background noise?

"And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice" (1 Kings 11-12).

(yes, it's the king james version. because that's how i roll.)

i hate very few things more (perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it's genetic, don't you know) than discovering upon my arrival at the gym that my ipod battery is dead. i am nearly incapable of exercising without a heavy beat driving my steps.

last night, i plugged my headphones into the elliptical so i could listen to the news on the overhead television in an attempt to compensate for my ipod-less-ness. this solution, i hardly need tell you, did not do the trick. that was the longest two and a half miles i've run (walked? jogged? ellipticall-ed?) in a long time.

which got me thinking about soundtracks and the sounds--music and otherwise--that fill my head. i've often blogged about the soundtracks for my travels around town (like here and here and here). but i haven't really thought all that much about what i'm listening to all day. maybe the sermon in church this past weekend got me thinking, too; our pastor preached about shame and at one point mentioned how many times more difficult it is to speak words that build someone up than words that break them down. what is being spoken to, sung to me over the course of my day? and am i listening? what am i internalizing? there's a reason, after all, that i listen to different music when luke is in the car with me than when i'm alone: i'm careful what he hears, knowing what a sponge his little mind is. but beyond music with luke or otherwise, what am i absorbing?

in my office this morning, thanks to my chris rice channel on pandora (oh, how i love pandora), i heard these lyrics (sung by someone other than chris rice, though i don't know who):

what heights of love
what depths of peace
when fears are stilled
when strivings cease

when strivings cease: peace. why don't i hear that more often? does any of us hear that?

too often, our strivings are rewarded with progress and productivity (good american values, of course, and if you know me, you know i'm all about productivity), but even more so with encouragement and validation. if what earns us words of affirmation--words that build us up--is striving, then learn to strive we will. but what if learning to be quiet and still were rewarded? what if listening and patience were valued?

oh, right: they are.

i almost forgot the still small voice. as i fill my head--with conversation, music, reading, words, sounds, noise--i am reminded that there is One who values and rewards my stillness above all. my quiet listening. my patient seeking.

a friend encouraged me a few weeks ago to go for a walk alone every day. no friend, no ipod, no cell phone. just to be quiet, to listen and think and hear and pray and be. i haven't done it once. i've walked plenty...in the company of friends, with music, and always with my phone. what is it that keeps me from that quiet walk alone? not enough time? sure. but i make plenty of space in my life for lots of other things, and with the perfect trail right behind my house and fantastic fall weather upon us, that's hardly an excuse. striving? there's so much i want to get done, so much that gives me a tangible reward or earns me affirmation and encouragement right here, right now. fear? if i'm quiet, and i listen, and i open my heart to the still small voice, what will i hear? what will i think? what will i say?

because if i don't keep up the background noise that i have chosen, i might hear something i don't expect. something that i didn't choose. and when i'm honest, i know that i am loathe to cede that control.

why i love hallmark

(my new favorite card)

colorful thoughts

as i drove home from dropping luke off at school today, i passed a group of six people out for a morning walk. what was unusual about this group was that each one was wearing a single-colored shirt. no stripes, no logos, no patterns. the shirts were all different--one wore a tank top, one a t-shirt, one a long-sleeved shirt--and they were not some kind of team or group who planned what to wear for one reason or another. the colors were different, but all colors, bright or faded: no white or black or gray among them. it was like a walking rainbow.

is it strange that i noticed them, and even stranger that i suspect there's a reason i did?

maybe i have colors on my mind because i went to parent night last night at school. luke's teacher told us that they have been talking about colors this week, and she shared with us some books they have read about crayons and colors. or maybe it's because luke was supposed to wear his favorite color to school today, and when i asked him what it was so i could help him pick out his clothes, he said, "i don't know. you'll just have to choose my favorite color for me." (really, dear child? mr. independent?) maybe it's because i left the house this morning--in a rush, rush, rush, as seems to always be the case these days--in brown sweatpants, a gray t-shirt, and a black bandanna. (that's some variety for me, by the way, from my usual just-plain-black or brown.) colors aren't really my thing.

is it too much to share here that i haven't noticed many colors lately? probably so. i'll leave it at that, then--think of it what you will--and I'll just be grateful for the gift of that group of walkers this morning.

(in case you were curious, i refused to choose luke's favorite color for him. he chose green. but he told me later that, having thought about it, his favorite color was in fact pink, which he was embarrassed to admit. and anyhow, he doesn't own any pink clothing. so he went with his second favorite. and so it begins. sigh.)

parabolically speaking

she suggested we try to write a parable this week.

in my women’s bible study this semester, we’re studying Jesus’ parables. i’m itching to get started, to tell you the truth. an entire semester studying the amazing stories Jesus told sounds a little more exciting than laboring through the wrecked families and tragic heroes of genesis, as we did all last year. don’t get me wrong: i learned lots in that study, and i’m very grateful for having done it. but, well, i’m just a little more enthusiastic as we start this year. i love a good story, and this semester promises discussions of some life-long favorites.

so when our leader suggested in her introduction to the study that we try to write a parable, my interest was piqued. at least one pair of eyes rested on me, one pair that knows my sometime-closet-writer self. that thing i mentioned here about telling me i can’t do something? well, that’s pretty much what she did. of course, i don’t think i can write a parable worthy of any notice, but if i were to write a parable, what would it be about?

which got me thinking, as you might have guessed, about the Writer of all life and just what story He is trying to tell with mine. if a parable is a simple story that teaches a truth or a life-lesson, why can’t my life be one? if Jesus told parables to teach his disciples and contemporaries how to live, couldn’t the Author of my life be using my story to demonstrate some truth?

i’m sure now, having failed to figure out even how to start, that i cannot write a parable. but if i’m being “written” into one, what is the truth being taught? the soundtrack for my week has been “fear not,” a choral piece written by carl nygard that we’re singing in my ensemble in church on sunday. i didn’t really choose this soundtrack, as i have in past weeks, but as i’ve sung along with my cd in the car all week (rehearsing my new alto part), the words have started to sink in. “my love will surround you and hold you for you are precious to me, dear to me.” precious. like the lost coin, maybe, in the parable in luke 15. or like the lost sheep in that same place. or maybe the prodigal son. precious. if i’m the lost thing in the parable that is my life, do i really believe that i’m precious, that my finding could be cause for rejoicing? what would i be, and lost where, and found by whom, and celebrated how, in my parable?

Jesus’ parables aren’t true stories. He made them up, presumably, to demonstrate some principle or truth for His followers. is my life--my true story--created similarly to demonstrate something for those around me? to teach others not to fear, to trust, to understand what it means to be precious and dear? if God is using me as a parabolic lesson, am i a willing participant? am i filling the role for which i am intended?

i don’t suspect that, were they real, the characters in Jesus’ parables would ever have known their importance to the story. that’s the beauty of the parables: they related everyday experiences and assigned cosmic importance to them. would the victim rescued by the good samaritan have understood his fame, or would he just have been glad to have his life spared at the hands of a stranger-who-would-have-been-an-enemy ? i don’t expect that i’ll ever understand just exactly what God is up to in my life or what His purpose is for me. but i am determined not to fear His purpose, and i hope and trust that, even as i am surrounded by His love, i am being used for His good work. may it be unto me as He has said, or in this case, as He is writing.

relatively speaking

i'm cleaning off my hard drive. a recent s..l..o..w..i..n..g down of function around here has me living in fear of losing all of my un-backedup stuff. i have never backed up anything. none of my millions of photographs. none of my children's ministry work. none of my editing work. none of my writing. so i'm backing it all up today. ask me how much i'm enjoying sitting in front of the computer for hours on end when i could be outside on the just about the most perfect fall day i've ever seen. (on second thought, don't ask). but i live in fear of murphy's law, so back up i will.

anyhow, as i was sorting through all the pictures--which are very poorly organized, i might add, much like the rest of my life--i came across this picture, taken on september 12 last year.



i remembered posting it here once upon a time (did you recognize it, faithful few?), and went looking for the post. interestingly--but unrelatedly, i might add--i posted it on sam's and my anniversary this year. which is not when it was taken at all. but i didn't explain, in that post, when it was taken or why, because that post was about something entirely different. i promised i might explain it someday. well, as if you've been holding your breath, here is the long awaited explanation.

i spent much of eliza's life trying not to get too used to her being around. does that sound terrible? it's not exactly that i thought i'd jinx it if i got comfortable, but i just didn't want to find myself too unprepared for the inevitable. a morbid way to live your child's life, i know. i didn't admit this to myself very often, but i realized from time to time that it was true. like if i kept expecting it, the unexpected could never happen. i'm afraid that even in my most faithful moments, i can fall victim to magical thinking. can't we all? didn't you grow up wishing on birthday candles and eyelashes and coins tossed in fountains, after all? i remember thinking, when eliza was barely clinging to life in the hospital in her first few weeks, that i couldn't admit to God that my biggest fear was neither that she would die nor that she would live but that she'd end up somewhere in between for just a little while. it didn't help cure me of my magical thinking that, having admitted that, i got pretty much just what i feared most, as if God heard me and tried to give me the biggest challenge He could come up with, just because i told Him that was it.

all that is to say that it took me a long time to adjust to the idea that eliza might long outlive the doctors' predictions. but sometime around the spring of 2008, when eliza had already passed her second unexpected birthday, i began the very, very gradual shift from crisis mode to long-term mode. sam and i had conversations about how we could sustain the pace we had been keeping indefinitely, about the state and future of our family, about how to live life with eliza in some sort of "everyday" mode instead of moment to moment. to that end, i began the unbelievable process of looking for nursing help with eliza.

if you know me, you know a few things about me: 1) i don't like to admit i can't do something, 2) if you tell me i can't do something, i'll definitely do it, 3) i'm pretty sure i can do anything. (i credit my parents for both my stick-to-itiveness and my foolhardy confidence; thanks, guys.) so when people who saw my life with eliza told me things like, "you've got to get some help," and "you can't keep this up indefinitely," and "you can't take care of anyone else if you don't take care of yourself," they unknowingly drove me to further determination to do it all, and to do it better, too. with that background, then, you'll understand why it took me as long as it did to accept the idea that i might need a little help...which everybody else seemed to know long before i did.

that's a very long introduction to say that sometime in the late spring of 2008, i decided to get some help from a nurse aide. little did i know how long it would take to find one. first there was paperwork upon red tape upon paperwork for medicaid and insurance and nursing agencies. then finally in the fall, there were nurse aides...yikes! from one who smoked to one who helped herself to my computer and journal to one who never showed up to one who quit willy-nilly and had no contact information--yes, there were some doozies. i was ready to give up many times; how could i trust some unreliable stranger with my daughter's care when i barely trusted my own husband with her?!?

(insert deep breath here. sigh. but i'm getting ahead of myself.)

the first nurse aide, one of many who did not work out, made her first visit on september 12 of last year. i forced myself to leave the house, even just for an hour, which took all i had in me and much prayer. when i returned home, exhausted beyond belief from worry about whether eliza was okay without me (pride, pride, i know!), i was relieved to find out that everything was okay (i would later find out about the computer and journal, but as for eliza, all was very well). as i walked the nurse aide out and watched her drive off, i saw the rainbow in that photograph and ran for my camera.

in the story of noah's ark in the book of genesis, God uses a rainbow as a sign of His covenant, His promise that he will never again send a world-rending flood (genesis 9:13). in the book of revelation, God's throne is described as ringed by a rainbow (revelation 4:3). and in the book of ezekiel, God's glory is compared to the rainbow's appearance (ezekiel 1:28). i decided to take my rainbow that day as a sign of God's promise to care for eliza, as a covenant with me that she would indeed be okay in the hands of a nurse aide, as a confirmation and encouragement of my decision to hand over some control.

i had completely forgotten, until i sat at my computer today backing up files, that my rainbow appeared on september 12.

you see, september 12 this year hit me particularly hard. exactly nine months since eliza had died, i was struck afresh by the relativity of time. nine months. if you're a woman who has ever given birth to a child (or a man who has lived with such a woman!), you know how significant that amount of time is. nine months is an eternity. with both of my children, born a week and two weeks early respectively, i thought i would be pregnant forever. forever. i remember telling my mother a week before luke was born that i was convinced he was, in fact, not a child but a tumor with which i would have to live forever. nine months is so very, very long.

but here, nine months had passed as if in the blink of an eye. my daughter, who had taken nine months to be knit together in my womb, was gone nine months already. nine months is, in fact, no time at all.

which, as you might have anticipated, got me thinking about the nature of time. about the fact that what to us seems like an eternity is but a blink of true Eternity. paul simon sang, "a man walks down the street, he says, why am i short of attention? got a short little span of attention, and, oh, my nights are so long."

if you'll be my bodyguard, i can be your long-lost pal...i can call you betty, and betty when you call me, you can call me al...

ahem. sorry. i do love that song.

we have no idea what a "long time" is. i remember telling a friend shortly after eliza died that i was glad she was free and healed and couldn't wait to see her as such...but it felt like such a long time to wait. Lord willing, i still have a lifetime ahead of me, a lifetime that i can't imagine passing waiting to see eliza again. yet now this nine months has passed, and i've barely noticed. meanwhile, my first baby is losing teeth it seems he just got yesterday; as i sit in the carpool line at school, i realize it will be just another blink before he is driving himself. and time keeps on blinking by. but i can barely stand how long it is taking to back up these pictures--at my computer all day!--and i've barely scratched the surface.

we have no understanding whatsoever of time or its significance. someday, the book of revelation promises, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (revelation 21:4). but we cry out with the psalmist, how long, oh Lord? ecclesiastes 3 not only promises that there is a time for everything but that God "has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what He has done from beginning to end" (ecclesiastes 3:11-12). past tense. He has done it already. eternity is already complete, and is in our hearts, and we can't understand it.

how long, indeed. we have no idea.

("somewhere over the rainbow," anyone?)

of the end of summer weeks and priceless week-ends

there's been much ado about the end of summer around here lately. yes, my boys have been back at "real life" now for weeks, but we have managed to pretend like the summer wasn't quite extinguished yet these past few weekends.

(by the way, if you visit this blog for deep thoughts, profound insights, carefully-crafted writing, and the like--thanks; i'm blushing!--but this post is not for you. if, however, you visit for pictures of luke--which means you're likely related to me--read on.)

first, thanks to unceasingly generous friends who are owners of a fantastic beach condo in south carolina, we escaped for a couple of glorious days last weekend, just the three of us. it was lovely. here's luke on the patio, to give you a sense of how very much on the beach we were staying.

and here's luke...well, being luke and resisting yet another beach picture. oh, but he's so cute. i won't be deterred so easily.

then this past weekend, luke and i took off for unseasonably rainy, chilly hot-lanta for a too-quick family gathering. we spent six hours driving, just the two of us, on friday afternoon, through alternately torrential rain and monsoonish rain. this was...well...mostly not fun for either of us. we did the same on sunday morning, torrents and monsoons included. ask me why again? oh, i remember...

the georgia aquarium? priceless (okay, pricey, actually, for my very generous aunt, who treated us; but priceless for former jacques cousteau wannabes like me and wide-eyed people like luke. really, this might be the second coolest place i know...to disney world, of course. and yes, it's fully full of real fish-and-all-things-that-swim and very few walking-around-stuffed ones...but i was too busy oohing and ahhing to take pictures of those).

gaffney, south carolina's james-and-the-giant-peach-esque water tower? priceless (especially when your five-year-old can appreciate it because he loves loves loves the book so much, which has not been ruined in his imagination by any silly movie version. and yes, i took this picture while i was driving. in a monsoon--thus the raindrops you see on the windshield.)

a good book and chicken nuggets? priceless (especially for the quiet they afford the lone driver, who was at this very moment navigating a torrent...and yes, taking a picture of the backseat while driving. don't ask. the book, by the way, was because of winn-dixie, by kate dicamillo, which he also loved.)

great-grandparents spending time with their eldest great-grandson? priceless (and so worth all it took to make it happen...even if only for a one-day visit!)

upon which she writes a post that is much too long in response to a book that is arguably so (or, lost in translation)

i just finished slogging through--ahem--reading the brothers karamazov for my book club. our discussion leader last night suggested that maybe some of us had done the work to read it because we felt like it made us better people; indeed, i do feel like an important gap in my literary experience, shameful english major such as i am, has been filled. i can check that one off the list, as it were.

but have you read it? it's hard, hard work. most of us agreed that we wished we had been reading it for a class, led by a no-doubt brilliant professor through the famous "grand inquisitor" poem (poem? really? i didn't notice) or ivan's devilish apparition scene. we all agreed it is in no way beach/airplane/vacation reading, and those there last night who hadn't read it didn't seem eager, at the end of our conversation, to plunge into it.

so why, our leader asked us, does it endure? why is this monster of a book considered a classic and read by high schoolers and college students year in and year out?

why, having barely survived it the first time, do i find myself thinking that i'd like to learn russian and have another go at it?

because i want to know how he did it. dostoyevsky, that is. how did he do it? how, in an eight hundred page work of fiction (and that with rather small print and rather large pages, i might add--who writes that much, anyhow? boys howdy!) that does not ever really describe anyone, just how did dostoyevsky create characters who were so real?

and therein lies the reason i suggest learning russian: because it is about the words. i have experienced this timeless, monstrous masterpiece, this work of incredible words, filtered through someone else's understanding. it was when we compared translations last night--for example, the chapter called "sensualists" or otherwise "voluptuaries"--that i realized how much is lost just in the translation of the words. never mind my utter lack of familiarity with or knowledge of russian culture, which would certainly inform my understanding of the connotation of that russian word for "sensualists" or "voluptuaries"; in english, i would argue, those two words are at least used to mean different things. are you fluent in another language? i can remember speaking french well enough to know words that i couldn't quite translate to my native english without losing some essence of their true meaning. how many such choices over the eight hundred pages did the translators of just my edition make?

you see, some books are about a brilliant plot, a riveting twist, fantastic visual imagery, or heart-rending emotion. i love many of the books i do for just those reasons. but no one loves the brothers karamazov for any of those reasons. this book is about the words. the crushingly long monologues (a seven page paragraph?), the dialogue between a brain-feverish man and the devil only he hears, the novella-length life story of a deceased elder--these moments are the ones that stick with me from this book. i can't tell you what those very characters looked like, where they were, or what these passages had to do at all with the plot, as it were. but they were powerful evocations of apparently-real fictional people.

and i read those people filtered through someone else's understanding. i can only imagine going to the source...

which got me thinking about The Source and the power of words to create. the Lord Himself spoke things into being, and in His image, we create with our words, too. what are we doing when we're writing or speaking or thinking but creating? it's a power that, too often, is corrupted by our sinful desire to maintain the glittering image, to borrow from susan howatch (have you read it? oh, do read it). we're busy creating who we think we want to be or need to be--at least i am--every time we open our mouths, pick up a pen, or sit down at the computer.

do you use facebook to create a profile--favorite quotations, status updates, wall postings--and when you do, who do you make of yourself? do the emails you send to your boss at work look like the ones you send your sister? (does an editor--read here grammar-and-puncutation nazi--write a blog with no capital letters?) who do you envision reading what you write as you pen the journal-that-one-day-may-be-a-memoir?

sweet luke asked me the other day out of the blue--as he is wont to do--why adam named the sandwich as he did, since there's neither sand nor witches in it. our words have power to create and shape, even as adam's words completed, as it were, what God had spoken into being. it's a corrective, i think--at least for me, for whom both work and leisure revolve most often around words--to be careful what i create. someone asked rhetorically last night how long it took dostoyevsky to write this, his ultimate work; and imagine! there was more to come had he lived to complete it. each carefully chosen word to create his masterpiece...do we choose carefully the words we use to create?

aside from the few songs i know from my peace child days, i do not expect i'll ever learn russian. as i'm still recovering from the first go-round and really never, ever reread a book (there are so many more good books to read!), i do not expect to venture to skotoprigonevsk with the brothers three (and a half?) again, though i've barely scratched the surface this time. but i will persist in marvelling at what dostoyevksy managed to create, and i will take to heart the reminder of the power of words. (and i will never, ever--and here i'm quite serious--see the movie, which is perhaps a topic for another post).

(and now, having agonized all day over what i've created here and having reluctantly judged it fit for consumption, i'll publish it. but not without concern about what i've created...and in fact, as you may have noticed, deliberately without any quotations from dostoyevsky's masterpiece, for two reasons: 1] i wouldn't want him rolling over in his grave on my account, and 2] i'm not opening that book again.)