray, God is near.
Imagine, if you will, a gnarling, green-blue river that snakes and winds its way up and around the knee to the inside thigh. Had I noticed it before that second? I guess I did--but it didn't really look like that, at least I don't remember it looking like that. It wasn't twisted, for starters, just closer to the surface and really dark. Now that Becca pointed it out, there aren't any moments when I don't know it's there; I'm constantly aware of the tightness and the slow, dull ache of bad circulation in my lower leg.
In case you don't know very much about varicose veins, here's a little lay-medical snippet:
Healthy veins pump blood back to the heart with a series of one-way valves that prevent the backward flow of blood and the build up of pressure. When we are standing there is a lot of pressure pushing blood back down towards our feet. If these one-way valves are not working, blood can pool in the leg veins causing the veins to enlarge. Varicose veins are dilated veins just under the skin.
Ever feel like you just can't catch a break?
Ugh.
Double ugh.
This really messes up that picture of myself at 45 that I have in my head--the one of me in an elite yoga outfit stretching in a mountain range under an expansive blue sky at 6:00 am. A grateful, wise head above me and a strong, capable body beneath me.
I'm doing whatever I can do--elevating my legs when I'm sleeping or sitting for long periods of time and doing funny feet exercises to flex lower leg muscles and increase blood flow. And of course, there's my daily exercise to increase circulation and raise my blood pressure for a small moment each day.
But it's official: I'm going to be that woman--the one who has to have special assistance at parties; chairs & cushion props always nearby.
Pffft. I've also started doing weird things that feel like they might make a difference, like massaging the vein upward toward my heart, not really knowing if it's helping or hurting. I'm even cutting down my salt intake.
Less salt?
{Insert groan}
I love my salty sunflower seeds from Trader Joes.
I love my salty Snyders of Hanover pretzels.
I love salty eggs.
Buuuuut, I really do like having usable legs, too.
At the end of the day, there's only so much we can do to stave off bodily decline. I'm trying to incorporate every possible healthy lifestyle habit that I can into each 24 hours that I've been given, in an attempt to hold at bay the eventual decay of this delicate vessel I call home. But after all the hard, responsible things have been done, and these unsightly, unfriendly reminders of the fallen world are still snaking in dark rivers across my leg--it's time to make my way through the crowd and and call out for some intervention from Christ, the Healer. It's time for me to reach out and touch the hem of His garment, as it were.
There is hope of deliverance {an awfully big word for such a small need}-there is hope for me that He can and will restore health and bring life and newness to these damaged pathways.
And that brings me to the bigger picture. One thing I did learn last month is that a person can't ignore body issues.
Remember when you were a child and you covered your eyes to hide yourself from a person, thinking that once you couldn't see them, they couldn't see you, either? Well, death and sickness can see you, even if you put your hands over your eyes. It's foolish to deny the need for help and healing; to hope that it will all work itself out, even when you feel death chasing you and changing you. You have to face these things.
Dad's final surgeon told us that the biggest cause of the heart problem that Dad had was denial. There were things he could have changed or done; help he could have gotten. But he didn't even acknowledge the pain. Somehow you have to acknowledge the sickness before you receive the cure. And no, denial isn't a cure.
I've got to face this pain/ this damage/ this decay/ this brokenness. I've got to pray about it, seek wise advice about it, change my ways.
As my friend Dixon often says:
Pray, God is near.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Discipline, You Undesirable Monster
“Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.” --Nido Qubein
For whatever reason, early on in life, I learned to define success as living about two millimeters "just outside" of the danger zone. If things get tight or sticky, I'll move heaven and earth to get to a place of safety and security; I think we all know this game.
But harnessing that momentum into actual goal achievement? That's for the birds, right? Ho, ho, ho--my get up and go is strictly reserved for self-defense and survival, or so it seems.
At the end of the day, someone might tell me, "Hey, look around, most people in our generation are having the same problems." But do I really want to grade my own life on a curve?
Do I want to measure my achievements by what everyone else did or by what I personally set out to do?
This last week has been a triumph in money saving, physical fitness and nutrition. I've been on a discipline roll, thanks be to God.
So it makes sense that instead of keeping that good roll going long enough to enjoy the benefits, I would want to just skip working out and go spend money on pizza at Whole Foods. I'm literally having a 2 sides of the aisle war going on in my head as I type this; one part of me urging for continued discipline on the road to eventual achievement--the other part of me saying, "Stop the horse at this depot, you've gone far enough."
What is my strategy?
Where is my resolution?
Somewhere at the bottom of my laundry pile. As inaccessible and undesirable as Mars right now, for the love of Pete.
For whatever reason, early on in life, I learned to define success as living about two millimeters "just outside" of the danger zone. If things get tight or sticky, I'll move heaven and earth to get to a place of safety and security; I think we all know this game.
But harnessing that momentum into actual goal achievement? That's for the birds, right? Ho, ho, ho--my get up and go is strictly reserved for self-defense and survival, or so it seems.
At the end of the day, someone might tell me, "Hey, look around, most people in our generation are having the same problems." But do I really want to grade my own life on a curve?
Do I want to measure my achievements by what everyone else did or by what I personally set out to do?
This last week has been a triumph in money saving, physical fitness and nutrition. I've been on a discipline roll, thanks be to God.
So it makes sense that instead of keeping that good roll going long enough to enjoy the benefits, I would want to just skip working out and go spend money on pizza at Whole Foods. I'm literally having a 2 sides of the aisle war going on in my head as I type this; one part of me urging for continued discipline on the road to eventual achievement--the other part of me saying, "Stop the horse at this depot, you've gone far enough."
What is my strategy?
Where is my resolution?
Somewhere at the bottom of my laundry pile. As inaccessible and undesirable as Mars right now, for the love of Pete.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thanks Be to God
I watched a small movie tonight about an orthodox jewish woman and a muslim woman who are elementary school teachers in New York, and who are both expecting to enter marriages arranged by their parents & community. In the movie, the two young women become friends and allies in a very fresh and unique way. Rather than being intrigued by the differences between my culture and theirs--I found myself taking a deep breath of relief as if someone was telling me something important about myself. I feel like telling you about how this movie got me thinking.
Firstly, this movie is a story about orthodoxy on the surface, but in the middle of that story you find out that it's really a story about individual faith. But that story, after you peel it open a little, becomes a story about uncertainty, and the uncertainty opens up to uncover a story about destined relationships. But that story of relational destiny is really just a story about miracles and about God bringing good things to the people who love Him and honor Him.
I'm watching this movie, seeing these layers peel away in the characters' lives and I'm noticing that these layers are like boxes within boxes or rooms leading to other rooms. I see that each of us approaches the miraculous through a series of rooms or boxes, one opening up into another. What is it that our generation thinks about orthodoxy? That's it's passe? That's it ignorance? That it's heretical?
It takes courage to live orthodox for any faith in a world that praises and rewards the indifferent and apathetic. Having the courage to live orthodox gives us the freedom to explore our faith without first passing it through cultural and psychological filters. This is what we do sanctifies us so that we're strong enough to ask ourselves if this is who we are.
The courage it takes to live out our faith, in purity and honesty before God, with faults, blemishes and shortcomings open not only to God, but to our own, searching eyes--makes it possible for us to encounter true uncertainty about the things that terrify and disturb us in our deepest cores. We enter into a clean, white room in our hearts where we can drag from the dark corners of the world everything black and grey and putrid smelling--and the white room closes in around us and pours water over those things for hours, sometimes days, sometimes years--until we understand them rightly, not as we first saw them, but as they truly are.
The uncertainty keeps our hearts open to hear from God--keeps us in a waiting, listening posture, as we search out how things truly are and how things truly should be. Each opportunity that arrives, like a messenger bird, carries on its legs the object lesson and answer from heaven. Or at least we think it might; we're looking to see if it does. Brushing by a stranger in a grocery store is destiny. God is intervening. Getting a letter from a brother in the mail is destiny. God is speaking. Feeling an urge to call a family member late at night is destiny. God is working. In subtlety and obscurity we're experiencing these sparks of destiny lighting our way down some eternal pathway.
The path is a miracle. The miracle isn't obtained, but lived. These rooms that enter into other rooms. This guided life: a miracle. Not just healing of the woman with an issue of blood or the cleansing of a leper. This life, these destined interactions, this hope trained by trusting: a miracle. The last door, to the outside world, armed with love and guidance. Filled with trust and patience. Guarded by orthodoxy. Inspired by faith.
It's not that I don't care about what we think of God or how our world-view defines us among our peers. It's more that I want us to ask ourselves how God would have us honor His presence in our lives, because I think He should have a say in this--I'm asking us to approach holiness as He has defined it and us, with open hearts and determined purpose. Not to receive a miracle, but to live the miraculous lives that are the mark of the people of God in every generation.
Suddenly I'm grateful for small things and receive them as miracles. Suddenly I'm asking God to lead me far away from temptation. Suddenly I hear myself saying, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, O Lord, that I might not sin against You," and thanking God for His Holy Spirit.
These are my thoughts for tonight, in total. Nothing more or less. Thanks be to God.
Firstly, this movie is a story about orthodoxy on the surface, but in the middle of that story you find out that it's really a story about individual faith. But that story, after you peel it open a little, becomes a story about uncertainty, and the uncertainty opens up to uncover a story about destined relationships. But that story of relational destiny is really just a story about miracles and about God bringing good things to the people who love Him and honor Him.
I'm watching this movie, seeing these layers peel away in the characters' lives and I'm noticing that these layers are like boxes within boxes or rooms leading to other rooms. I see that each of us approaches the miraculous through a series of rooms or boxes, one opening up into another. What is it that our generation thinks about orthodoxy? That's it's passe? That's it ignorance? That it's heretical?
It takes courage to live orthodox for any faith in a world that praises and rewards the indifferent and apathetic. Having the courage to live orthodox gives us the freedom to explore our faith without first passing it through cultural and psychological filters. This is what we do sanctifies us so that we're strong enough to ask ourselves if this is who we are.
The courage it takes to live out our faith, in purity and honesty before God, with faults, blemishes and shortcomings open not only to God, but to our own, searching eyes--makes it possible for us to encounter true uncertainty about the things that terrify and disturb us in our deepest cores. We enter into a clean, white room in our hearts where we can drag from the dark corners of the world everything black and grey and putrid smelling--and the white room closes in around us and pours water over those things for hours, sometimes days, sometimes years--until we understand them rightly, not as we first saw them, but as they truly are.
The uncertainty keeps our hearts open to hear from God--keeps us in a waiting, listening posture, as we search out how things truly are and how things truly should be. Each opportunity that arrives, like a messenger bird, carries on its legs the object lesson and answer from heaven. Or at least we think it might; we're looking to see if it does. Brushing by a stranger in a grocery store is destiny. God is intervening. Getting a letter from a brother in the mail is destiny. God is speaking. Feeling an urge to call a family member late at night is destiny. God is working. In subtlety and obscurity we're experiencing these sparks of destiny lighting our way down some eternal pathway.
The path is a miracle. The miracle isn't obtained, but lived. These rooms that enter into other rooms. This guided life: a miracle. Not just healing of the woman with an issue of blood or the cleansing of a leper. This life, these destined interactions, this hope trained by trusting: a miracle. The last door, to the outside world, armed with love and guidance. Filled with trust and patience. Guarded by orthodoxy. Inspired by faith.
It's not that I don't care about what we think of God or how our world-view defines us among our peers. It's more that I want us to ask ourselves how God would have us honor His presence in our lives, because I think He should have a say in this--I'm asking us to approach holiness as He has defined it and us, with open hearts and determined purpose. Not to receive a miracle, but to live the miraculous lives that are the mark of the people of God in every generation.
Suddenly I'm grateful for small things and receive them as miracles. Suddenly I'm asking God to lead me far away from temptation. Suddenly I hear myself saying, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, O Lord, that I might not sin against You," and thanking God for His Holy Spirit.
These are my thoughts for tonight, in total. Nothing more or less. Thanks be to God.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
A New Leaf
I was so sure that I would turn this blog into an intellectual mining company. I could smell the oil greasing the drills.
But in the very deepest part of me, as it turns out, and as my closest friends probably already knew...there is no David Brooks lurking around. There isn't even Chesley Lately, or whatever that funny late-night woman's name is.
If I dig down really deep, I most often will find a Far Side joke or something that resemble a Some E Cards postcard.
But this is my life, not someone else's, and it's best that I settle into the fact that I'm not as smart as I would like to be and I'm too smart to be comfortable where I'm at. I want to say extremely relevant and informative things, but I just don't have any things like that to say.
End of story.
But on a brighter note, I called Cameron in Cape Verde this evening and got to hear his dear voice for approximately seventeen minutes before my money ran out. Seventeen minutes. I suppose someone else could say a lifetime of important things in seventeen minutes. But I just stood silent outside of Mafiaoza's, listening for the sound of his voice, wanting him to tell me the way everything is for him. What is his island like? What are the color of the walls in his room? Will it ever rain there? Is he scared or maintaining sanity or feeling crazy?
Seventeen minutes is longer than it takes me to shower or cook breakfast or drive to the freeway. But it's not very long when Cameron is on one end of the phone and I'm on the other. This Peace Corps thing is a good idea. It is. It is. It is.
Losing two people at once, it's hard to understand distinctly the loss I'd feel if they vanished in different periods of my life. Right now, I have this colored mixture of grief and sorrow, partly for Dad, who I cannot accept is gone at all, and partly for Cameron, who I cannot believe is gone. I feel the loss of Dad anew every time I sense the loss of Cameron in my daily routine and I sense the loss of Cameron most painfully when I'm surprised with the realization that I've lost Dad.
The only thing distinct is the ache itself.
I mean not to write about Dad. But I think about him.
But in the very deepest part of me, as it turns out, and as my closest friends probably already knew...there is no David Brooks lurking around. There isn't even Chesley Lately, or whatever that funny late-night woman's name is.
If I dig down really deep, I most often will find a Far Side joke or something that resemble a Some E Cards postcard.
But this is my life, not someone else's, and it's best that I settle into the fact that I'm not as smart as I would like to be and I'm too smart to be comfortable where I'm at. I want to say extremely relevant and informative things, but I just don't have any things like that to say.
End of story.
But on a brighter note, I called Cameron in Cape Verde this evening and got to hear his dear voice for approximately seventeen minutes before my money ran out. Seventeen minutes. I suppose someone else could say a lifetime of important things in seventeen minutes. But I just stood silent outside of Mafiaoza's, listening for the sound of his voice, wanting him to tell me the way everything is for him. What is his island like? What are the color of the walls in his room? Will it ever rain there? Is he scared or maintaining sanity or feeling crazy?
Seventeen minutes is longer than it takes me to shower or cook breakfast or drive to the freeway. But it's not very long when Cameron is on one end of the phone and I'm on the other. This Peace Corps thing is a good idea. It is. It is. It is.
Losing two people at once, it's hard to understand distinctly the loss I'd feel if they vanished in different periods of my life. Right now, I have this colored mixture of grief and sorrow, partly for Dad, who I cannot accept is gone at all, and partly for Cameron, who I cannot believe is gone. I feel the loss of Dad anew every time I sense the loss of Cameron in my daily routine and I sense the loss of Cameron most painfully when I'm surprised with the realization that I've lost Dad.
The only thing distinct is the ache itself.
I mean not to write about Dad. But I think about him.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Just a Republican...
"A conservative independent is just a Republican who’s had his heart broken." -Gail Collins for the NYTimes
I was musing to myself recently that I tend to assume that the entire human race is on the same journey as I am at all times. Everybody on Earth, from the recently born to the aged, have all just turned thirty this last year and have finally come of age, so to speak.
How self-centered, right? I know differently if I think about for more than five seconds. But naturally, as a way of handling world events and human diversity, it seems much easier to imagine that every single person on Earth is someone just like me, dealing with dangers and opportunities on every side, tempted by the absurd and delicious, and chastened by life's disappointments.
Perhaps it's loneliness that causes this. Isn't it wonderful to think of the over six billion people on this planet getting inspired and disillusioned by the same hope and failure at the same time for the same reasons? I wonder if we weren't created with a need for unity? I crave unity and harmony and the down side is that I find it intolerable to be pressured to bluff harmony when all I feel is dissonance. I want true concord, real connection.
I want to be connected to people through a common sense of like and dislike, through hopes and disappointments, through joys and terrors. I want to work alongside people I admire toward a common and wholesome goal. I want to do the things that are considered good works, regardless of whether a person is red, blue or purple (or green, for that matter). At the end of the day, politically, maybe I am just a Republican who's had her heart broken. But maybe that's true about me in more than just politics.
I do know that I find points of unity on both sides right now. Beyond the things we have in common, I'm going to have to find a lane to swim in, so to speak. Whatever it is that I think I must do, I have to find the people who are doing that very thing and get involved.
I was musing to myself recently that I tend to assume that the entire human race is on the same journey as I am at all times. Everybody on Earth, from the recently born to the aged, have all just turned thirty this last year and have finally come of age, so to speak.
How self-centered, right? I know differently if I think about for more than five seconds. But naturally, as a way of handling world events and human diversity, it seems much easier to imagine that every single person on Earth is someone just like me, dealing with dangers and opportunities on every side, tempted by the absurd and delicious, and chastened by life's disappointments.
Perhaps it's loneliness that causes this. Isn't it wonderful to think of the over six billion people on this planet getting inspired and disillusioned by the same hope and failure at the same time for the same reasons? I wonder if we weren't created with a need for unity? I crave unity and harmony and the down side is that I find it intolerable to be pressured to bluff harmony when all I feel is dissonance. I want true concord, real connection.
I want to be connected to people through a common sense of like and dislike, through hopes and disappointments, through joys and terrors. I want to work alongside people I admire toward a common and wholesome goal. I want to do the things that are considered good works, regardless of whether a person is red, blue or purple (or green, for that matter). At the end of the day, politically, maybe I am just a Republican who's had her heart broken. But maybe that's true about me in more than just politics.
I do know that I find points of unity on both sides right now. Beyond the things we have in common, I'm going to have to find a lane to swim in, so to speak. Whatever it is that I think I must do, I have to find the people who are doing that very thing and get involved.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Death & My Gentle Giant
Early Friday morning my dad passed away.
My right hand held his right hand.
My left hand held his face.
Life support was turned off and like a lightning bolt disappears into the dark storm, the man who was my dad vanished.
He loved my blog, the other one that I shut down last month. In one of the last conversations we had, he sheepishly asked why he couldn't read it anymore. It seemed silly to me that he was reading my blog. Now I wish that I had written more for him to read.
The truth is, my dad
From the time I was very small he would take me on drives with him to the bakery or to the grocery store in the San Fernando valley, and he would tell me that there was something very special about me, very unlike other people. He often would tell me that even though I was having trouble fitting in, there would be a day when I came into my own and didn't mind being me.
He called me sweetheart, lambchop, pumpkin -- and over the last two years, he would sign his name in emails to me as "Daddy Dearest" as an homage to my Allie, Dearest nickname.
He always called me during the week while he was at work to tell me how my mom was doing or how he was feeling or how much work he was taking on at NASA. He loved us. He loved me. He was gentle and mostly a pushover, which is why I've always been so hesitant to ask him for help. I never wanted him to feel used or manipulated. But he has saved my toosh so many times.
I don't want to say more right now about my dad-because so much of my love for him is private and therefore sacred to me. But I wish that each of you could have known him the way that I did-he so amused me.
I love my dad.
God grant him rest and peace.
I will see him again when my turn comes--a joyful day of celebration for us both.
I wish he were with me now.
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