let the words spill out honestly

I'm trying to find my voice.

Yes...in my fifties, and trying to find my voice...still.  

In having a reserved and cautious personality, I have often found it difficult to say out loud my true thoughts and feelings, especially in the moment, but I have grown and become stronger and learned to speak up.  I am proud of some particular moments when I've stood up, to the surprise of some, and spoken out my thoughts and said out loud what I really felt.

A few months ago my husband sent me a link to a video on Facebook that was circulating and it so resonated with me and struck such a deep place within me that I sent it to my daughters and to my close friends.  It was me--in so many ways, it was me.  Everything You Ever Wanted is on the Other Side of Fear.  Then, a few weeks later, in a completely coincidental event, I came across a video that I would not have otherwise sought out and that again struck such a deep place within me that it brought tears to my eyes and I found myself watching it over and over and over again in the days and weeks that followed, turning up the volume, listening with earbuds, taking in the message, over and over.  I was embarrassed to tell anyone--it was a video by a young, beautiful, pop-star diva--and it was bringing me to tears.

Someone was trying to tell me something. 

Then a close friend at work sent me an email with another link...you have to hear this, she said--another young, beautiful, pop-star singing about bravery and saying what you want to say--it was all adding up. Find your bravery.

Find your voice...say what you mean to say...ROAR if you have to...but find your voice. 

It's a challenge so many of us find ourselves up against, especially as girls and women.  So here's to us--we who are challenging the world with our voices.  Here's to my 81-year-old mother speaking up for herself in ways she never has before and learning to manage a checkbook and pay bills for the first time in her life.  Here's to my daughter who has found a peace and centeredness she didn't know she had--within her very own heart.  Here's to my shy, quiet 8-year-old granddaughter who wants to sing like Adele.  Here's to my step-daughter and my daughters-in-law who are changing their lives for the better by being brave, speaking up for themselves, and challenging the world with their voices, thoughts, and feelings. Here's to my friend who finally spoke up for herself and told the truth--and then made a very difficult and risky decision that will change her life forever.  Here's to me for speaking back to the vulgar customer at work, for speaking up in my family and with my friends.  For not remaining silent anymore.

Clearly, even the young, famous, rich, and beautiful among us have not escaped this great challenge either. Pop star, working mom, old, young, rich, poor, beautiful or homely...let's link arms and re-courage each other.  Each of us is facing great battles--within and without.  Let's find our voices together.

strangers and friends

Thy will be done.

We sat in an Al-Anon meeting in a rented room at the Episcopalian church with strangers all sitting in folding metal chairs sharing their heartbreak and struggles. They had all had to let go of someone. One young man toward the end of the meeting shared that he was the one who had to be let go. His father sat beside him. He went on to say to us all that there is hope for us all because he was living proof. If God could turn his life around like He had, He could turn your loved one's life around too, he said.

When our allotted time for the evening was up, we all stood and held each others hands standing in a big circle, all of us strangers and friends at the same time. We stood their holding each others hands--touching each other--and we recited the Lord's Prayer together...Thy will be done. God, you get to be God in all Your indescribable power--this is beyond us to solve. And forgive us, give us, don't test us, deliver us-- without you we are nothing and can do nothing.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.  In me. In all of us who stand before You yearning for heaven and wholeness.

I felt like I had just been to church.

sleep...He is awake

I can't even remember right now what all has happened over the past month--but I can tell you that I feel like I've been crawling through a mine field on my belly wondering at what moment I was either going to implode upon myself or explode into a thousand psychological and emotional fragments.  This period of my life is certainly among the top three most prolonged stressful times of my adult life.

This morning as I sat in my reading chair, the house tranquil and silent in the early morning hours, I read...have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones, and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.  God is awake.   (Victor Hugo)

If you can believe those words--and I do--there is a sweeping, swelling, all-encompassing peace that comes.

He is awake...

tidal wave

I am growing older and can't stop it.  I feel more and more helpless, more and more overwhelmed by life, by the 6:00 news, by noise and clutter and flashing lights and honking horns, by the Internet, by too many choices and decisions, by the clamoring of my own inner needs.  I am only in my fifties.  If I'm feeling this now, what on earth is it going to be like in my sixties? seventies? eighties?  Will I even still be here?  It all gives new meaning to what it means to be "out of control."  I'm realizing that its not just other family members who are beyond my control, or their choices, or co-workers or finances--it's every tiny parcel of every day.  I do not know what is coming today or the next hour or the next minute.  How do you stay open hearted and exposed to the good and the beautiful when you're startling and flinching whenever there is a sudden noise or that unexpected phone call or that physical sensation that you're trying to manage? 

Late in the morning I felt hungry and I was out running errands and decided to get one of my favorite meals.  I stood in line pretending that my whole life was in order, not letting on that I felt weak as a kitten and vulnerable as a naked baby bird.  I bought my meal...have a nice day, the girl behind the counter said.  I needed quiet, so I drove to the river and sat in the car and watched as people here and there fed the geese and pigeons. 

I took a bite of my food and watched a man and a woman and three young girls set their picnic out on the picnic table.  The girls threw bread crumbs to the birds.  I chewed my food but felt a tidal wave of grief welling up and out of my soul.  Stay with it, I told myself.  Look at it.  Feel it. I stopped chewing and stared at my food and let it come, swelling up and up like water filling a cavern, rising and suddenly spilling over the top until the tears were dripping down and I had to gasp to breathe. 

It was my daughter and all that's been lost, it was my oldest's suffering I had recently witnessed,  it was about my brother being gone--we are not five anymore, we are four--no more chances with him.  He's gone. It was about the stress and relentless strain of the last three years. It was about aging and about loneliness--these moments that are lived out of the deep wells of our lives are always lived out alone.  They can't be shared.  The depth and breadth and the waves and currents are too much to get out in words. 

I listened to the music playing on my car stereo.  I listened to one song over and over.  I pressed the replay button--three times, five times, ten times, and let the grief spill out.  I listened and watched the three girls feed the geese and then the gulls--the gulls riding and sailing the wind, spiraling up, riding silently down, now this way, now that, a mass of gray and white living leaves riding the wind.  I let what was sealed up inside come to the surface and gasp. 

Having time alone and having the quiet and giving myself space and privacy to let the waters well up and spill out was what I needed. When the waters rise, the leaves and debris float on the surface and finally are washed out when the waters spill over the top.  It leaves the basin cleaner.  A clean basin is easier to manage--less debris. 

It doesn't change any of the circumstances that cause me grief but it does allow me to accept them and make room for them without trying to control them.  It allows for the co-existence of pain and peace.  It takes that festering wound, sealed over with taut, red and swollen skin that's too tender to touch and brings it into the healing air, let's it begin to heal.

burying my brother

On Saturday, December 15, 2012, ten days before Christmas, my family and I buried my brother.  I had been contemplating more and more as I got older what it was going to be like to have to lose my parents.  I was not thinking that I might lose my brother before that.

I received the call from my sister while I was standing outside of the bank with my husband...just standing there in the parking lot about to get in the car and the call came.  He was gone.  He had fallen after dinner, maybe his heart, I don't know, but he was gone, she said.  I wailed, "No! No! No!", but it didn't make any difference.  I clung to the phone that night crying and listening to my parents and my sister crying...we hung on the phone and cried together, several thousand miles apart.

We flew to Texas the next day and by that night I was wrapping my arms around my little mother saying, "I'm sorry...I'm sorry, Mom...I'm so sorry!"  What else is there to say?  The next four days were filled with decisions and planning, sometimes heartlessly demanding.  My mother never looked as small as she did the day I saw her standing in a room full of caskets, nodding her head at one, pain etched across her face in silence, tears running down her cheeks.

I stood at the podium in the chapel, unable to stop shaking, unable to steady my voice, barely able to read the words on my pieces of paper.  All so surreal.  I saw his body and knew it was him, but asked myself silently, "Is it really him?  Why do his hands look so old?"

We buried him on my parents' land, there near the road, there where Mom could watch over him and know that there would be no more suffering, just the absence that we will all have to live with and the loss of all that could have been.  The next morning while it was still dark, I walked outside wearing Mom's winter coat that she has hanging by the back door.  I stood there by the mound of dirt and told him I was sorry and late that afternoon Mom and I planted bluebonnet seeds across the soil and watered them hoping they will come to life in the spring.

You never know what's coming.  One of the hardest things about life is keeping an open, receptive heart when you know full well that tomorrow could bring the shock of loss or betrayal or death...with no second chances.  I've lost my brother.  I know where he is...he is on the other side of that river and I will see him again one day, but today...he is gone and there is a grief that fills that emptiness. 

shackled

My children are adults now.  They are no longer children.  They must live their own lives, and they need freedom from me—the one who wanted to meet all their needs and couldn’t.  My role has changed from the one who was to give all to the one who must let go of all.  Know where they are at every moment for over 25 years and then—stop.  Stop and let go and let them live their lives.  And reflect on all the things you thought were so right and so important and see now that they weren’t important or that you were flat-out wrong.  You were misinformed, you thought you saw things the way they were, but you saw incorrectly.  You thought you were loving, but you were only protecting yourself.  You thought you knew what would equip them best, but you ended up shackling their souls.  You thought they would remember and feel loved, but they remember and feel hurt. 

It's not the entire truth.  It's not the whole story.  But it is part of the truth, and it is part of the story. The part you hoped would never happen.