Serving > Ben n Jerrys

Today was one of "those days." Today I uttered the following phrases to my toddler: "Are you really eating a bowl of gravy?" and "Oh no you have burrs in your face" among other winning phrases that could be found should my day had an official transcriber. How annoying would that be? I am more exhausted than I could imagine being and I am waiting up for my Husband because he had some rough meetings today and I want to see how that went and share a cranberry cookie with him. Important note: By share I meant we each get our own but we will both be eating one.

Moving on. Even though my day was sort of a ball of lint stuck with burrs and covered in gravy, I am really pleased with it. Allow me to explain. Today I got the chance to stand up again and throw a few punches at life. For weeks I have felt like the pile of goo in the corner of every room but today some rough things happened in our family and I contributed to being the backbone. This comes as a shock to me because yesterday was one of the worst greiving days yet, depression settled in like a fog and the forecast seemed less than bright.

But, today I remembered a very important truth: Serving other people and being Jesus to them lifts you up out of your own funk. This is good advice, seriously write this down, because when you step up to meet someone elses needs you stop thinking about your own. You put yourself in someone elses shoes and think of ways to make their life better and stop focusing on how bad yours is (eve if it is!). Being selfless gives depression a good slap to the face, we wake up and go: "Huh, I'm going through something awful, but so are other people."

I know somewhere, way back in the dusty parts of my brain where I keep all things learned my college philosophy class, I remember someone very negative and crabby saying that you can't do anything selfless. This school of thought asserts that when you serve others, you feel good and hence benefit from it. Your positive result takes away the selflessness of the act. I guess to that guy (who in my head looks exactly like mike meyers from the SNL sprockets sketches) I would say that even if you go to a soup kitchen to serve pull yourself out of depression, so what? There were far easier options if I was the only focus of my actions. Such as eat an entire pint of Ben and Jerrys white watching an entire season of Project Runway. As I have heard some may be known to do...

God has us wired in all sorts of cool ways, but I think one of the coolest is the desire to forget about yourself that leads to serving someone, which in turn results in feeling lighter and brighter in your own heart. If I were more scientifically inclined I would make that into an eqation... somehow.

Swimming through pudding and a gray Christmas

Kel just took Noelle to buy Gravy. We are eating some thanksgiving leftovers for dinner and our gravy meter was on absolute zero so clearly this was a life or death WalMart run. This leaves me the first quiet moment I have had in days. My craving for this moment overshadows any cravings I have had for all of the Thanksgiving fare available to me in the past few days.

Let me start by stating the obvious. This holiday season has been and is going to be majorly rough. I have had no fewer than seven minor nervous breakdowns contemplating how to pull off Christmas 2010. The only real thing I have come to know for sure is this won't be the merriest of Christmases. I have my three trees up, which sounds impressive but really they're a grove of trees. And no it's not because I love to relate them to the "three trees" Christian children's book. It's solely because I like them, and I like things in odd numbers. Little known fact: we had to add an extra bridesmaid and groomsman to our wedding party bc I have this strange quirk of loving odd numbers.

So, back to this Christmas season, I am ready for the peaceful moments of it, I hope huge to see some snow before its all over. However, the overwhelming feeling I have going on is longing. I long for a "Glory Days" Christmas. Let me explain: In the glory days my Dad was around to pump out Christmas cheer like a snow machine. He was the king of the Christmas bargain and he turned our house into a Christmas cookie factory. Our family had the sacred tradition of hanging the "cosmic santa" ornament, which is, not surprisingly Santa in a space suit and helmet. Only Dad got to hang him and he had to go near the top. I knew what to expect out of a "Glory Days" Christmas. Tradition, Family, Snow, Comfort.

So here we go, Christmas 2010. Both my parents are gone. The home I went home to for Christmas will be on the market. No one lives there anymore, that home is now dead too and cosmic santa is in a box somewhere, and won't be on a brightly lit tree this year. Although I have dibs on him and will try to make it up to him in 2011. I have a blank slate for new traditions for our new little family, but I long for a comfortable Christmas that was all figured out for me. Many of you will get a comfortable and familiar Christmas. Know that I am a little jealous, but happy for you.

Kel and I were talking today about Advent and how the real nuts and bolts of the Christmas story allows for the gray years in between the glittery ones. I really relate to the story of Anna and Simeon. These were the two older folks who experienced baby Jesus when Mary and Joseph went to the temple to consecrate and dedicate him. They had been fasting, praying and waiting for the savior of Jerusalem their whole lives and generations had done it before them. And when they met Jesus, they rejoiced that the redemption of the brokenness of Israel was starting right then. The Bible tells us they could die happy and at peace having met Jesus and gotten to see with their own eyes the baby boy who would be their salvation. They had experienced many gray seasons of waiting and groaning. But that was their glittery Christmas.

Our beautiful Christian faith has room for Gray Christmases and in the story of Anna and Simeon the gray ones outweighed the . But the one far made up for all the years of pining and waiting. Now, I don't expect to have decades of tough Holiday Seasons before I have one that is lively and cheerful. But, I do expect this one to be as easy as swimming through figgy pudding, or banana pudding. I have never had figgy pudding so I'd rather relate to a pudding I know I enjoy. And as tough as this is it's good to know that the hard years come, and I don't have to fake the cheer, I can have my Christmas and be where I am at, it's in the bible folks.

So this evening, in the quiet space of my living room I take as big a breath as my very pregnant body will give me and I commit this Christmas to my God, to honesty, to lots of grace, and to the full knowledge that just because he came to heal all that is broken, does not meant that all that is broken is whole this year. Is there anything more beautiful and cozy than that truth in the midst of a painful gray Christmas? Not for me there isn't. Not even a huge bowl of banana pudding.

beauty and pain

On an hourly basis I am amazed at the blend of beauty and pain that can exist in life all at the same time. I can be experiencing a moment of deep aching pain over loosing my Mom, and at the same time my daughter can be twirling and dancing in the same room, and then stop her dance to come and give me a grin and a kiss. I carry my son and he continues to grow and approach his grand entrance into this world while I mourn my Mom's exit from it. There is not near as much black and white as I thought there was. You can have both polar opposites at the same time in the same room. Amazing, painful, joyful, amazing. The weird thing is I feel like I am observing these polar shifts instead of feeling them.

I think my subconscious response to these dramatically different sides of my life has been a numbness to all of it. It was best described to me as the fizz going out from life, like a bottle of soda, still all the flavor and sweetness, but the bubbles aren't there. I actually hate the numbness because I feel like the intense feelings would be so much more comfortable. It would seem normal to be aching and crying all the time, or to feel really big joy when I fold a tiny blue onesie or look at the latest ultrasound picture. Instead I just go "huh" I can't believe all this is happening to me.

Even my favorites are blander. I just ate pumpkin cheesecake ice cream for the first time. The texture was perfect, Ben and Jerrys knows their shizz. But the flavor, while it was there, didn't explode in my mouth. I want the fizz back. I want to have a food-gasm, or fall into a deep and restful sleep. Instead I feel like I am drifting for now. Just drifting through the fall, drifting through my pregnancy. Like I said I would prefer the intensity, but for know I guess I will drift.

The New Normal

Right now I am camped out in the valley, life isn't okay right now, what I am journeying through is a journey consisting of miles, different states, maybe even countries. I am not going to arrive at any sort of all better place in the next week or so. Now, what does this mean?

It means that I have a hard time being in large groups, I feel small and without skin. What I have on my mind doesn't always lend itself to an atmosphere of mirth. It means that a lot of times I would rather be home, in an environment that quite generally I know and can control. My entire life feels out of control but the walls, floors, furniture and fridge contents of my house I am generally pretty comfortable with. For now at least it means I don't want to put on make up. It may have something to do with the fear of crying off all the mascara. Or perhaps it has to do with the fact that I don't want to pretend to be at a spot of "all good" and for me eye shadow and eye liner flies in the face of how I feel.

This also means that I welcome the company of people who understand the space and time it takes to heal from a loss like this. I relish and savor a conversation about having Faith in the tough spots. I want to surround myself with people who understand that in things like this, God isn't up in heaven teaching me a lesson. He is down on my level holding me and his heart is breaking in sync with mine. Small theology that consists of only rainbows and sunshine are not helpful right now, although I have a grace for all who try to help, comments can certainly be made that are harsh in their simplicity. So I am guarded with who I go to the deeper darker places with, but I am not bottling, I do go there with friends.

I also need to make myself aware that while I will move through this, I cannot go back to the way it was before. The way it was before is simply not an option anymore. I will keep living, keep savoring the moments, keep choosing to see the joy in my life. But I don't have the luxury of being "before me" ever again. I only get to be "after me." This is one of those events on the time line of my life that can be used as a reference point. There are things that happened before this, and things that happened after this. I am now living in the after. And I am okay with it. I could be angry, and demand that life go back to the way it was before. I certainly want that, but in 28 years of living within the boundaries of space and time I am painfully aware that I cannot. I cannot go back to the night my Mom died and talk her out of it. I cannot go back and change the events that led to this pain. I can simply heal, and keep living.

So thank you, for having grace for me, for giving me time to be in the valley. Such a loss merits valley time, and there is no prescribed limit on it. I see myself picking up my tent in stages and moving it out of the shadows slowly.

I didn't order this

When you are going through a deep and painful grieving process, it's a very mixed bag when it comes to what emotion will rise to the surface next. I am sure that you are familiar with the five stages of grieving, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I like these stages in theory but if you try to tell me which one I am currently experiencing, you will likely just irritate me. I am aware of the stages and if I feel the need to label where I am, I will.

Through all these stages both Kel and I have felt this overwhelming sense of confusion and surprise. Just days before mom took her life I was straightening my hair in the bathroom while listening to the song beautiful things by Gungor. Our family likes music while getting ready in the morning, and we have iPod docking options in both the kitchen and the bathroom to accommodate this. On this particular morning I was listening to a song, which I love, called Beautiful Things by Gungor. The first few lines of this song deal with pain and a longing for something good to grow in the soil of your life. I remember thinking to myself, for this first time in a very long time I am not feeling an overarching sense of pain in my life. I do have an intense longing to be a fertile ground for God's work in my life, but I am content with my life, happy with where we are. Dads’ death took me a long time to get over, but on that morning I felt contentment.

Flip ahead two days, when I got another, completely different, earth shattering phone call. It just flat out doesn't seem fair that just when I was content, not proud, not boastful, but content that I should draw the "Go back to square one" card in the game of grieving a parent.

The best way I know how to describe how it feels right now is that I am sitting at a huge long table. The kind you would see in a castle where the two diners sit at opposite ends so ridiculously far apart that it makes conversation impossible. As I take my seat the waiter brings the traditional silver platter covered with a silver domed lid and sets it in front of me. The lid comes off to reveal something so incredibly terrible and awful that my entire body is repulsed by it. This isn't what I ordered. I don't want this. You have to take it away. But as much as my entire being is opposed to the contents of the tray I am steeped in the knowledge that this tray is my only option. And I have to sit in this chair for a long time and deal with what has been placed in front of me, and not only me my entire family.

This was supposed to be a season of joyful anticipation for the birth of our son, Noelle's brother. This is fall, and soon thanksgiving and then Christmas. This is my favorite part of the calendar year, the part I look forward to and savor. How could it be so suddenly defined by the arrival of this terrible thing?

I can say with honest sincerity that I don't point a blaming finger at anyone because this tragedy is now part of my story. In the future someday, I might, but today as I sit on our couch wrapped up in my favorite sage green blanket I am not angry at anyone, not my Mother and not God. I am just in shock that this is the now. I am in total despair at the length of time this will take to heal from, to process. I am keenly aware that there is good in the now, and that there is life still continuously moving inside and around me. I feel hope even though I know it will only truly come to bloom in the days ahead of me. And if I check the guidebook for my personal life I find myself without instructions on how to cope with this exactly. But I know that my God is pouring love into my life in the form of friends, family, and everything I eat that is made from apples. I love and live for apples in the fall, and that is one part of me that seems to remain unchanged. I feel that our family is being lifted up by prayer in an almost tangible way. All of that makes each painful day more possible.

And so I can be here, and feel the exhaustion, the hurt, the shock, the numbness and the pain. I can do this because he does make beautiful things out of the painful parts of our life even when he doesn’t cause them. I can live through this because while this death seems to define today it won’t define who I am. I can get up tomorrow and keep eating and breathing because I believe that even when something incredibly painful arrives and demands to become a large chapter in our story, I know it isn’t the entire story. That a beautiful theme will sing louder than the pain when the book of my own life draws to a close.

Pieces of a Funeral

Not really ready to write about much but I do want to share a few things for those of you who were too far away to experience the comfort that was my Moms funeral this past Monday.

My Aunt had heard this song and really resonated with it and brought it to us to share at the funeral. It's incredibly powerful, painful, but fitting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t8Sk6cZ-PA

Here is the picture tribute put together to remember her life in photos.

http://obit.cookfuneralhome.com/obit_video.cgi?task=Current&vid=13193&id=844580&vidext=flv&listing=Current

And these two scripture verses came to the surface

Revelation 21:4 ‘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.

James 1:12 Blessed are those who persevere under trial, because when they have stood the test, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

It was an incredibly painful hour for me, but I am so thankful that all these pieces and more came together to honor my Mom, attempt to make sense of all of this, and bring comfort to those in attendance.

golden calves

So Kel and I are trying to read the bible in 90 days. And its intense. And we are behind. I always seem to start reading plans and then get stuck in Exodus or Leviticus and give up. So I reread Genesis thru Leviticus or so every time. I'm interested in seeing how the bible ends one of these times. I hope we win.

So today in Exodus, I was reading about Moses up on the mountain hearing from God about how things needed to be run in Israelite life pertaining to the ten commandments and the Tabernacle. And from what I understand he was up there a rather long time, about five and half weeks. And during this time the people got antsy, and bored waiting to see what God had in store for them. So they took the next logical step and built some golden calves. Like you do. And God was so pissed off that he wanted to end them. Moses had to talk him out of it and still God withdrew his presence from them so he wouldn't essentially end them by proximity.

Every time I reread Exodus, (which as mentioned above it all the time) I always try to put myself in a place of humility when it comes to the Israelites. No holier than thou attitude here, I make all the dumb moves they did, and some new ones that they hadn't invented yet. So back to the story, they couldn't wait on God to speak for five and a half weeks so they distracted themselves with other gods. And then threw crazy drunken parties to honor their new bovine buddies.

So I am an impatient person and prone to drama and distraction. I do not like waiting on God for big life direction at all, and if a big decision is taking too long I try to force it, my way. I mean our modern culture has us so preprogrammed against patience and waiting that I am surprised the word still exists. Everything is available next to now. Patience I am finding is a lost virtue, dying quickly and in need of revival.

So I was thinking about what my Golden calves may be, what needless and stupid things do I distract myself with when I grow impatient waiting on the Lord? I can tend to jump to conclusions and then work within those conclusions as if they were absolute reality. I also have a small golden calf of what if and worry. I like to paint for myself and my friends all sorts of potential end game scenarios and then build them up to be large and likely outcomes. Either way I busy myself fretting, dramatizing, what-iffing, and eating ice cream. None of which could be adequately described as waiting on the Lord.

Thankfully the story of the Israelites is one of constant death and redemption. And I don't have to live out their exact story line. My story can veer, and it does veer.

And then Moses said

Exodus 33:13 If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” 14 The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

And so tonight I think I'll just pray that, and call it good.