Category: Stella

stories of estrangement and our lost daughter, my best friend who has wandered away

Ta Da!

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, Stella, The Chef1 Comment

Gran, where’s purple blankie? Honey, have you seen my briefcase?  Nanny, I can’t find my______.  Lisa, do you know where I set my ______ down? Like the chorus to our family song, these questions ring out with such frequency I almost don’t hear them anymore. I just begin looking, I go retrieve the missing item. Like our beasts who can sniff out a tennis ball behind the couch or under a cabinet, I just know where lost things are. No need to pray to the saint of missing items around here, it never gets that serious. Ta Da, here you go!  I am the hero for a few fleeting seconds, family member reunited with item, all is well. Of course, that means these people never really are responsible for their stuff, not with a built-in finder at the ready. I previously thought this was a superpower that made me special to them, I have come to realize that it kept them from being able to search on their own, a skill they would need throughout their lives.

Being a mom to my children was more important to me than just about anything, like breathing or eating. I overdid it on many aspects and hindsight allows me to see my mistakes, attempts to swing so far away from my own childhood that I created other problems. I left my kids with deficits that now are glaring, now haunt me. In my efforts to protect them and make their lives happier, to make up for earlier trauma, I forgot to let them struggle just a bit. I forgot that they needed to learn to find stuff on their own. It feels great to be so needed in the rush of everyone’s lives, when buses are coming or carpools are waiting and I could hold up the desired book bag or sweater, but that meant they didn’t learn to look for what they wanted, they didn’t learn to miss what was gone. I thought they had enough struggle early on, I wanted to save them from anymore. Oh, Hindsight, you wicked devil. It felt so wonderful to be needed in the moment, now I am missing and they don’t know how to search for me. They can’t find their way home and back to truth and into forgiveness. I think maybe they just gave up and got replacement moms, relationships that were easier and immediate and Ta Da required little of them.

I left my children without the skills needed to stick with the search, to uncover truth like pillows on the couch, to compromise as if bending to hunt below the bed. They give up too easily, forget the fun of the hunt. I remember one birthday party when we held a scavenger hunt during Stella’s sleepover, all the girls fanned out around the neighborhood. What was expected to be an hour game quickly turned into a bust when one household went through the list and gave that pair everything on it. The girls returned triumphant, unaware that they had really lost and destroyed the game. Robbed of the opportunity to ask many times for help, one stop gave everything. The goal was not really winning, the journey was the fun part. The neighbor thought they were helping I am sure, just as I always thought I was. Kids need to learn to search and find and ask and look.

Sometimes when we search for one thing, we find a different treasure all together. I began writing to seek my own voice and have found a place where many feel heard. Each holiday season as I prepare to decorate I come across something in a closet that I forgot was stashed away, the blessing of a short memory, maybe. Still, treasures lurk waiting to be found. Exploring is the journey, finding riches in my soul I didn’t expect, finding connections to God I would have missed if I chose not to go looking.  Oh how I wish I had taught the kids to seek. I can’t undo the damage with my children who are now adults. I pray they someday will learn to ferret out truth, they will become eager to seek forgiveness and dole it out like the grand prize. Ta Da! We found you, Mom!  Until then, I can change my role as “Super-Finder” with Plum. He loves to explore already, it won’t take as much to help him learn to seek out what he wants most. Not so sure it will work with Chef, he is already grown. And I AM really good at finding things.

One day I pray I will find my daughter again. Ta Da! I pray my son will find his way, Ta Da! I know that God, the Great Finder of all us lost souls, has prepared the way. The best hunt ever, the most glorious find ever, a journey that will ultimately only happen with Him as the guide. So I keep looking to Him, knowing the struggle is teaching me much. There is no one place to find all that I need to get reunited with my lost children, I have tried all of my super-powers to make it so. The time is not right to find them. They have to find me. When they just can’t do without me anymore. Like Plum and his purple blankie, often he goes to find her on his own, he can’t wait until I finish my task. When their need is that great, they will look back towards home. I will be here. Just where they left me. Ta Da!

May you find what you are seeking today, may your heart be filled with joy and just enough curiosity to seek out what God is nudging you to look for. Treasures await, my friend.

My Mother Is Yellow

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Mom, Stella3 Comments

When asked her favorite color my mother would have told you it was blue. Still, I think of yellow when I remember my mom, years spent peering up at the counter as she mixed and measured cakes using her yellow pyrex bowl. When she pulled this bowl out of the cabinet I knew delicious things were in my future. I could consider the electric skillet as a symbol of my mother, she did a lot frying for our family. But the yellow bowl, that was the good stuff. That was when mom was making cookies and cakes and the extras, before boxes made the process easier, faster. The yellow bowl meant dessert, meant mom was going to hand out one electric beater and the emptied bowl to each of her three children to lick, the pre-dessert to children who hovered about her legs and watched and probably whined as she spent even more time in the kitchen after working outside our home and making meals all week. Yellow is my mom to me, the times she nurtured us with sweet delights beyond just feeding us.

I always knew that when she died, the bowl would be my inheritance. One day though before she left us, I discovered it in my brother’s cabinet. I had never told her what the bowl represented, I am not sure I knew it back then.  She had already given it to him, she no longer needed such a big item as her baking days were mostly behind her. She bought her cakes and pies and treats at the store or more accurately, her husband did. Each trip to my brother’s house saw me trying to sneak the bowl away, his watchful eyes ensured I was never successful. A trip through some antique shops allowed the purchase of not one but two of these bowls, a back-up, just in case. Not the same, not the years of mom scraping the sides and standing over it, but still, my cabinet stores my own yellow bowl, a legacy of cakes and cookies. (I have teased my brother that I have swapped out my store purchase with his bowl, that now he has the antique find and I have mom’s. Can you tell I am a bit hung up on this piece of kitchenware?) My Kitchen-Aid makes mixing those items much faster but I still choose my yellow bowl. I use it for more than baking, it holds soups and spaghetti and most any dinner item. I love my yellow bowl, it connects me to the good parts of my mom.

I remember potato salad from that bowl, the best kind of potato salad, the bowl was always  completely full. I still prefer mine at room temperature, like it was just prepared, like I am eating it right out of mom’s bowl, unable to wait for it all to chill in the refrigerator. The bowl meant it was going to taste good and it did. The one caveat is that every year at Christmas she made a braunschweiger ball that I detested. I was called in to help with the process and abhorred sticking my hands in to the icy mess of cold processed meat and freezing ketchup. I have yet to taste this atrocity. Mom wasn’t perfect with her bowl, I have forgiven this misstep.

My brother is the cook in his household, I cook for anyone who sits still long enough. Mom taught us this is how you show love. Don’t tell my brother but I am secretly glad that we both, the only living family left, have a bowl. We have a piece of the good from our childhood. We shared mixer beaters dripping with batter resting on the edge of a yellow bowl, we fought over that bowl and the chance to run little fingers along the smooth surface to catch the batter she purposely left for us.  The times mom was just a mom.

Before she died,  I was seeking a particular recipe from her. I never got it. She was going to look through all of her cookbooks and call me back. I inherited her books but still can’t find the one that I wanted. Seems fitting, I will always want just a bit more from her. Still, most of my calls to her began with the ask for a recipe, she would rattle it off, I better have something to write on ready. She gave ingredients and steps mixed together, I often had to number and edit or if I was familiar with the steps, I left that part out, just getting quantities. Most of the calls with her ended with a scrap of paper, an envelope that was close by now covered in my horrible handwriting as I flew to keep up. These are the recipes I pulled the most, these are stained and rumpled and well loved. These will be my legacy one day when my children consider what color I am. My favorite color is teal but maybe they will remember me as yellow, like a bowl that I pulled out to make them delightful treats. We don’t get to control how the next generation remembers us, but we can invite them to the table while we are still here. My door is open. Are you hungry? I am happy to whip up something to eat, let me grab my yellow bowl.

Good Breaking

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, Stella4 Comments

Apple pie, layers of crusts surrounding cinnamon sugar coated slices softened in juices, cut into wedges and served up, so delectable, an irresistible gift. The baker offers up pieces of themselves, labor and love melting with flour, the tiniest bit of salt. She watches as those with the plates of pie carve into her heart’s gift, fork slicing through the crusty wall, reaching the luscious fruit, she watches as the first taste of her love is taken. Waiting waiting anticipating the moment when taste buds accept her love, know her gift is of herself, that moment when eyes shine and a smile begins, a sigh escapes, the fork returns for another bite. Her soul rejoices, she broke herself into pieces that found new resting places as others accept her slivers of love.

There is a breaking that happens when good is coming, like the sun pushing up over the horizon to interrupt the darkness or the tight shell of an egg releasing the promise of breakfast. Good breaking surrounds me, the rip of paper as my grandson prepares more artwork, the grind of coffee beans wafting me awake.  Finding, noticing the good breaks is challenging when the biggest break is my heart, splintering slivering shattering silently into fragments unrecognizable and irrepable. I watch from a distance as the pieces shred away, captivated by the beauty as light catches memory slices and reflects hopes and dreams. Paralyzed rooted maybe unwilling to stop the destruction anymore I just gaze at the growing heart heap and watch my life loves destroy what I gave them. I don’t think this is good breaking, my pieces seem too shattered and scattered ever be restored. I gave my soul pieces, they rest within others now, aching to be rejoined.

That gorgeous apple pie left out on the counter, left unattended, forgotten, will grow moldy, will sink into the plate, become a heap of mush, the extravagant gift wasted. Apples cut and left to rot are not good breaking. My pieces are too fractured to collect, scattered by the winds of harsh words and shriveled by unforgiving neglect. I watch, wonder if I will ever be whole again, if we will ever celebrate the good breaks of rising suns and the crash into language of a first word, the busting into mobility of a first step. I imagine a place where my heart pieces are reconnected, bigger, more light through the cracks, room for more more ever more still. Those are good breaks. Today I wonder about  growing moldy, slinking down into the juices of despair as I see more pieces of my heart flake off, out of reach.  Then I remember those slivers are not meant to ever come back to me, an egg shell cracked is not to be restored. The glory comes in what is created after the destruction, after the crisp apple loses it peel and the sun pushes us into a new day. More light comes into my broken heart where all of those slivers and slices were carved out. If I am left with only crumbles, I have given the me God said to offer up.

There is good breaking, where more light sneaks through walls into our souls with forgiveness, casting out shadows of shame, slicing up room for new hope and creation. I pray that you can find those broken pieces and see the beauty that came from gifting your love to others. I pray that you can find that grace comes in severing your hold on those gifted pieces. They are no longer ours, any more than the baker would ask for that piece of pie back. Let our hearts be broken and slivers offered, let us rejoice in the light of our crumblings.  This is good breaking.

 

Math is Hard

On By LisaIn Faith, Stella, The Chef2 Comments

Math has never been my best subject, I am more inclined towards words, letters. When a teacher in 5th grade taught me to diagram sentences, creating lines and trees on paper, I found the best use for graph paper. I later went on to take advanced algebra in summer school, a rush to fit in all of my credits, squeezing in room for more English Lit courses, thus I learned it for the test and then let it slide away as I went swimming.  What I do know of math is this, when you get married, you add. You bring in this person you have chosen and ask them to not only accept all of your lovable parts but also your quirks and not so great parts. Then you ask them to do the same with your family of origin. This is where sometimes math gets tricky.

When my Chef introduced me to his mother, the kindest most generous crazy woman who has no filter on her mouth or thoughts who does not understand the concept of boundaries,  I was accepted. I still question her wisdom but that is a different story. Nevertheless, Chef and I and his mom and his two brothers became a wider family. My family was surely easy for Chef to love, after all they were my family. Certainly I came with two children, an ex-husband, a battered relationship with my own mother and her odd pick of replacement husband (see how I feel about that one?) and of course my brother and sister-in-law. My family required no adjustments, they were mine. Understanding the nuances and communication styles of his though, that was like multiplication. I didn’t always feel like I had added just one mother-in-law, she is a powerhouse. She often speaks loudly, forcefully, pulls weeds in my flower beds and makes plans with my Chef without talking to me. For holidays. That he agrees to. Without talking to me. Well, mostly we have corrected  that one, but still, the math was hard. I wasn’t always sure about this addition. It would have felt much easier to have just married Chef and move him to Lisa Island where I knew all the inhabitants, my family. But that would have been division. More math. Bad math. Easier, more comfortable for me, not so for my Chef.

The truth is that had I created or pushed for that bad math, I would have missed out on the richness that has developed between me and my mother-in-law. She accepted me first, it took me longer. I love this crazy boisterous extended family, so unlike what I experienced as a child. I know Chef loves the children I brought into the relationship as if he had been there from the beginning, I know how deeply he loves my brother and sister-in-law. We allowed the math problems to become celebrations as we added more and more. (Special note: we have not added in the ex-husband. I am not crazy.)

My point is this: math is hard for some of us, marriage is hard for most of us. Both start with the basics we learn in kindergarten though, just keep adding. We don’t learn to take away for some time, multiplication comes next and division is the very last thing learned, like a last resort. If we consider dividing as our first response to added family members, we are just doing the math wrong. As an English major I can state this with authority. As a mother with an estranged daughter who was wooed away by a new love, I can proclaim it from the mountaintops. Division is bad. I propose we focus on adding, seeing the good and working through the hard. I propose we leave advanced math to God who does the taking away. Let’s just keep adding more to who we love and to who we accept and who we invite to our dinner tables and our flower beds. Let’s add to who we forgive and who we offer mercy and grace and peace to, we may just discover one day we can no longer remember which ones we started with and which ones were supplemental. A blurred family tree with lines that even a math teacher couldn’t graph, connecting points intersecting and reaching out, across.  Oops, I think I moved into geometry. Or Algebra again? Math is hard. Marriage is harder. Lets just add.

Finding Stella

On By LisaIn Faith, Stella, The Chef, Travel3 Comments

Four years ago I was on my way to South Korea, carrying only my new tightly packed huge backpack and enough excitement to fuel the multiple modes of transport that would take me to my daughter. I was bringing her home from her year of teaching but first we were traveling to Cambodia and Thailand. Many weeks of traveling, just us and our backpacks. Mine was pink, I sent her a green one. A constant flow of information between us as we selected our routes, planned our hostel stays, determined how little money we could get by on, and especially the detailed plan for me to reach her apartment once I landed at Incheon International and then found the correct subway and then the all important right stop to disembark. I was traveling across the world to see my girl, all alone, Chef dropping me at the local site to catch the shuttle to take me to the airport 3 hours away. Many transfers, many opportunities for me to get mixed up, turned around, lost. I always get lost. This time, though I found my Stella, I was at her apartment when she returned from work, a testament to her preparation and determination to get me there, a story of just how badly I wanted to see my daughter.

I can point to many life events that have shaped and changed me, set my path on a new course. Some are awful, just so horrific they left me wandering in the dark lost and searching for too long. Other events opened me to new lights and greater glorious fields, new ideas and realizations of my more. This trip was the good kind. The very best kind. I saw my daughter as a woman on this trip, no longer my little girl. I loved who she was, who she had grown into. Sure and confident, living in a foreign country, alone and mastering it. She took me to favorite restaurants where owners hugged her as she walked in. She showed me her classrooms where children asked us to take them back to America because they loved her so much. I met her supervisors who said she always had a place there, she was a wonderful teacher. Then we began to travel and she showed me the world. She taught me how to navigate, how to find our way when English is no where to be found. She showed me her soul as we cried over the Killing Fields in Cambodia. She showed me how to play as we laughed with the elephants in Thailand. She taught me to eat  street food that I will never be able to replicate or name. We slept in places we agreed to never tell Chef about, we rode in vehicles we weren’t sure we would survive in. We talked into the sweaty nights and laughed every sweltering day.

I think my daughter is lost now, maybe I am. We can’t find each other. God knows that I would travel on any tuktuk or midnight bus with sketchy hipsters who haven’t showered in forever if it meant I could reach her. A constant flow of apologies, beseeching, anger, crying out to remember who we are, nothing I do seems to cross the divide. My God I miss that laugh, those eyes, that beautiful woman who teaches me things. I miss how her soul, always an old soul, uses creative ways to explore and explain her insides. Her art, oh Lord, her art. I miss how she loved so fiercely that it often broke her, she loved so loyally that she had no understanding of those who left others behind. I can’t find my daughter in this big world, maybe she has lost herself.

Four years ago today I was leaving for the trip that would forever change how I travel and why I travel. It forever altered how I see those around me, those in the places I visit. I seek out their stories, I want to know them and learn how my life is connected to theirs. Because we ARE all connected, that’s what she showed me most of all. She showed me that the water we waste, the clothing we take for granted, the extra food we throw out, the stories of suffering we don’t care to learn as we buy trinkets and bargain for the lowest price, we are connected to others who suffer. Today as I look back on that trip 4 years ago, I am reminded that Stella and I are still, forever connected, once through joy, today through heartache. She knows I will travel the world to reach her, she knows I will stop at nothing once she says she wants to be found. I feel her some days, so close she could be a shadow, a hazy bit of fog, I reach out but cannot touch her.  I trust that God is with her, near her, hovering over, listening to her soul. I know that God celebrates our connections, God loves our reconciliations and seeks restoration in our broken world. One day God will draw the map that will bring us back together. Today, we remember our past travels and keep walking in the light. Soon, Stella, we will meet again and my God won’t we laugh?

 

 

Leaving the Mat

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Stella, The ChefLeave a comment

Be Still and Know that I am God. Ps 46:10.  Let go and Let God. I don’t think that one is in there anywhere but I sure hear it often. Both come at me when I am wrestling, when I am struggling and seem to be losing my way. When my faith is shaky, when the foundation under me is crumbling. The words are meant to comfort and guide me, help me catch my breath and center my soul but in the heat of a battle I rarely can remember to be still, to let go. Counterintuitive to any wrestling match, to just stop. What if I let go of my strong hold, the little bit of control I have and all goes to hell-in-a-handbasket, what now? A quick search shows no scripture that guides me in regaining my headlock after release moves. Seemingly, the expectation is to loosen the grip, sit back and listen and wait. Horrible instructions that time and again worked wonderfully, beautifully for those willing to truly follow them.

I have been secretly trying it out. For several months. In the midst of our financial disaster, our estrangement with our daughter, our worry and fear for our son. I have chosen this time to stop wrestling, leave the mat, (I really know nothing of the sport so expect this metaphor to end soon or be misused) shake off the sweat and grime from rolling on the floor with opponents that taunt and mock me. I have taken a shower in God’s promises, I have stopped to listen and most importantly, I have trusted. While hardships stuck their tongue out at me, tried to lure me back into fear and anxiety, while Chef’s mourning threatened to drown me, still I refused to reengage the battle.

Listening for the whispers of God meant seeking out those who hear Him better than me. It meant ignoring those who don’t. It meant being quiet when I wanted to yell or scream or say bad words. It often meant walking away, something that can look hurtful to those on the mat. It meant intentional prayer and seeking out those whose prayers break my soul open.

Letting go meant not sending the cards I wrote out, not putting a stamp on the letters in the envelopes that were fully addressed and ready to hit the mailbox. It meant not reengaging in texting battles (Okay, I had one quick trip back to the mat, but that was an extraordinary circumstance and I found myself feeling filthy and beaten rather quickly. A slip-up that reminded me I am no good at fighting this battle with Arrow.) Letting go meant not accepting the ugliness and desolation that comes with holidays not celebrated with my children, rather being present with ones who were present. It meant allowing Chef to grieve and not falling into depression with him.

What I found is being still and letting go were not passive endeavors, as I have always imagined. I thought I would have to sit. I hate sitting. I thought I would have to wait. I abhor waiting. What I discovered is my time became so full of other pursuits that I barely had time to think about wrestling. No checking the calendar for the next match, I was  off to another meeting, a lunch date, a book club, starting a new ministry. My worry time was transformed, I was transformed.  Before, I said no so often that I was no longer even asked, I stopped looking for ways to grow because I was stuck in the battle. My world was tiny, a gym sized mat consisting of aches over Stella and Arrow, hurts from the past. Allowing myself to let go meant I could say yes. I say yes so often that it is a habit, I am almost becoming an extrovert. (Okay that is a stretch, but I am no longer hiding. An introvert who is out of the shadows is kinda like and extrovert, right?)

It should be noted that resolution has not come to either of those situations. Trust me, if that were true this blog post would start with Hallelujah in the boldest print and then say that 100 times over. Still, I  have a new resolve. I have a new purpose and freedom. I think there just may be something to listening to God and letting God have all of my worries. I pray I can stay off of the wrestling mat, I hope you will join me out of the ring. We can get amazing stuff done out here and trust me, you will feel so much less dirty. Yes, I am now one of those people who just may whisper to you, “Be Still and Know That I Am God.”  Pastor Pat would be proud. Of course his version to me went something like this: Lisa, shut up and listen.  Equally effective.

Will you shut up and listen today, listen for God’s whispering?

Hungry Messy Inconvenient

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, Stella, The Chef7 Comments

She looks up at me from the crook of my elbow, the perfect distance for newly developing eyesight according to some researcher. Mothers already know this. She locks eyes with me, I am looking at my granddaughter and also at God. Not the “Strong take care of everything control the world ” God but the “tiny vulnerable captivate your soul” God. My God is sometimes the Father but more often the Child, He comes to me through the children who show me grace and love unconditionally. Is it any wonder that women flock to hold a baby even in the midst of the burdens of their own family? It grows ever harder to see the God in us all as we grow: we are needy and wanting and not always very nice. We don’t smell so good and look so sweet. Yet it is ever so clear staring into the eyes of a baby, God is here.

Still, babies cry and want fed and have to be changed and are highly inconvenient, the backstory you forget when you are a grandma who only has visits or a young woman longing for her first child. Those God moments can be more rare in the trenches. But isn’t that the same with our God? Surely our sins bring screams of agony to our Father, cries that cannot be calmed much like a baby with colic, requiring hour after hour of pacing each evening. I can only imagine God’s pure pain at the hate rising up in our world, the violence and separation, the refusal to tend to our neighbors. God is crying, a neglected babe alone.

Can you envision God’s cries as we feed our guilty pleasures, our addictions, fill our time with social media and leave Him starving for our attention, forgetting that time with Him feeds us too? Long walks noticing creation, baking bread, real honest to God knead the dough and let it rise bread, arranging colors on canvas with intentionality, all are answers I have received when asked “How do you feel closer to God.”  The commonality in the responses is time creating and time apart, maybe from others but certainly from regular life. I believe retreating and creating is when we feed God, when He feeds us. Our souls become open to his nurturance.

Scripture reminds us that God is the same, yesterday today always. But we live in a changing world that requires our involvement. We live in a broken hurting world that demands our engagement. This world is God’s, we are His. To ignore the damage is to ignore the baby with the sopping diaper, soon to have a rashy bottom, soon to be blistered and the agony magnified. We are the ones called to do the changing, to tend to all of God’s children. The ones who have been left neglected the longest may smell badly, have the worst sores and scream loudly when we get near. They certainly don’t present as cuddly babies but imagine how long they have waited for our attention? Like a child with diaper rash, one swipe of ointment won’t fix it. We have to be attentive, we have to keep at it. Closed wounds don’t heal themselves. Homeless don’t find homes, hungry don’t grow food, slaves don’t gain freedom alone.

God is inconvenient. I know He does not make my life any easier. My list of those who have angered me and should be scorned forever, cast into the Dungeon of Non-Forgivables grows shorter as I grow closer to God. I try to bring that list to Him, asking for a smiting, a spell that would do Harry Potter proud but come away we another name crossed off as I lose my own fire. I want to stay mad sometimes. I want to hold on sometimes. Inconvenient. I have another list, a list of topics I will not address in public or mixed company so as not to offend. This one is meeting a similar fate. Rather than disappearing in resolution or forgiveness, this list burns within me and God demands that I speak up. God demands that I begin to talk for those who are not present. God demands that voices rise up to confront hate and bigotry and lies. God demands that this list grow and it is inconvenient for me to get louder.

It is inconvenient for me to follow a God who sees our broken world, my hurting home, my addicted son, my estranged daughter, my grandson who cries for his favorite aunt and wonders when he will see his dad again, how can I follow a God who doesn’t fix all these things? NOW. Then I look into the eyes of this babe and know that He gives me her, a way to see Him. A reminder that He is here, He is near, I just need to keep walking and rocking and working on my lists. With each of her cries and diaper changes, I know I am called to act on her behalf out in the wider world. She is God. Hungry, messy, inconvenient.  I pace with her in my arms, pat her bottom as she falls asleep, and thank God for visiting my soul.

Hideout

Love Whispers, Happy Tears

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, StellaLeave a comment

I carried my Sweetness, my new little bonus granddaughter, through the house yesterday, a milestone. It was her first visit to gran’s house, she will be 8 weeks old tomorrow. She certainly would have been here sooner but beasts are huge and newborns are fragile, mamas are protective. I knew the day of our first visit was approaching, it almost happened earlier in the week but last minute plans changed. We see them in their space almost daily, quick visits to drop off or pick up whatever Plum needs, whatever we have extra of, all excuses to see our Sweetness.  We all know these are lame reasons but continually saying I need some Sweetness in my morning seems a bit intrusive. Instead we say, Plum left his jacket here, may need that. Or, do you have any more dairy pills for the school? So visits there have been numerous, just not at our home. A quick call to mama, an invitation to have daddy help run the beasts with Chef before our day trip left them alone for hours, it was enough to bring mama and daddy and Sweetness to our door. Until they were here, I didn’t realize how important that visit was, how much I wanted them in our space.

I sent Mama to Plum’s room to retrieve extra clothes, to the freezer to claim some extra food. Of course she needed her arms free for all of this, my arms were empty and ready for some Sweetness.  Then an incredible thing happened. I walked throughout the house, into Plum’s room, with this child in my arms and my heart exploded. I looked into her eyes, she smiled and finally slept and I was lost in the déjà vu. Plum’s room that once was a nursery, the toy room that once was mama’s room. Looking out the front windows as birds fluttered from tree to tree, remembering the hours Plum and I sat and watched and sang our “Birdie” song which will never be heard outside our home. Carrying the second child, the sibling, brought a gush of emotion I didn’t anticipate. When I loved him throughout all those walks and rocks to sleep, I was dreaming of the possibilities. Now I have a model of what a grandchild running about the yard looks like. Now I have a real vision to attach to the dreams of pounding feet on the steps and toys scattered about the living room. My soul told Miss Sweetness that one day she too could rush about the back yard and dig in the mud, that we would do experiments in the kitchen and take so many bubble baths. My heart sang to her and she slept in my arms.

Later, as I tried to explain to Plum just how amazing it was to carry his sister around the house, how I remembered doing the same with him, I choked up and began to cry. He said, “Yeah, I know, happy tears.” Joy in the carrying, the sharing, the remembering. Joy in Sweetness sleeping as I walked and rocked and patted her tiny bottom, a rhythm so intrinsic to my body, I music that I hear only with a baby in my arms. The dance of motherhood, of long nights and anguished evenings with colicky babies, my body moves of its own accord. God brought some joy over to our home, a delightful sprinkling of baby coos and remembered dreams. One day I know this home will be filled with all of our grandchildren, Plum shepherding all the little girls about the yard and establishing rules about the toy room. He was here first, will always be the one who broke us in. He opened us so wide, destroyed any walls we tried to erect to protect our hearts, he paved the way for his little sister and his cousins and a new sister to come. He taught us to love under extreme circumstances and to forgive beyond our abilities and desires. He teaches us that he is worth every sacrifice, worth every discomfort and to keep showing up.

In the dark days I never dared even dream of this day thus I know that anything is possible through God’s grace and relentless pursuit of our hearts. I carried my granddaughter through our home and whispered love to her. I told her I carried her big brother the same way. I told her I carried her cousin Princess the same way. I pray I get the chance to know my newest granddaughter while she is still carriable.  One day I will write about Princess visiting again, filling the bird feeder on her own tree. She will introduce me to her sister. Another granddaughter due in May, so many little girls. They will come to play and make messes and I will cry, watching them all through the blur. Plum will assure everyone there is nothing to worry about, he knows my happy tears. After all, they fell on him first.
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The 20% Path Towards Easter

On By LisaIn Faith, Plum, Stella, The Chef5 Comments

I awoke sweaty, kicking off blankets, seeking cooler air. Groggy from the heat and deep sleep, I struggled to determine the source of my fevered state. A quick check to the left for the heating blanket controls next to my bed revealed I had been tricked again, the dial reading “H,” a setting I haven’t used in ages. Certainly not for an unseasonably warm February night. My little trickster usually reserves this move for the early mornings, his effort to wake me before our internal alarms say we can rise. But 2:00 am, way too early. A slow look right showed not only had Plum messed with my dials, he had infiltrated my bed and was sleeping soundly on my pillow, edging me out of my spot. Something happened during the night to send him into gran’s bed, seeking comfort and protection. How had I slept through this? Once I would have woken at the slightest noise, hearing everything throughout the night. Learning as a child that night time was dangerous and sleep made me vulnerable, I rarely really rested. Now a small child can seemingly climb right over me, get under the covers and scoot me aside and still I slept on. Oddly enough, this is a good thing. It signals a clear sense of safety.

Childhood sexual abuse carries into adulthood, alters reality so dramatically that merely sleeping soundly is a huge win. But what other effects have I held onto without really questioning, without deciding to address? What if I did alter that abuse DNA to live more wholly, more fully? The topic came up as I talked with my small group of friends and smugly spouted my stance on pain management, pain levels, pain awareness. Even as I spoke I knew I was sinking into the realm of the absurd, somehow I couldn’t stop myself from trying to defend the indefensible. My ears could hear how wrong I was, my practice and habits bespoke years of training. Maybe I unconsciously wanted to be chided, to be questioned on the validity of my long held beliefs. It worked, I am rethinking.

In order to be a good victim to an adult abuser, you must learn to ignore your own body. You must learn to shutdown warning signs and your learn that pain is a choice, one you cannot afford to experience. You must learn to be quiet, very very quiet. You must learn to escape your body.  In order to be a healthy adult who has survived childhood sexual abuse, much unlearning is required. Years of therapy have gotten me about 80% there I think, on a good day. I have learned to speak up, to protect myself, to stay in my body. But that last bit, really owning my own body and caring for it, I just haven’t conquered. As I explained to my friends, I was a child who would stand outside and wet my pants, completely unaware that my bladder needed emptying. In many ways, I am still that child. Years of ignoring basic needs such as this have led to real medical bladder issues. Years of ignoring body cues to eat that for a time exhibited as anorexia, now look like missed meals and poor food choices.  Lack of awareness about my body makes reporting symptoms to doctors for routine neurological appointments a nightmare. I don’t know, I can’t remember, my standard answers. For most of my adult life this has worked for me, in the sense that I was okay with what I considered my quirks and felt no compulsion to address them.

These last several months with Chef, who has felt real pain and desolation in the stripping of his identity, have called on me to be a better person than I am. There, I said it. Like waking at every creak of the house as it settles during the night, I have old thinking that is disturbing my life now. As I tried to defend my position to my friends, I ultimately decided that maybe I am just a bitch. Wow. Angry ugly labeling to describe my adult self, still it is easier than choosing to address the core. Would I rather remain unkind than own that I am removed from my feelings for good cause? Looking at the source means resurrection of the worst kind, traveling a path that is dark and scary, enough to send the child me into granny’s bed, seeking comfort and protection. But I am the gran, I am the parent, I am the one to provide the comfort to my own broken self. Not trusting that is enough, I stay entrenched in the separation, not realizing that I am no longer hurting me, a pain I don’t feel, but hurting my Chef. I think I have finally reached a point where this is unacceptable. (I suspect Chef will raise his arms in victory at the reading of this.)

I realize that I was once so close to healing, so close to joining my body.  The estrangement with my daughter, a young woman who was guiding me into adulthood as much as I her, left me adrift, afraid. She was my realtime example of brave women who could feel things and do things and laugh out loud. Then she disappeared under the influence of a dangerous narcissistic man who turned her into her own cowering self. We have both shrunken. We have both hidden. We cannot find a way to connect and I stay separate from much of me. But what if God has brought new women along, put some women on my path to guide me back into me? Am I brave enough to accept the challenge to stop being unkind, to shed the label of bitch and finish the last 20% to fully inhabit me? I am convinced that is what God wants. I fill certain that is what Chef would love.

Self-care is just a phrase I speak, words I type, something I have never practiced. I know the importance of putting on your own oxygen mask. Lent is soon to begin and as always, I am giving a great deal of thought to what I will give up. More and more I am realizing I am being called to give up that last 20%. Thus Lent may not look like fasting for me but eating.  Really eating.  Lent may not look like solitude for me, but engaging.  Really engaging.  Giving up chocolate or Coke made the Easter celebration delightful, for sure. Inhabiting all of me may well please God beyond the 40 days.

I may ask for prayers along the way, I may wish I had given my M&M addiction up to the Lord for the season.  I hope to share with you my struggles to keep me honest and on the path. 40 days towards 20%, starting March 1. (I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I may stay a bit aloof for a few more days.)

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More Than One Dress

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, Stella, The Chef, Travel1 Comment

I bought this dress on a whim while on a trip about a year ago, full of expectation and brimming with the hope that I would be the kind of person who wore that dress. It was a vacation kind of dress, bright fun colors, a bit shorter in cut. It required some sass, a bit of pizzazz to wear. I intended to have those, I wanted to have enough confidence to wear this dress. I purchased it, packed it in my suitcase, brought it home and hung it in my closet where it has stayed all this time. The dress began to mock me recently, laughing as I walked by, knowing it was not for me and I was not for it. I wanted to be that person but the dress just did not fit my vision of me. Oddly though, every time I looked at it fully, I saw not my shortcomings but a vision of my friend. I could not get her out of my head with each pass through the closet. She has sass, she has pizzazz, she routinely wears dresses.  She has been allowing her hair to go gray and has the exact right coloring for this dress. I knew this dress was not me, but surely it was her. Finally, the dress was removed from my closet and now resides in hers. I don’t know if my vision really matches her reality, this could be just a  traveling clothing item that is searching for the right home. Still, I am sure this dress was not for me, the real me. It felt good to let it go, to walk peacefully through my closet and not feel mocked at who I am not, but rather to see my big sweaters and longer, darker dresses, also to see the t-shirts from marches and issues I support sprawled around my shelves. The closet reflects me.

When I was younger, I wanted to heal the world. I was an activist social worker, I wanted to make a difference. I was on track but messages from childhood competed with the education I was receiving in college. I can see now that I was scared, afraid of being on my own, not married, not sure I was capable of protecting myself. My desire to be a mother erupted and overtook my personhood. My life trajectory was forever altered. I don’t regret those years, still it is only with hindsight that I see I gave all to only one aspect of me. I only ever wore one dress at a time. When my children left to begin their own lives, their own relationships and choices with consequences that severed our ability to stay connected, I was left naked. My one dress was gone. I can hear myself tell Chef repeatedly through angry hurtful tears, “But I am a mom, that is who I am.” The sound of my own voice crying out that plea to let me go back, put on my old identity, begging God to just let us all go back, it still breaks my heart as it reverberates in my mind. Like the children of Israel who followed Moses out of slavery, I didn’t understand I was being freed. I didn’t see that while walking in the wilderness, God was leading me by day with the clouds and at night in my fiery dreams. I could only complain about wanting more, what to go back to the known. Yet, God had more for me, wanted more for me, knew that I am more. I didn’t know I was shedding. I did know it was horrible and painful. I didn’t know if there was anything after, if there would be any me left when all that had been was scrapped away.

Wearing roles as my identity is much like that dress, I wanted them to fit. I wanted to be enough for them, them enough for me. Shedding those roles that once defined me has been an excruciating process, not one I would have chosen any more than giving up on this pretty dress. Pain in the peeling, the leaving behind, fear of the resulting emptiness. If I take away “mom” will I disappear?  I did for a bit. I sat in the nothingness, my skin raw as the last vestiges of who I thought I was slid away, unable to expose the fresh tender me to the sunlight. The hiding time was healing time, though. God was growing me into my new skin, from the inside out, not allowing me to don another role of caregiver as my new dress. Hindsight allows me to see that my year of seclusion looks much like a time of wrestling that old skin away, much like my beasts hurling themselves against the huge trees outside, rubbing their bodies from nose to butt against the rough bark to help remove their winter hair. Clumps fall away, get caught in the wind, beasts run with abandon feeling lighter and less itchy. Many trips to the tree, much hurling and tossing about, barks and yips breaking the quiet. Growing into the new is hard, is a process.

I am new. I am becoming more of me. The struggle to assert my personhood even causes friction in my marriage as we establish room, more space for a bigger me. Like the dress that doesn’t fit, not just a size up is needed, an entirely different style. Communication, assertiveness, determination, skills required as Chef realizes he wed one woman and is living with another. We are sweeping up the clumps of hair, wrestling with our evolving selves and how God wants us to stand together to be new and united. I can see that Chef is in the beginning stages of the peeling away, the horrible painful time of losing it all to find what is underneath, to find his more. I have cleaned out his closet to remove those clothes that mock him as well. Now he sits in the nothingness, losing clumps of himself and wondering what will remain, will anything remain. I know, I want to shout with joy, I know so surely, that God is leading him out of this wilderness and into his own time of growth and new identity that is pleasing to God and in fulfillment of His plans. It is okay that Chef doesn’t know, doesn’t always believe, I do.

My raw skin has healed, I am free and new. I am a person of God. I will always be a mom, be grandma. But I am more. My closet is a mixed mess of colors and styles, ready to take me anywhere from the back of my brother’s Harley to Sunday morning church. It takes me to meetings for all the ministries I am involved in and out to the dirt to play. There are comfy clothes for writing time and Tom’s shoes to make my statements.  I pray I never get stuck wearing one dress again, as beautiful and tempting as it may be. I am more.

 

 

 

 

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