Thanksgiving

Thank you, Lord, for

The gift of yourself, in full,
The measure pressed down and running over
Grace upon grace

Unseen, unfelt, so seemingly distant and aloof sometimes
Surely my own projection of my own sense of abandonment and betrayal
Surely you know abandonment and betrayal better than I do
And suffered it for my sake

In your great mercy you wrestle with me
As you did with Jacob
In all my anger and contentious strife
You grapple with me and bear me up
And bless me with limping

And how you have also blessed me
With peaches and pecans and chocolate chips
And blueberries and pumpkin
In pancakes and pie
A turkey to roast
Sweet potatoes and more

With husband and child
Parents and in-laws
Cousins and uncles and aunts
And nieces and nephew

With friends far and near
Close and arms-length
On and off
Here and there
Reconciled or never estranged

With those who love me
Despite all they know of me
Who forgive and welcome me
Nearly as you do

With the sounds and movements
And efforts of music
In instruments and voices
In dance and in still art
In books and even tv

With the clouds soaring on high
In their infinite chaotic order
And the following moon
And the trees stretching forth

How you have blessed me
Lord, my God,
My heart bows by grace
Before you.

Momentary prayer

Lord, fill and replenish me.
Nourish the neglected, shriveling bits.
Lavish me with mercy and grace and love,
Until no fear stands still quivering,
Until no irritation can provoke silly defensiveness.
Open wide my arms to the abundance of life,
Gently let my hands neither grasp nor push away.

Align me with your rule
I thirst for order
For each thing to be in its rightful place
Harmonious
Rightly related
So that the dance be unhindered
So that nothing entangle freedom

Restore me.
(And then
I will be kind to Amy (and others)
Feel less threatened by her needy smallness
Less worried about the balancing act
Only outflowing the kindness pouring in)

Like water on stone

Firebelly, hydrant,
You pour continuously
Even when all you’re doing is
Lying around with your blanket and your thumb;
The feet are poking around, you’re wiggling,
Your eyes are intense, your will pulses out like an aura.

Like Japan in Truman’s eyes,
You won’t ever give up the fight.
If I say it’s naptime
If I say use the potty
If I say I don’t want to
If I say I like bananas
You’ll contradict with great force
Until hours and days and years have run by.

Not always, of course.
Sometimes you speak so politely and pleasantly
Sometimes you tolerate and adjust to things you don’t initially like

Sometimes you
Dance and sing and talk and color and play and laugh
Sometimes you
Do those things as fervently as you contradict me.

This morning when I took you out of the shower
And I said you would have a timeout
(You didn’t put down the toy when I said it was time)
You said no and I said yes
And you hit me
And you know that hitting earns another timeout
And I told you that, again, too
And you hit me again
And eventually you racked up twelve timeouts in a row.

(How I needed that twenty-four minutes.)

And when you can’t hit
(If I’m out of reach)
Or instead of hitting sometimes
You spit
And spit
And spit

Sometimes you spit instead of saying no

Patience, respect, gentle firmness, compassion,
I tell myself again and again
Advance notice
Consistent consequence
Pick my battles
Remember to relax and play sometimes…

And you wear me out sometimes, little girl

I love you, but sometimes you wear me out.

Haiku

Over on facebook my friend Janet has been on a haiku spree — lots of her recent status updates have been in haiku form. Once I tried it I got hooked, too. Here are some of the ones I’ve posted.

1. Blueberry

“Little Giant” bush
All of your leaves have withered
Are you going to die?

2. Skirt Shirt

My skirt doesn’t fit.
What if I made it a shirt?
Wow, that’s pretty cool.

3. Cain

Groundhog rejects me
And my lettuce offering.
I’m feeling like Cain.

4. Hill of “Meat”

Dreamed a hill of dirt
Supplying “meat” to campus.
Oh, how disgusting.

5. Stuffy

It’s not suits and ties
That make a church feel stuffy;
It’s missing Jesus.

6. Puzzle

Missing puzzle piece
Can be infuriating
Whispers, “Let me go.”

7. Macho

Black tank of a truck
So macho across the street
Wish you lived elsewhere.

8. Hat

Knitted produce bag
I’m wearing it like a hat
Amy’s idea

9. Festival

Do I care enough
About the dulcimer fest
To endure camping?

10. Ground Dog

I dreamed the groundhog
Turned out to just be a dog
Too bad it’s not true.

11. Haiku

It is addictive
All this measuring of words
Say it all, but short.

12. Smile

This morning, first time:
Recognizable drawing –
Markered smile faces.

13. Omnivore’s Dilemma

Fertilizer sucks
Wish we had a Polyface
Or at least a cow.

14. Repetition

Please no Charlie Brown
Six times a day is too much
Ah blessed silence.

15. A Sonnet for Giovanna Who Thought I Should Move On

Giovanna thinks that I should write some sonnets
Perhaps she thinks I have a lot of time
Besides the knitting up of purple bonnets
And sewing up of skirts the color of lime

Besides the running ’round with Amy girl
The reading of the many many books
The making of a ponytail that curls
The cleaning up of mess where’er one looks

Perhaps I could express myself more often
In this long and convoluted form
Perhaps my readers’ hearts would calm and soften
Perhaps they’d feel all fuzzy and so warm

But sonnets are a lot of work, I fear
More haiku you’ll probably have to hear.

To my charming daughter

As I was waiting to fall asleep the other night
I thought about the way you
Tap your little pointer finger on a picture in a book
Slowly up and down and again and again
The way you look so seriously right into my eyes
While I count to sixty for your time-out
(Sometimes I can barely keep from giggling, and
You catch me and giggle back)
The way you yell with delight “it has a STEERING WHEEL!”
Or “The big potty was LOUD!”
Or “Look at all the TEA SET!”
Or “That’s not our CAR!”
Or “Mama’s RESTING!”
The way you pretend to read, “Tavis tavis tavis…”
The way you talk about everything all the time
(Which is as charming as it is sometimes infuriating and exhausting)
The way you repeat yourself until someone acknowledges what you’ve said
And then sometimes you repeat yourself some more
The way you refer to yourself as “you”
The way you bang your forehead on the ground when you’re terribly frustrated
(Just like I did, except not so desperately, not so hurtfully)
The way your hair curls out to the sides behind your ears and all around the back,
Like Sally in Peanuts but so much cuter
The way your face is, the way your legs are, the way all of you is so
Sturdy and delicate and smooth and beautiful
And I had to smile
(And almost giggled out loud)

The more things change…

The mini-crisis mentioned below?

Same as always, though the places and people change over the years.

Willful and unintentionally idealistic, if I can’t have what I want the way I want it, I’d rather not have it or anything at all.

I’m thinking particularly about the world of people, and how often (like in Africa) I am tempted to withdraw from that world, keep to myself, avoid relationships entirely and minimize social interaction as much as possible. If you’re not going to be my friend on my terms (which feels like, ‘if I’m not that important to you’), I want nothing to do with you at all.

Except that reaction doesn’t really punish you. It hurts me instead, because as much as the world of people sucks, I need it. Like everyone else I’m made for community and relationship.

But can I just say it also hurts to suck up that reality and continue to engage in social stuff?

The unintended poem from my journal last night says continuing social engagement is like saying:

Yes — I’m worthless scum.
My feelings may be trampled
But I’ll still come lick your crumbs.

This post is much more light-hearted than it sounds. I am aware of my own ridiculousness as well as the validity of my feelings and needs, and am endeavoring to piece everything together with compassion and respect.

Red Flag

I tried to wear my prickles on the inside:
‘Cause maybe they’d dissolve and go away –
Or at least not ruin everybody’s day.

Those prickles always found their way back out, though;
There’s just no way a porcupine can hide –
So now I wear them properly outside.

Crying, “leper, leper” as a warning
To everyone who edges a little close;
Red flag waving: I’m a hefty dose.

He who made the porcupine designed her –
Loved each quill, each sharp-tipped hollow spike;
Amazes me what Jesus finds to like.

How long?

how long
until
you understand
that what you throw away
doesn’t come back?

what lies behind
this need
to relinquish
your most beloved
blanket
to the floor

do you have some
grieving to do
and you need
a trigger?

are you
acting out
a sense of loss
or abandonment?

or

is it just
an experiment
like Newton
to discover
gravity?

how much
grief
gravity
causes
both of us

Worth

Is it worth it
Is the wrong question
For those of us who can’t answer
Who are so hesitant
So ready to check our impulses
So unsure of what we want

What makes life worth living
Is not the question for us

Instead let us ask
Why not?
When?
How?

Let us taste and see
That the Lord is good

In everything

I exist and that’s okay

I exist and that’s okay;
I am meant to be.
I needn’t fight the universe –
It’s not fighting me.

Last night at DBT, we spent a good portion of the meeting discussing a list of questions and comments I’d emailed to the leader, Denise (not the Denise who does my psychiatric evaluations). She thought it would be more useful to open it up to the group instead of answering me privately.

This gets to my thing about wanting attention and not knowing how to handle it.

During the meeting I had this feeling of protruding, like a bump in a sidewalk, and that I needed to flatten out and become invisible. (Concrete items: talking too much, shifting position too much, reacting too much, making too much noise like when digging in my purse for my glasses case.) I often feel this way in groups, and sometimes even with just one other person. It may be one reason I am more comfortable playing background music at the farmers market than playing a solo concert to a paying audience.

I think it wasn’t until near the end of the meeting that I realized this is just another example of my central inner conflict — part of me is desperately fighting to become a self, to feel allowed to exist, but another part of me thinks it’s not allowed to stick out.

To the one part, everything is a threat, including the other part. (The other part really is a threat… and perhaps that’s what makes everything else seem threatening.)

Not everybody wants me to disappear. Not everyone wants me to be smoother and unobtrusive. Some people might… but not everyone.

Even the people who love me most will be annoyed at me sometimes (my reaction is to feel hard and sharp-edged), and will sometimes not be in a good mood themselves (my reaction is to feel it has something to do with me). That doesn’t devalue or negate their love.

It seems the biggest threat to my Self, my Life, is from inside; from the equal and opposite reaction to my fight to be, from my black-and-white interpretations of and reactions to other people and circumstances.

Critical self,
You who want to do what you think will
Make people like me,
Protect other people’s feelings,
Soothe the universe’s affront at my existence –
You would make me palatable
By making me nothing;
By making me move only
In ways that affect no one.

You can’t escape the fact that I exist,
That I am indeed a self,
And that I therefore protrude
As much as all the other selves,
And that that’s okay.

Let me learn how to protrude
More gracefully,
More beautifully,
More truly;
To take down the fences and barbed wire and cut glass –
The deliberate sharp-edged awareness of sticking out –
Without taking down the rest of me.

I am especially grateful to the young woman who encouraged me to trust my instincts when I feel the need to fight or when I sense hostility or at least unlovingness from someone; that sometimes it is good and necessary to fight, and to recognize real threats. I don’t have to believe that everyone is dedicated to my wellbeing any more than I have to believe that everyone is out to get me. I don’t have to believe all fights are wasted energy any more than I have to believe that all fights must be continued.