More about being open to a life of prayer:
/:it's not about what we're saying in our heads; it's about what we're hearing in our hearts.
Parresia
/(Greek) Confidence, boldness, courage. The word is found 31 times in the New Testament and in the context of speech, it describes words that are clear and straightforward, spoken openly and publicly. In the same way, it refers to the confidence that believers have when they approach God with their prayers. It is not presumption, but filial boldness.
So, shall we chat for a bit about the rest of the story? I mentioned that I had the Velveteen series all queued up and ready to go a couple of weeks ago. And I mentioned that Friday's post underwent significant re-writing. The reality is that I almost pulled the plug on the whole thing. On Sunday before my series was published, a dear friend made a decision to stop blogging. I understood her decision. I get her. I love her. And sometimes, words are really unnecessary. She wrote what she meant. She meant what she wrote and I believed her. But on Monday, I experienced the horror of the internet from a different perspective.
I saw it through the eyes of a friend as someone I love and trust was picked apart. It wasn't my blog or my reputation. It wasn't me at all. Instead, I watched as people, both publicly and privately, questioned motives, cast aspersions, offered armchair psychological diagnoses, and then blatantly stole her content. I was dumbfounded as people questioned whether or not she even owned her own pictures, words, and lesson plans. I was astonished at the lack of compassion, lack of charity, lack of grace. And I was horrified.
My first urge was to pull my own blog down. My second urge was to reach for the phone. I dialed familiar numbers.
We talked and talked. We wrestled big questions. We thought too much. And we shared with each other things that will remain forever in our hearts, because some things really don't belong here in this public space. By week's end, I posted my last Velveteen post.
She undertook the formidable task of making her blog safe in the wake of hate, protecting her memories and the images of her children from people who really would do harm.
Evlogia means blessing. The blog is a blessing, born of courage. Of confidence. Confidence in something--Someone--bigger even than the Internet.
Go visit. You will be blessed.
Daybook upon the Return Home from Away
/Outside My Window
It’s 95 degrees but it “feels like”
100. I’m not a big fan of hot. Not at all. I wilt, droop, sag...
I am Listening to
The songs from the Sound of Music sung
as only my darling little girls can sing them. We went to see an absolutely fabulous
live performance while in Charlottesville and the girls have been singing ever
since. They are also often found to be singing and dancing on furniture (we’re
hoping that particular part of this phase will be short-lived). The show has finished its run, but I'm betting the rest of the season is well worth seeing if you're in the neighborhood (Barefoot in the park? Hmm, might need to plan a trip). And yes, we brought all the kids. The boys enjoyed themselves, despite themselves and even the little girls made it to the very end.
I am Wearing
Denim capris, a pink oxford cloth shirt
with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and new Once Upon a Shine lipgloss in
Sheer Blossom. Isn’t lipgloss grand? Instant pick-me-up, not terribly costly
and one size fits all.
I am so Grateful
for
Restorative time away with people I
love in a place I cherish.
I'm Pondering
concepts create idols; only wonder grasps anything. ~ Gregory of Nyssa
I am Reading
From this list. I tend to binge.
I am Thinking
That meeting Katherine Malone outside
of Anthropologie on Saturday morning was very much an answer to prayer. Bless
you, dear lady, for having the courage to introduce yourself and for sharing so
generously from your heart. I am very, very grateful.
I am Creating
Nothing at the moment, but I have a
notion to call a friend and see if maybe this is the summer to really learn to
knit.
On
my iPod
This
song, sent to me by my friend Donna, early one morning, while I was away. Donna
has a knack for sending just exactly the right words at the right time, so that
there is absolutely no doubt she was inspired by the Holy Spirit. She sure did
this week. Click and close your eyes for just a few minutes.
Towards a Real
Education
Big deep breath in this department. I’m
buckling down to plan in a big way this week. We’re talking utter simplicity
here. Tell you one thing’s for
sure, I already have a booklist and I mean to use it extensively this year.
Towards
Rhythm and Beauty
Well, we’ve done quite a bit of work on
rhythm lately. One thing not on my list but often suggested is a nap. I’m going
to try to get one in every day this week. I’m still not feeling totally well
and I think the extra sleep will be key to recovery. I also plan to get back on
that bike.
To Live the Liturgy
I want to get back into my daily Mass
habit now that I have some big kids around to help me dash out for a quick
midday encounter with Christ.
I
am Hoping and Praying
That I will protect and ponder the treasure gained from my time away from the internet and from the heart-to-heart conversations of the
past week.
In the Garden
My poor plants are hanging in there, despite the
overwhelming heat and absence of rain. The garden is struggling along but I’m
not giving up hope for a comeback if the only the rain would fall freely.
Around the House
I had this little daydream going while
I was away (with everyone under 16). I dreamt that those left at home would think
to themselves, “Gee, wouldn’t it be really cool if we cleaned the whole house
top to bottom while Mom is gone so that she would be greeted by utter
loveliness and grace when she got home?” Then I realized how ridiculous that
was and just hoped they might clean their own rooms. In the end, I was touched
by the thoughtfulness of a nicely made bed.
We’re –ahem—cleaning this week; house looks
like I left college students alone too long.
From the Kitchen
Leftovers
from the party for World Cup final. Well, it wasn’t really a party, just us and
a couple of Paddy’s friends I’d never met before. And after Mass this morning, Nicky
invited Fr. T to come by for the game and he was able to make it. Nicky was
tickled and we were delighted to have his company.
One of My Favorite
Things
Walking the Lawn with my littlest in a frontpack and my three-year-old in a stroller. I walked that walk so many, many times. I could never have imagined being so richly blessed twenty years later.
Sarah
Annie this week
She had a
grand time at my dad’s house. She
stayed awake for the entire production of The Sound of Music. The next day, she
was quite the trooper as we walked and window-shopped and lunched with a
friend. She’s also very fond of frozen custard, the chocolate-vanilla twist, daily, if you please. Pretty sure I gained back every ounce I lost. Someone had to keep that custard from dripping.
A Few Plans for the Rest of the Week
Ummm…I don’t know. I have very few plans for this week. There’s that housework thing calling my name and I see soccer is back on the schedule at least twice this week.
I have a
big stack of books to mail (Thank you! For your overwhelming interestJ.
And we really need to research and make some dance decisions…Then there’s
Gracie’s summer to-do list; gotta get to some of those things.
Picture thoughts:
morning quiet, home away from home
Velveteen Me--New Beginning
/
...once you are Real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always. ~The Velveteen Rabbit
Fifth in a series.
All of the other posts in this series were written a couple of weeks ago and queued up at Typepad, ready to go. This one is mostly being written in real time. That's because I have used this last week, the ninth week, to come to an understanding of the eight previous weeks. I thought I had it figured out, but God had other plans.
On Monday of this week, my first real day back online and the day I planned to integrate all my new habits into my real life, I woke up sick. Sick enough that I didn't exercise. And I didn't pray the Hours. I didn't get dressed. I dragged myself through the day, feeling sicker and sicker as time went on. I did manage to get drawn into an internet dialogue. Spent more time hunched over the computer than I had in the last eight weeks. And then I spent too much time on the phone. At the end of it, nothing good was accomplished and I had a headache and an overwhelming urge to go to confession.
The day ended with me curled up in a ball in excruciating pain from my waist to the top of my head. My entire left side burned. It was the kind of pain that when they say, "On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you've ever felt..." I briefly remembered the time they forgot the meds right after my c-section and said "Nine, but almost ten." All night long, I kept considering how very wrong the day had gone. Did I mention that I also ate leftover brownies from the weekend party? Yep. Blew that whole thing, too. It was as if, in one day, I had the opportunity to see how critical every component was.
Tuesday, I went to the doctor. People who know me know that I never go to the doctor. The last time I had a sick visit to the doctor, I had taken a child to the pediatrician and he made me stay until he managed to diagnose pneumonia--in me. It had never occurred to me that I needed a doctor that day. I have just a wee bit of post-traumatic stress where doctors are concerned. This was not improved by my last [life-threatening] delivery. But I went to the doctor because I was that sick and that desperate. Turns out I've been nurturing a staph infection for sometime now. That might go a long way to explain the recurrent mastitis and the fatigue. I left the doctor, filled the prescription and went home.
Wednesday, I read Amy Welborn. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Amy Welborn? She articulates the good and the true and the beautiful so very well. I read all of Come Meet Jesus on Wednesday. And then I began to read it again on Thursday. It's my new gift book of choice. I think everyone should have a copy and I mean to put one in as many hands as I can.
Wednesday definitely found me trying to make sense of it all, trying to hear what He was saying clearly. Turns out this wasn't an eight week experiment. It was the unveiling to me of a rule of life.
I need to start the day with prayer. Lots of it. And I need to pray it in the rhythm of the real Church, not the Church that other people represent to me.
I need to exercise every single day. (No, I don't mean when I'm sick, but I could really tell how the lack of routine could upset the apple cart even if I felt fine.)
I need to start the day (after the prayer and exercise start) with a shower, clothing and lipgloss, and then some quiet time with the Bible. I want my children to find me in that room, with a candle lit and the Bible on my lap when they first wake up. I don't want them to find me staring into my laptop.
I need to refrain from internet drama, even a little bit.
I need to limit the phone to times when my children and husband aren't present, so that I can be fully present in my home. And oh boy, I need to be fully present. To them.
I can't eat sugar or flour--not even a taste.
On Thursday, I packed up the children and went to visit my father and his wife in Charlottesville. Because even after all these years, Charlottesville still calls my name. I am the child of a naval officer and my parents divorced in my late teens. Those two things make it very hard to know where to go when every bone in your body wants to go "home" to someplace where someone will take care of you for a day or two.
My father and stepmother live in Charlottesville--the only town I've ever chosen for myself. It was my town before it was their town. I went to school there and around every corner are little pieces of me and of people I love.Those are my trees, my mountains; the air smells like home to me. It's a good place to be. Sometimes, when we're very tired, a change is as good as a rest. And if that change takes you "home," all the better.
So, surrounded by people I love, in a place I cherish, it's been easy to reflect on the past nine weeks and know what I need to do every single day to live the seamless life I so long to live, to walk in the peace of Christ. Over the past couple of days, I've had heart to heart, face to face talks with people I trust. I bought new lipgloss and a new candle. I met a friend for lunch and kind conversation and then put two tiny girls in the van and drove around while they napped. I drove past the places where I was educated. I drove past the places where I taught--and where I fell in love with teaching. I thought about how dear it all is--the things I've done, the places I've been, the people I've loved.
And I thought about how dear the time to come is. I want it to be everything God intends for it to be.
The last big question remaining for me has been whether to continue to blog or not.
One of the things I did when I decided to take a month-long blogging break was to sift through lots of old columns and give them to my children as copywork to keyboard. In such a way, I preprogrammed posts and continued to blog, using writing that was sometimes 15 years old. The process of choosing those pieces was lovely, indeed. I spent several hours reading my own writing and remembering things I know I thought I'd never forget.
But I had forgotten.
And it was a joy and a consolation to read them again. I read about our happy times, my moody times, the struggling times. As soon as my eyes met the word on the page, I instantly remembered every column in great detail. I even remembered where I was when I first composed them in my head. My children enjoyed reading them and I think they were touched more than once to see in black and white how very much they are loved. Those columns have value. And it's a very personal value.
The blog is even better. This place has always been the place on the web where I am at home; I am myself. I am real. There is more writing and many, many photographs. It's a family treasury and my immediate family has never been anything but extremely supportive of my blogging. I know that every post is a deposit in a treasury of family memories. Some of those memories are family anecdotes and others are the personal musings of a mother's heart. I think, when I sift through them fifteen or thirty years hence, both will be of worth.
More than my memories though, I want these posts for my children, particularly my daughters and daughters-in-law. I want to connect with the young mothers they probably will be. I want to empathize and to encourage and to support. I want to be for them the hand up, the strong shoulder, the warm hug I have wanted so many times on this journey. I think these posts might help us both. I want to remember the struggle of these years. I want to remember how hard I tried, how much I pondered, how deeply I loved. I want to remember because I want to be able to empathize. Going forward, it is my intent to write with those young ladies of the not too distant future as my audience.
So, why publish?
Because of you. Because despite the nasty notes and ugly threads and hurtful comments hurled through cyberspace, mostly the people who read this blog are very good people. And you wrote to me. You told me how and why this blog mattered to you. You told me your stories and you touched my heart again and again. You sent me birth announcements.
We are given gifts. We all have our talents to bury or to squander or to invest. All my life, God has given me words. When I have been lonely, afraid, without comfort or attachment, He gave me words. I write to make sense of the world around me and I always have, for as long as I can remember. Actually, He gave me the Word and He gave me words. Late at night, huddled under the covers with a flashlight and the Children's Living Bible, I had a very strong sense of understanding that to know this--really know--the God of these words was the only way I could stay sane.And then I scribbled notes in the dark, reams and reams of notes. I write because it's my gift--the lifeline God has thrown me, for me. But, He showed me that when I have the courage to share those words, they can bless someone else. I can give them as a gift. I can articulate something that she is thinking and so help bear the burden of the thought.
As I recently told a friend, if you have a beautiful voice, and you sing the Hours faithfully at home in total privacy, that is certainly a beautiful thing. You are giving God a beautiful gift and you are allowing yourself to be open to His transcendence. But I would be ever so grateful if you would consider recording your voice. When I lay down to nurse my baby to sleep and start to sing to her, she ceases nursing, holds up her hand and says, "Stop." I cannot sing. Your song would be a gift to me.
I want my words to be a gift.
I worry, though. When I first started blogging, one thing several friends who are writers agreed upon was that this is a great medium for people who think in narrative. At last we had some place to actually put all those thoughts. The last few days have me wondering. Are we supposed to think in narrative? I don't think so. I think we're supposed to think--or not think-- in prayer. Thinking in narrative focuses our minds and our hearts on ourselves. Living a one-piece life of genuine prayer focuses both heart and mind on God.
To know Christ is a gift, a gift I am tempted to shelter and carefully protect, lest it slip away somehow. A gift I can scarcely believe is mine. A gift that seems so precious that my first instinct is to protect it deep within my soul.
I think I'm making this all too complicated. Maybe it's really much simpler. Live the life of prayer--make it genuine and true and real. And if the Lord gives me the words and the time, share abundantly.
I know that I cannot control how I am received. I cannot control what people will write and say and do. I cannot begin to take into account every possible situation. I can just remember how much I wish someone would sing the Hours for me in clear voice and how I might somehow bless someone likewise with clear prose. I can share a life of prayer--just as long as sharing it does not cause it to cease being a life of prayer.
I could sit for hours and try to do a cost-profit analysis on pushing the "post" button. And I have. In the end, it doesn't matter if blogging has caused more pain or more happiness in my life. In the end, what matters is whether I have the words and whether I have the means to share them. These words are God's gift to me. I cannot, in good conscience, smother a gift so dear. Instead, I give thanks for this new media. I give thanks for the opportunity to see words come to life on a MacBook in the small spaces of my day when my children leave me in the quiet with my thoughts. I fully understand that those times may be scarce and I promise not to squander them wandering mindlessly online. I give thanks that I can and will tell my children and anyone else within earshot that there is joy.
The whole series:
Velveteen Me~To Desire Him More
Velveteen Me~My Heart in My Home
Velveteen Me--The Years the Locusts Ate
/The mechanical toys were very superior, and they looked down upon everyone else. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel very insignificant and commonplace and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse. --The Velveteen Rabbit
Fourth in a series
This is the part of my journey that is most difficult to write, to share. About six weeks into the project, I had to come face to face to what was really tormenting me. My children are growing up so fast. It's astonishing to me how quickly the time has passed. When I began "the new habit project," I sifted through old columns and set them aside to post while I was away. I enjoyed reading them so much! I enjoyed re-living the moments they captured. I found myself wishing for that girl again. That girl--the one who wrote about ten years ago--that was the real girl I knew and loved. But where did she go? Why did she feel so elusive? And oh, what have I done to allow something, anything, to take her away and leave in her place an exhausted blob of a person who doesn't have nearly the idealism and enthusiasm as the girl she was? I don't want to be thirty again. I'm not looking to turn back the hands of time. But I want to take hard-earned wisdom and marry it to the positive optimism I once had in such abundance.
I sat today to write all about how I've restructured my time and my perception of the online world. but then I realized I've already written it. Nothing has changed really since those three pieces. Kind Conversation is new since then. It has a very tightly defined mission statement and I hold myself to it. Not everyone needs this kind of definition. I do. I use Kind Conversation as my portal to Twitter and Facebook, updating from there because being there holds me to that standard and the prompt is phrased in such a way that I am reminded to promote a culture of respect, dialogue, and friendship. I give social networking--Facebook, Kind Conversation, Twitter--no more than one hour a week total. I set a timer. I keep track. I have to in order to guard the precious, precious time I have. There was a time when I spent more than 20 hours a week nurturing a message board. I honestly believed I was doing the right thing. I was grateful for a ministry opportunity that allowed me to share this lifestyle without leaving my home. I invested my heart into the women there with all good intentions. In my sharing though, I traded the lifestyle. I gave away so much of myself that I lost the real. Struggles on the internet have yielded at last to an insight about myself for which I am very, very grateful. I see that for me, in this season, I need to look away from the computer and sharply limit my conversations there. I can attribute the insight, the resolve, and the ease with which I can keep those resolutions only as a blessing of this time of intense prayer and fasting.
Right around the time I was wondering where all this was leading and why peace was so elusive, I got an email from a friend who was inquiring on behalf of her friend. She was wondering how we decided to go ahead and try to conceive after chemotherapy and radiation. The gist of her question was whether we had researched and worried about the effect of chemo on my ovaries and the precious cargo therein.
I responded:
I don't let myself go there too much because it's really a waste of emotional energy. Christian was conceived in 1991. Six months after I finished chemo and radiation, I asked my oncologist about getting pregnant. He said it would probably take awhile to conceive but that if i could, he thought it highly likely I'd live to raise my child. We conceived that night. I didn't go home from that doctor's appointment and consult the internet. There was no internet access. I didn't get bogged down in medical studies or anecdotal reports on message boards or anything else. I trusted my doctor medically and then I trusted my husband with my life and the life of our child. That's the way our marriage works. We gathered expert information and then asked the Holy Spirit. We discerned that it was God's will to be open to conception and we were.
Wow! The biggest decision of our lives and that's the way we made it. Actually, we consulted two priests as well; both of them celebrated Christian's baptism nine months later. We have continued to make that decision that way for all these years. As my childbearing years come to a close, I am profoundly sad. I wish there more more babies. But I am also consoled by the fact that I know we have been open to every single one of them. I used to say (until very recently) that I have no regrets about these years. Now, I see that I do. I most definitely do.
I regret the way I allowed what I read on the internet to influence my life at home.
The thing that has changed is that now I look on those heavily- influenced- by- the- 'net years and my regret is not that I let my children play with felted fairies. My regret is that while they were happily engaged, I entertained countless conversations with women on the internet. And I let their opinions, their judgments, and their understanding of the faith color mine. Over time, the real me was rubbed away and what was left was a facsimile that was further from the image God I was created to be than I ever thought possible.
I regret that I made school decisions, house decisions, even clothing decisions in a way that was so counter to the way we made childbearing decisions. And I definitely regret the time I spent "consulting" about such things. I have always taken the gift of time very seriously. I regret that I wasted time online. I regret that I allowed online conversations to rob my family of the wife and mother God intended for them. Those were the years the locusts ate.
~~~
"I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter" (Matthew 12:36)
Kyrie Eleison!
~~~
My experience with social networking isn't a unique one. It isn't universal either. It is what it is and I am where I am. The internet can be a tool for the good. It can be a font of community, prayer, and genuine support. And it can be a tool for evil mischief. Some people can engage in online banter or vigorously debate an online correspondent and click the computer shut and walk away, no better or worse for the exchange. Not me. I carry it around in my head. I laugh about it. I cry about it. I mentally write responses to it in the shower. I feel it. I live it. Some wounds run deep. And for those of us who feel those wounds, who struggle still to let Him heal those wounds, internet conversations can be a place of peril.
Let's bring the cancer thought to its completion. When I first got online, I joined a Hodgkin's survivor's group. At least I thought it was a Hodgkin's survivor's group. It was an email list that actually included survivors and people in active treatment. The week I joined, someone died. The first three days, there were graphic reports from his wife, delineating in detail his suffering. There were all kinds of posts second guessing his treatment, and everyone else's treatment. There were conflicting reports of longterm survival and early demise. There was utter confusion and despair in almost every thread. It was the blind leading the blind and they were all going some place very bad. On the fourth day, the man died. I unsubscribed. I was about 7 years out of treatment at that point and I'd avoided groups all that time. I knew myself well enough to know that I would take everyone else's experiences and make them mine. I'd feel their pain, live in fear of their struggles, share their confusion, and empathize so thoroughly that I'd never recover. That's who I am. That's how I'm made.
And I knew myself better than to do that. I don't believe that positive thinking can cure cancer, but I do believe that negative thinking can seriously compromise recovery. Recovery is too precious to me to risk. Ever. I am sure that there are very nice, medically sound cancer support groups out there online somewhere. Do I want to risk stumbling around in the negative ones until I find a positive one? Not really.
About a year later, pregnant with Stephen and feeling so happy and full of life, I found a Hodgkin's message board. I had one purpose: I'd get on and share the joy. I would shout to the world the good news of recovery. It just so happened that on that very day a dad was doing research for his daughter. He asked if anyone had every gotten pregnant following treatment, since she'd been told it would be nearly impossible. Oh yes! Someone had! I was expecting my fourth post-cancer baby. Wasn't that grand and glorious news? To my dismay, people started weighing in on how what I was saying couldn't be true. How "irresponsible" it was to raise her hopes. How I really shouldn't gloat on a board where so many people were suffering. And my joy? It was awash in tears of rejection and fear. Never again with that kind of board. Ever.
Over time, I settled into a Catholic homeschooling mama niche online. Mostly, the conversations were very enlightening and very friendly.It takes hours and hours to form relationships online and I invested those hours. All was well with the conversations there. Except when they snuffed out the joy. I didn't recognize it at first. Hah! I didn't recognize it at second or third or... Instead of clicking away, I tried to see the perspective of these "other people out there who must know so much more about God than me." I tried to believe their perspective. I formed my opinions and changed my mind according to the ideas and "authority" of people online, rather than using the discernment process of ageless wisdom. I listened and empathized and believed and felt until I wasn't even me anymore. I knew more and more about religion and I spent less and less time with Jesus. And the joy? Gone.
Anyway, I was slow to see the same dynamic as on the cancer board. Now I do. Now I know where the places are that I must avoid in order to guard and preserve my own interior peace. And there are lots of them. Apparently, I am a bit hypersensitive in this regard.This experience is mine alone. Why then, do I share it?
Because confession is good for the soul.
Because in writing I can begin to make sense of it for myself. Because the mere fact that I am able to write again means that there is healing. I stopped blogging because the voices of the people who would rob my joy had grown so loud that I couldn't hear myself think.
I shut it all down. And there was quiet.
The good news is that I found God there. I have quieted the voices of other people that have pelted my thoughts for so long and when I stopped hearing them, I heard Him.
Good trade.
Only God can love me back to real. Well, God and the sweet family with whom He has abundantly blessed me.
The whole series:
Velveteen Me~To Desire Him More
Velveteen Me~My Heart in My Home
