an honest story in parts: hope

i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (pause) i am married (pause) i have hope (full stop)

this may be the most "becoming not already became" part of the story. in fact, instead of saying "i have hope" i should probably say that i will choose to try and live into hope, toward hope. 

there is *so much* that seems hopeless. needless violence and cruelty - the kind that we used to watch on the news happening "over there" is suddenly happening in our own cities. needless hate and vitriol, increasing disparity between poor and rich, increasing insecurity in our jobs and homes, family structures crumbling under the pressure of quarantine, climate change, global disaster... god, the list could go on and on, couldn't it? sigh. it's exhausting, and when we are all isolated from one another, from the relationships that form so much of the foundation of joy and meaning in our lives, it is harder to see beyond the looming darkness. 

it takes intention to look for hope, to find it. it takes diligence and persistence, and maybe a little foolishness. 

it's there, though. i see hope in the nice boy my youngest daughter met, who makes her smile and flip her hair. i see hope in the joy my oldest daughter has as a young woman doing actual, important research work, who is marching in DC and believing change is possible. i see it in a friend who is thinking about online dating and in text chats with my brothers as we all navigate lives with really difficult things in them, bolstering and encouraging and just ... being there. 

i see a lot of hope after work, actually. most nights, after work, brent and i walk a 3 mile loop through several neighborhoods, some a little bigger, some a little smaller, and we have been struck time and time again how people seem more willing, not less, to wave, say hello, be kind, smile... instead of pretending we don't see each other, it seems like we are trying to see each other more. trying to hope that this small gift of bestowing humanity on each other by seeing will build and grow and be less becoming and more has already become.

there is hope to be found, i think, and if we nurture the small hopes, i believe it will be easier to lean into big hopes. because we *need* to be big hope-ers. if we are just going to throw our hands in despair and call it quits, then we have lost while the fight still rages on. and i hope we are better than that. 

 

an honest story in parts: love

i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (pause) i am married (full stop)

when i left my marriage, it was with the honest intention of never getting married again. i was married at 18 and couldn't imagine a man or a circumstance that would be compelling enough. and then due to the happy accident of locking myself out of the house, i met this guy:

without warning, i found myself loved. loved. even adored. and i found love (and cheesy, smooshy cornball feelings) oozing out of me. it was really the strangest thing. and the most unexpected, beautiful thing. my whole life i had heard it said at weddings that someone was 'marrying their best friend' and while i knew it was a lovely sentiment, i dismissed it entirely as romantic rhetoric, not something that could possibly be true or bear the weight of Real Life. 

but then, this guy. the week we met he bought tickets for us to see my favorite band with vip access (!) for a show that was 3 months away. i was delighted, to say the least, but also figured it was a waste of his money because the likelihood we'd still be seeing each other was slim to nil. i made him promise to leave them with me when we broke up. that was 3 years ago. 

there's a line in one of my favorite songs that says, 'you can be flawed enough, but perfect for a person'. i have no illusion that either of us is perfect, far from it, but our flaws are part of what make us perfect for each other. turns out i *did* marry my best friend... we adventure through the world together, actual partners. we have each others backs.  and our friendship does bear the weight of Real Life. negotiating the tentative relationship with my daughter, which was fraught and volatile for nearly a year. being laid off. buying a home together. a job that had me in tears and wiped any margin or lightness from my life. big financial realities. loss of relationships. quarantine. and those are just the big ones. despite the small stresses and pettiness-es of daily of life, evening still finds us on the couch, side by side, touching or holding hands, every night. i look at us and wonder how on earth we got so lucky as to even find each other - a girl from western canada and a boy from west virginia, meeting in north carolina. i have to shake my head at the miracle of it all. 

but here's the thing. i struggle even to write that all down. i hesitate to openly celebrate all the crazy love i get to give and am given. because i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (pause) i am married (full stop)

the guilt and shame of leaving my first marriage is an undercurrent in my life. it carved deep grooves in my bedrock, that are only now starting to smooth out. i feel like i ought not to be outspoken, or even overly cheerful, about being married to my partner, my best friend and my lover. i feel as though it is frowned up, even dismissed as temporary or unfounded, because i am divorced.... that it is seen as a second class second marriage.

i am totally willing to admit that may be entirely internal and that none of it is coming from people i know or the world around me, but that just makes it even more appalling. even if, especially if, i am the only one i am living apologetically toward, it's a cruelty to my relationship, my husband and myself.

i am the luckiest girl around. maybe there are whole swaths of people who have spent 6 months cooped up with one person and are totally blissful about it, but maybe it's just us. who knows. but i *do* know that i am loved, and i love him. and my life is better, fuller, happier, safer and more joyful because of him. and i am grateful - like super, crazy grateful. i didn't think anything even close to this could be real. i recently posted that i was not going to apologize that we are so damn adorable... and i think it's time i really meant it.

an honest story in parts: faith

i am an evangelical pastor's daughter (pause) i was married to an evangelical pastor for 22 years (pause) i am divorced (full stop)

this story isn't so much about those things as it is about the things that followed, and the things that have come together for me recently. things that are still more exploration than fact, more becoming than have become. 

i have a beautiful friend, Dylan (@the_dylanhill), who is a gay man who loves Jesus.

He recently posted this picture with the following caption: “I’m living proof that you can look like a street walker, and still love the Lord...” This is a funny quote that I say all the time. But it is such a true statement! This weekend I sat by this window in a hundred year old church. This church hasn’t had a congregation in a very long time, but looking out at the empty pews, God’s presence was still ever present. As it is in my life. I can’t tell you the number of times people have tried to dismiss both my love for him, and his love for me. Simply because of who I am, and how I present myself to the world. But here in this empty church, he whispered to my soul, a gentle reminder that we all come in different packages... some more abstract than others, all carrying different things, gracefully broken, and always loved by him. So yes, just like you, I’m living proof... "

what he wrote ricocheted around inside of me... "all carrying different things.. and always loved by him..." when i left my marriage, i lost all the things you hear about ... friends, dishes, the trust of my daughter...and i lost God. i was devoured by a firestorm of guilt and shame, my whole interior world reduced to ash. divorce, and divorcing a pastor no less, was a Sin with a capital S, and i knew that i had been abandoned by God. unable to return to the church i loved, i attempted, twice, to attend a church in the city that was vaguely familiar to me and that i knew i enjoyed. from the moment i sat in the pew, my eyes began to well up and by the end of the first song i was in full-blown tears. i didn't even make it to the sermon. i had the same experience going back a second time, and found myself crouched against the short wall of the parking lot, tears streaming down my face. i had no longer had any right to enter the presence of God... i had pinned the scarlet S on myself with both hands. it was over a year before i attempted church again. 

my friend ashleigh recently said to me quite matter-of-factly, ''you KNOW God looks after babies and fools." it's been over 4 years since i made the incredibly difficult decision to leave my marriage, but i grabbed onto that like a lifesaver, because even now the journey back toward some kind of faith is difficult and halting. and though it may not seem like it to an onlooker, i am still a girl who loves Jesus, and has her whole life. but i can no longer find comfort in prayer, though do sometimes in music. i struggle to connect, feel adrift, and have to look around my life for the beautiful things, the joy-giving things and point them out to myself saying, 'see - God loves you - he is still watching out for you.' but when we found out the roof needed to be replaced, my initial thoughts carried the underlying current of 'see! God has turned his back on you.'

it's as though i live in a schism inside myself - the faithless and the faithful, the daughter and the outcast, the beloved and unlovable. some days, sooty piece by sooty piece, i want to try to put the ashes back together. some days i don't... i seem to myself a lost cause. but i *want* to. i want to find my way back...no. i want to find my way forward.  not back to the girl i was. i have outgrown that girl and her small beliefs. i want to unearth the woman i have become, with all of her experiences and love and hurt and joy, and find God whose love is big enough to hold all of that. 

so i will hold on to the hope that i am a fool, looked after by God. and a gracefully broken human, loved by him. and i will keep trying to dig through the ashes to see what emerges, if anything...

New Rhythm

Today I started my new job... it was nothing fancy; some HR forms, a mildly tragic vacation policy overview, the start of the training webinars and a skype introduction to the people I'll be working with. But you know what *is* fancy? The absence of panic. The body language of ease and a tone of voice that invites you in rather than pushes you forward. I hope that work is productive and meaningful, and that I get to have a positive impact on people who are doing what can feel like a very intimidating thing. I know that I'll get busy and there will be days I'll forget to eat lunch - there always are. But for the first time in a *long* time, I felt hope today with regards to my work. I felt like maybe there is a balance that can be struck, and hard, happy work that can be done. I can't express how foreign that feeling is, and how relieving. 

On Friday I had two friends over who both work in my field, and one of them said to me, "You know God looks after babies and fools!" I laughed out loud, but I do feel that today. God is looking out for this fool, making a way where I had resigned myself to there being none, for no other reason but Their own happiness at having my back. B always says that we just need to follow The Path... we might not know where it will lead, but it's going somewhere good. He has a lot of faith in that, developed over many years of The Path being a hot, terrible mess but then ending up somewhere good. I guess he's a fool, too, being looked after. We are lucky fools together. 

Happy Monday to you, friends. I hope you have a taste of some of the goodness of life today. 

A Refresher

I wrote this in 2015 while going through the citizenship process, but it seems very timely, frankly, and worth saying again.

During that process, I got to thinking  about citizenship, patriotism, community, the world… all the vast ideals... and was reminded of something that happened to me about 7 or 8 years ago, when I was a stay at home mom who spent a good deal of time each afternoon in the carpool line.

5th graders rotated through the responsibility of taking down the flag every day, and from the carpool lane I would laugh to myself as I watched them struggle to fold it and keep it from dragging on the ground. It seemed like a very ponderous process. But when my daughter reached 5th grade, I learned that it’s a big deal (remember, I didn't grow up in America). I didn’t know that the flag wasn’t allowed to touch the ground, out of respect. I didn’t know that the way it was folded was prescribed. During her week of flag duty I watched my daughter’s careful clumsiness, the way she took her responsibility very seriously. Clearly, the way the flag was treated mattered.

I don’t know why, but one day, watching the whole process, I was struck by this thought: We treat this flag with more respect and care than we treat the people who pledge allegiance to it. We are up in arms when the American flag is burned, dragged, disrespected, violated, vandalized or ripped down. It offends our patriotism and makes us angry. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that our symbols and how we treat them matter. But it also matters how we treat the people who share them. The people who live under the Stars and Stripes are all too often treated entirely differently than its flag.

All you have to do is flip through the headlines – racism, classism, abuse, murder, rape, crime, poverty. But it is so much more insidious than even that. We are selfish and inward focused. If we bother to notice people outside of our “inner circle” it’s only to take stock of how they compare to us… they are the measurement of our success or failure. We are casually cruel to the immigrants and the poor. There is very little compassion for anyone who falls outside of our tidy guidelines. We don’t see people. We see “dirty (insert nationality here)” or “white trash” or “rich bitch” … the list goes on and on. As a nation and as individuals, we work very hard to keep outsiders out and insiders in. Everyday someone’s dignity and humanity is violated by our unthinking disregard. But the flag never touches the ground.

It’s interesting – when I say ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag…’ I am giving assent to beautiful ideals – the unity of a nation and justice for all of her people – but they are so lofty and so soaring that they are almost vague … too easily disregarded on a personal level. I’ve been thinking lately, what if we changed the words? What if we pledged allegiance to the people of our country instead of her flag? “I pledge allegiance to the people of the United States of America, and to the Republic in which they stand, one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” Now that is a scarily personal pledge. I give my loyalty to my neighbor, I promise fealty to the landscaper, I will live in unity with the woman in the hijab. I will notice the injustice my fellow American suffers for being black, brown, disabled, poor, uneducated, old or young, and I will stand against it and fight with them for equality. There is nothing vague about those things. Imagine what our country would look like if every child grew up pledging allegiance to each other every morning? What if we treated the people in America with as much respect, dignity and care as we treat the flag?

Well, its only been four years...

It’s pouring rain… like, *pouring*. From where I sit I can see out the front storm door, but I can’t see the road, the rain is so heavy. Despite that, it splatters against the skylights in my living room with the most peaceful cadence - I love it. I have finished my youtube yoga, poured a glass of wine, and here I am. On the couch, with the rain, with the wine, and with you. 

I am trying to start a new rhythm. I took a new job that will hopefully be significantly less stressful, and it is a full-time work from home position. I mean, I’ve been working from home with the pandemic, but in the back of my mind has always been that I will be back in the office eventually, so I never really tried to establish healthy work from home habits. It’s been shower optional, real pants out of the question and hair very questionable. At my lowest point, I hit nearly 3pm before I realized I had not brushed my teeth. But now it’s a real thing, the work from home life, and I’m going to have to figure it out in a way that helps me be not just productive, but also mentally healthy and able to shut the door and be done my day at the end of the day, you know? 

The first thing I did was turn my desk to face the window - what a difference! I see birds and green things and dog walkers and am surprised to find I feel less isolated. The world exists, and it has real beauty. The Huffington Post (read “my husband”) says that establishing a faux commute helps, so this week I started walking the dog around the block before and after work. I am also starting a daily yoga practice - 3 days in! - after the dog walking to clear my head and move my body. If the gym ever opens up again I want to hit the gym at lunch (optimism!) since no one will care if I’m sweaty when I clock back in. (Gosh, do you think the gym will open back up??) And lastly, I want to start writing again. I love writing, and loved blogging when I was a stay at home mom a million years ago. Not because I had a huge following, just because putting words on paper does something inside of me that is so…deeply good. Healing. 

So, here I am, on the couch with the rain and wine and you. I want to figure out my new rhythm. A woman of a certain age, working from home. Showering, walking, working, writing and yoga are my starting point. I’d love to have your company, if you feel like it. Either way, I hope you find your own rhythm, wherever you are and whatever you’re up to.

epiphany or heresay, i will be mecurial

so. there's the whole 'God made man/woman in his image', right? regardless of your beliefs, you must at least know the idea is out there? but when you ask someone - even someone who theoretically believes that - to describe God you get all kinds of descriptors that don't sound like anyone i know.

how can the daughter be like the mother without mother also being like the daughter?

what if God is like me? or like you? what if God is actually pretty funny, sensual, smart, creative and loud? i asked some of my friends a couple of years ago to describe me in one word, and looking at that list, what if those words also described God? expressive, unfiltered, mosaic, open, authentic, brave, loving...

people are always loping off parts of themselves to try to fit into whatever religious or social or cultural mold they happen to be trying to fit in - what a terrible idea. all the parts of us are so, so important - the ones that make us confident and the ones that make us utterly fragile.

instead of loping off more parts of myself to fit, i'm going to start collecting up the pieces of myself lying around and figure out how to reincorporate them. i do not want to live piecemeal anymore - i want to be whole. mercurial as that might be.