The Way to Now

Surrender is not a word we often like to hear, much less think about doing.  It sounds weak.  It sounds like we just can’t hack it and so we resort to surrender.  Today is Ash Wednesday, and for me, Ash Wednesday symbolizes our fragility and also our strength in letting what will be, be.  Ash Wednesday signals the start of Lent, the Christian season of repentance and preparation for Easter.  Why do we need to prepare for Easter?  It is because throughout the year we forget about the our vulnerability and our need for a Savior.  Throughout the year, we begin feeling like we are doing it all on our own.  We are controlling our destinies and our futures.  But, when the unexpected happens, it can throw us into a bit of a tizzy.  By tizzy, I mean drinking the whole bottle of wine or being so frustrated with our partner that it makes a tiny problem feel insurmountable, as if our life is about to be ruined forever … over a messy kitchen!  When we feel like we have control, we start acting control-ish.  We become control hungry.  Control is the thing that keeps everything normal and manageable.  So, at whatever point your annual crisis comes, you feel the weight of the whole world descending upon you and you cannot be consoled.  The worst thing someone can tell you is to not try to control it.  First of all, they are not supposed to point out your control-freak tendency, and secondly, it makes you realize you are probably self-imposing your crisis.  What it comes down to is trying to play God.  So, every year when Lent rolls around, I remind myself that I have very little control over the world and what happens outside of my small circle of friends.  Who am I kidding, I don’t even have control over that.  On Ash Wednesday I sing the songs of surrender, I get imposed with ashes on my forehead,  I remember that from dust I was created and to dust I shall return.  I feel myself breathe in and and I notice a distinct need to breathe out, to exhale.

The Ash Wednesday service is one that rebalances the soul.  It feels almost unnatural to take myself down a notch, to remove myself from the overwhelming echo in society that says you have to follow a prescribed set of steps in order to be successful.  Intentionally coming out of that path allows me to examine a little more objectively what path I actually want to continue on.  While marketers really only have one message, work harder so you can have more, we actually have many other options from that.  During this time, maybe more because of my personal circumstances than the Lenten season in particular, I feel like I’m changing course.  I’m choosing a new path.  It feels different because it is not in a controlling way of wanting a certain outcome, but more of an open exploration of being in balance.  I think Lent for me this year is marking the first steps on a new path that has no mandatory goals, no set ladder of success.  It feels like the beginning of an adventurous trip to a new place I’ve never been.  I had the same excited feeling before I flew to Kenya.  It’s a whole new world, and I knew it would change my life forever.

My journey over the last year or two has been one of coming to this place of surrender.  Surrender to what is.  Surrender to non-control.  Surrender to God.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Who said that?  I can’t remember but it came to me in a big way after the thoughts I had last week about choices and when to take advantage of different opportunities in life.  At times I feel over-analytical and stress inducing (to myself) and I think, why am I thinking about all of this stuff so much? But then, this quote popped into my head and I see that it is all part of examining one’s life.  I think the worst possible thing might be to slave away at the daily grind and come to the end of your life thinking, I wonder what Paris looks like and I wish I had spent more time with my kids and less time stressing about work.

I recently got to know my husband’s aunt and uncle better.  They are hippies.  They live in a house now, but only in the last eight years.  They spent most of their working years flitting between New Mexico and Alaska.  She’s a teacher turned administrator.  He’s a plumber, carpenter, pot farmer, wanderer.  It is really a kick to know these people now – grey hair, knee replacements, living off the government (social security) but bitching all the way!  They have a wonderful attitude about life.  They go where the wind takes them.  They lived for several years on fifteen acres in New Mexico, in a trailer, with a huge vegetable garden out back, a water well (with the best water in the state, they say), views on all sides, and not a person in sight.  He bathed in a bucket by the fire.  There is something really enticing about that life.  It is simple.  It is not bothered by the world.  Part of my conflict is that I really like the world, and yet, I feel suffocated by it at times.  There can be too much world.  As soon as we pulled back into our driveway, my husband said, our houses are too close together.

Yes, I think maybe our houses are too close together.

What does that mean for our lives that are dependant on the places we work, the stores we shop at, the services we expect (mail, trash, roads)?  When we were out snowshoeing on the aunt and uncle’s land, after an hour, I felt the pull back toward town.  It was time for lunch, I wanted to see people, I needed creature comforts (like a real bathroom).  But, when I get too bogged down in traffic and close quarters, I just want some space and I’d give anything to sit around a fire with all the stars in the world, peeing against a tree.  So what is it?  Is it a perpetual leaning toward being unsatisfied?  Is it a restlessness about feeling caught in this work-world we have created?  Besides all this, I think it comes down to something some friends said to us a few months ago.  There is a real gift in having friends of all ages.  This is a couple that retired early, no kids, and makes the huge decisions we all wish we could make.  They lived in a mountain town for a few years.  When they got bored, they moved back to the city.  They seek out meditation with a Buddhist monk even though they are Christian.  They read several papers and take art classes, but yet, live on a golf course.  You see, what they’ve figured out is the magic of contrast in their lives.

Contrast.

Contrast is what allows camping to seem like a great adventure after the weekly commute between work and home.  Contrast is what makes grand-parenting so great – these are your beloved babies, and yet, you are not with them through every weepy and sleepless night.  It is the glory of a huge mountain around the bend of some foothills and forest.  It is the excitement around engagement and marriage when before you were just an individual living a life for yourself.  It is the same with having a family.  The pursuit to have a family is biological, sure, but it is also the contrast to living selfishly and without knowing if your family with grow and carry on after you die.  The contrast in life is what gives each color its brilliance.  I believe that is why young people seek out adventure.  Travel brings the vibrancy to life at home.  It is time apart from that which has become routine.  If traveling is your life’s work, you may not find it as appealing.  For me, Kenya is a magical place, a place where all my senses come alive and I see things more vividly.  Most people ask why I would want to go to a developing country on my vacation time and spend the same amount of money I would if I went on a cruise.  It is because of the contrast with my own life.  I find the people to be wonderfully different, British accent and all, as they pedal around on bicycles barefoot but always wearing a suit coat and stopping for tea.

The real question is then, for all of us who have just established our careers and hadn’t thought about what’s on the other side: how do we create a life of contrasting opportunities?

I can see for myself that I am in grayscale with my job right now.  Because I desire to have a baby, I no longer desire to put all my energy into my job.  For the last eight or nine years, I have thought only of the ambition to establish my career and shine as the all-star minister.  What I realize now is that it is not a realistic pace for the long-term.  However, maybe short-term bursts are fine if you decide to pursue a life of contrast.  In listening to my hippie aunt and uncle, I heard them say they bounced around from job to job and tried out all sorts of living situations.  They were not afraid of change and were definitely not afraid of what the future held.  That is probably one of the keys to living a life of contrast: no fear.  Believing is a powerful thing and one that I wholeheartedly put my faith into.  We create our lives around that which we believe in.  Perhaps that’s the next question, what do I believe in (my values, desires, faith principles, and dreams) and how is my life taking me there?

When I think about what it means to start a family, it means a lot less energy into a job outside my home and a lot more energy inside my home.  That feels like contrast – that sounds like heaven.

I was at a lunch today to plan a fundraiser to ship medical supplies to a hospital in Kenya I’ve had the privilege of visiting.  Together with Project C.U.R.E. and The Center for the Church and Global AIDS, United Methodists all over Colorado will be raising money – our part will be with a golf tournament in May.  While this would usually just be another project in the work I do, I had a different feeling about it today.  Today, I felt “there” in a way I haven’t felt in the past year.  I was present – fully present.

Why was today so different?

Months ago, I was feeling something many of us in our 30s do.  I was having a bout with depression and I felt at the end of what I could do for others.  I was not even caring for myself.  I needed rest.  I needed to be.  I needed my house and home cooking and time apart.  For most of 2009, I felt this set of needs come and go in waves.  I would push them aside or tell myself, yes, I will care for you later.  By September, I remember getting ready to celebrate my 31^st birthday.  That day, I cried.  I could not celebrate.  I felt so sad, so empty, so ready to fall apart.  I finally started talking about my pain and sharing my sadness with my husband.  It broke a cycle that I had let occur for months.  I would feel ok and work at my wonderful job and be thankful for all the gifts in my life.  Then, I would come back around to the reality that I really wanted to start a family.  With so much fullness, there was still emptiness.  It was a devastating feeling, knowing I lived four hours from any specialists or doctors that even offered fertility help.  I also revealed to my parents how empty and sad I felt.  While I think it scared them a little, they were quite supportive of my need to explore the ways to get help.  I had already started seeing an acupuncturist, a tall dancer who was raised in Grand Junction, and had just received her doctorate for acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.  I really liked how acupuncture felt, but mostly, I liked that I could talk to my actual doctor every week.  Unlike my western medicine OB/GYN, whom I almost never spoke to in person, April was personable and knowledgeable.  I remember the moment clearly, when she asked, “How are you doing today?” and I replied, “You know, I think I realized that I’m putting on a brave face when anybody asks me that question.  Really, I’m not doing good.  I have never been so sad.”

It was a moment of pure honesty.

Where was I to go from here?  Next, I found a therapist/counselor, whom my insurance covered.  The first session I had with her, I just cried through my story.  I couldn’t believe how heart-broken I felt over not being able to conceive.  After that first session, I took the rest of the afternoon off from work, and that night, I told my husband how shocked I was to realize the state of my heart.  He listened, looked me in the eye, and said, “What should we do?”  We talked about waiting for nature to take its course, waiting for acupuncture and herbs to revive my body, looking up fertility specialists, or trying to work with the limited options my OB/GYN was offering here.  While still talking, and sniffling (mostly me), he Googled the specialists my brother and sister-in-law started seeing on the Front Range.  They are rated as the best, not only in the state, but one of the best in the country.  As he read this, I felt my heart perk up and heed the good news.  Suddenly, Eric was saying to me, “I just filled out two forms, and should definitely have someone contacting me.”  Two days later, he told me our phone consultation would be in a month!  The husband got extra points for taking the lead on getting something in the hopper.

That is the medical side of how I started to breathe again, feeling the solid hope in my heart that we would, indeed, be parents.  But, still in the midst of feeling completely disconnected, and very distracted at work, I knew I needed to take a break.  We were just going into the program year at the church, and the busy time of Advent and Christmas would be right around the corner.  This was definitely not the time to take a break, but it was also not the time to have a break down.  I came clean to the people I had been acting my butt off around for months and said I needed to take some time off for me, but I didn’t have a clue what that might look like.  Over the next months we worked out a plan that would begin around the 1^st of the New Year.  I combined a renewal leave for the purpose of writing with a medical leave and was able to work out an eight-week leave from work.

As Advent and Christmas rolled around, I was counting down the days until I could have seemingly endless hours of doing exactly what I wanted, what I needed.  My husband and I worked with our new fertility specialists and devised a plan.  We actually did one round of fertility drugs in December.  I was almost giddy thinking the large and looming task of getting pregnant might be taken care of by the time I was on my break!  One of my friends said only a person having fertility issues would call getting pregnant “work” or a “task” – touché.  The result was not the one I was looking for – a period instead of a positive, but the good thing is, I ovulated (not a usual occurrence for me).  The beginning of January came and I began my time off and I felt almost immediately a weight lifted.  I pinpointed it on that same day – finally I wasn’t caring for anyone else but me.  I took a brilliantly selfish deep breath, and have every day since!