a call to God

“God can handle honesty and prayer begins an honest conversation.”

i was taught two prayers as a child. first, a bedtime prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
 If I should die before I wake,
 I pray the Lord my soul to take.

i find this prayer a little disturbing so i haven’t passed it on to my girls. the other was a standard blessing said before meals:

God is great, God is good,

let us thank him for our food.

By his hands we all are fed;

give us Lord our daily bread.

Amen.

i learned the Lord’s prayer indirectly from sundays at church, the way you learn hymns like amazing grace and how great thou art. and my favorite prayer is the apostle’s creed. i love the cadence, the rhythm of it. and i don’t yawn in the middle of it like i do the Lord’s prayer. (this isn’t becuase the Lord’s prayer bores me but because i have yet to figure out when to breathe when i say it.) and the apostle's creed is a succint description of, well, what i believe.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN.

sigh.

the only other thing i can recall as informal prayer education was the book, are you there god, it’s me margaret. this book was a mini bible for me. a lesson that demonstrated prayer as conversation plus a revealing first hand view into puberty that i otherwise would not have received so intimately.

another thing i learned was how to make a wish. a loose eyelash on a finger. close your eyes, make a wish, and blow. on your birthday, candles lit, close your eyes, make a wish. penny in a fountain, make a wish. under a bridge with a train crossing. hand on the roof, close your eyes, make a wish.

as long as i can recall i‘ve felt as if making a wish was indulging. i have a clear memory of riding under a bridge in dc. i was probably 9 or 10 years old. a train crossed over the bridge as we drove under it. i reached up to touch the roof the car. i made a wish,

“i wish for daddy to call me and come visit...”

oh no. i just wished for two things. now neither will come true. i had to learn to choose my words wisely. wish, but wish for one thing only. concentrate. next time.

praying and wishing. why do i connect them in my head? without any formal education on how exactly to pray i felt i had to approach it in the same way i made a wish. with care not to ask for too much, with carefully worded thoughts, and with requests that were spaced out so as not to seem greedy.

and to this day i still struggle to ask for things. from anyone and especially from God. i imagine that if i do ask for something God might be thinking something like,

“really my child ? you sure about that? you want help with losing weight? self-control? you wanna give more to your church? don’t you think you should be asking Me something else? maybe you could word that differently. come on, try harder. why don’t you think about it and get back to me.”

i admire the people who speak frequently with God, who weave Him into their conversations. the ones who speak eloquently on behalf of the rest of us in the room without rambling. the ones who, at the moment i mention the smallest sliver of a worry, offer to keep me in their prayers. i imagine my name being mentioned silently or quietly by these people at dinner tables and bedsides and in prayer circles. i believe that my grandmother prays more than anyone i know. i truly think that she’s praying every moment that we don’t hear her talking.

i asked the other night on facebook if people prayed or wished and what they thought the difference was. interestingly, most people responded by sharing the things for which they prayed and wished. i am thankful for all the thoughtful responses. in general it seems that people wish for the material, the unnecessary, and pray for what they believe to be significant. some pray directly for things while others do not ask for a specific outcome. instead they pray to be shaped, taught, moved, or even led by a certain concern or issue. or they pray for this on behalf of someone else. some do not believe they are worthy of prayer.

these days i still pray before eating. i pray the lord’s prayer, and when we say it in church, the apostle’s creed. after communion i kneel at the altar with my daughters and show them how to pray by speaking aloud what i believe they might want to pray for. i close my eyes during silent prayer but sometimes don’t think of anything to say. i write down the names of people on a yellow card in church that i know need prayer but for whom i don’t believe just my words are sufficient. i secretly want to add my own name to the yellow card. and occasionally, when i feel totally helpless, i pray in the shower.

in any case, i wish now that as a child i’d known it wasn’t necessary to wait for a penny and a fountain, my birthday, or a train to cross the bridge overhead before asking for big things. and it is my prayer that all along God was listening.  

I Got This

bible study, it’s not my strength. God and me, we connect though.

God speaks to me through people and experiences. and shit does He speak loudly.

through the blue eyes of a 95 year old man who wants us to enjoy his labors.

through the woman who performed my marriage ceremony. twice. who told me i was my own person. who told me i was whole and worthy even though i had done unforgivable things.

through the question he asked me last sunday about what earth meant to me.

through the photo of her on a mountain holding a gun. and happy.

and God,  He speaks to me through music, again and again. and again.

and when i call her crying, in a pile of tears, selfishly trying to make sense of my childhood she listens and sees my pain and says i’m right to question that.

and in his confession that the job search has become near unbearable.

and in her comittment to personal health and her willingness to guide us there.

and the request to have me cook, to use my hands to show love and support and sustain.

from her and his exchange with me when they sing a capella on  any given sunday. it gets me every time. every single time.

through the request to mentor her, to come full circle.

and in a weeknight non-snowday conversation.

and on and on and on and on.

i am moving forward in some ways but hopelessly behind in others. but i am grounded in this view back into beauty. it is always unanticipated, unforseen, and most clearly viewed just after it has passed. like in a rearview mirror. it's small, it's passing. grab it.

love day

fresh off a trip to disney world and i’m feeling i need a break from commercialism. and wouldn’t you know it today is valentine’s day. tom texted me while i was down in orlando with the girls. i was relaxing on a lounge chair and reading email while they were swimming in the pool with my sisters and parents.  i had forgotten my bathing suit and was unwilling to shave my bikini line and then stuff my body into a far-too-small black bathing suit with white trim and a mickey silhouette on it from the hotel gift shop. i wanted to swim but i kept getting this image of jamming a sleeping bag into a nylon bag after a camping trip. you swear it’s supposed to fit and so you just keep stuffing and stuffing but it’s like one step forward and two steps back. crap just keeps spilling out again. so instead there i sat in jeans and an appropriately fitting t-shirt. my phone buzzed with his text:

good morning. are we gifting each other this valentine’s day?

i texted back:

not unless you want an ipad. (he recently and very generously got me one and i know he’s anxious to get one of his own.)

he texted back:

ok, while i do that why don’t you get a massage?

now he was speaking my language.

it’s likely that neither the ipad purchase nor the massage will occur  today, on valentine’s day, which is just fine with me. i’m all set to draw a little heart on the inside of my wrist, anne lamott-style, from “me to me” and day dream about how to love myself and my loved ones more.

i'll start with this one.

the unanticipated goodbyes

My second experience with hospice in the first 28 days of this new year. This time it was my grandfather. I had not seen him in many years and I was too late to talk with him before he slipped into a coma last week. So when I flew down to Georgia to see him I remembered the words I’d read in a hospice pamphlet just three weeks earlier when my mother-in-law passed. The hearing is one of the last things to go.

When I arrived at the hospital I ignored the wave of emotions that came from seeing family I had not spoken with in years, from seeing my Dad who, God love him, has been little more than a flash of appearances in my life since I was nine years old. I went to the hospital room to see my grandfather, my Paw Paw. He was receiving seven different medications through his IV and hooked up to round-the-clock dialysis. His ventilator pushed into his mouth and throat holding it open, drying out his mouth so it got crusty on the edges and his jaw was painfully locked into place. He had a tube going from his nose to his stomach.  His arms and legs were swollen from all the fluid that had pooled in his limbs from lying down for days. Just a few nights prior he had coded and was brought back to life after eight long minutes of CPR. His heart rate had been beating in the 150’s for days. So there he was, a shadow of the proud man with thick silver hair, a quick temper, but endearing brown eyes that I remembered. I held onto his shoulder, leaned into his ear,

“Hey Paw Paw. It’s me, Christy. I came to see you. I’ve missed you. I love you.”

The next few days I sat with family as we told stories, laughed until we cried, and took turns stepping back into the tiny ICU room where Paw Paw lay. My sister joined us after a couple of days and in that short time we learned a lot about that side of our family and about ourselves. Like where my sister got her obsession for a clean house and ironed pillow cases, our inclination towards heartburn and constipation and irreverent humor. And worst of all, the tendency to fight, and hold grudges, and miss out on the chance to love one another, to lean on one another, and to be there when one of us was close to death.

There was a final attempt at a procedure to regulate his heartbeat. A cardioversion. It failed. Then came the acknowledgement that there was nothing else to be done and with it the discussion of hospice. Paw Paw was moved to hospice the next day with one bag each of only two of the medications, the ventilator, and two different narcotics to calm his breathing and keep him still and pain-free. My grandmother stayed by his side, holding his hand, talking to him in her sweet Southern way. Lots of “sugar” and “baby” and “bless his heart.” The room was comfortable. Large enough for all of us and large enough for our stories and large enough for our laughter and our tears.

I have very little experience with hospice but I know this to be true:To be witness to someone nearing death is heart-wrenching and peaceful at the same time. It is an honor and a privilege and a gift and a chance to learn a lot about people. To be present when someone is in such a vulnerable place, fearing or accepting death, feeling surrounded by those they love or hopelessly alone as they cross over, that is like nothing else. To hear last wishes or realize that you will never hear those last wishes, to see the body as it systematically shuts itself down,  to experience the grace and wisdom and forgiveness and purity of a dying person is to be propelled forward into life and forced to grow into that corner of yourself that you thought you still had years to consider before before facing.

And so you gather the strength it takes to smile and cry and speak softly and make a promise and express love and ask for forgiveness and run your fingers through their hair and put your unproductive thoughts aside and lean closely into their ear and say,

“I love you. It’s ok to go. I’ll miss you and I’ll be ok.”

Because the hearing is one of the last things to go.

Questions

what happens when you want to be one thousand things and can only pull off a good fifteen? what would you do or do better if you really wanted to? speak better french, dance well, be the ideal weight, refuse dessert, gracefully remove something from your teeth at the table. give an impromptu toast, speak from your heart without crying, never raise your voice, whistle. sing a simple song in tune, offer well-received words of condolence, bring a gift to someone before they know they need it. wake up early, meditate, do math in your head, stick to a mantra, tell someone you love them. not judge, live in the moment, laugh more, stick to a commitment, decline an invitation, listen without speaking, run a respectable 10K. refuse something, take a deep breath, go to bed, just give the compliment. take a picture, send the letter, read the book, stop and take in the beauty of her imitating your every move.

is life about dreaming or accepting? where does the time go?

please, tell me you drive yourself insane with this, too. what do you wish you for?