My Life, A.D.

Two years ago I received an Easter basket from Eric, who was my boyfriend at the time. He proudly presented the basket that he had perfectly assembled and filled with delights. I was inwardly panicked because I hadn’t given Easter much thought. I had no hand-crafted gift to offer. So I sat on the couch in my little apartment and rifled through my basket of goodies. Eric seemed a bit anxious as I took time enjoying my unexpected gift. Finally I reached the last tissue-paper wrapped morsel in the bottom of the basket. It was a diamond ring. I looked up at Eric who already had tears in his eyes. He got on a knee and asked me to be his wife. 

I don’t think I paid much attention to Good Friday that year. I was thrilled, elated, content. My time in the wilderness was ending and I would be married! Eric and I would lay to rest our time as boyfriend and girlfriend and would be resurrected as husband and wife. Good Friday is the darkest day in the Christian calendar. We light candles in memoriam. The only “good” thing about Good Friday as that we know the rest of the story. We know that death is not permanent and that, in a couple days, there will be life. 

 I was driving through our neighborhood this week and passed a small, brick church with a sign out front. It simply read “Waiting For New Life.” Eric and I are enduring our own Lenten season of waiting. The hours turn into days, the days into weeks, and suddenly our wait has swelled to a year and a half. It’s hard to dream, imagine or hope at this point. We don't know the rest of our story. We are stuck somewhere between Good Friday and Easter: we have grieved a death and are awaiting new life. 

A few months after my Easter proposal, Eric and I exchanged vows. A sweet friend of mine has reminded me of something recently: There is no asterisk attached to marital vows. “In sickness and in health*" (* but only if we conceive a child). “Till death parts us*" (*Or until the Dr. confirms that we are infertile). No. We took vows to be man and wife NO MATTER WHAT. That IS a story to which we know the ending. I do have hope because God granted me the desires of my heart that day;  he gave me my husband. My cup runneth over.  

Post Script:

A.D. (Anno Domini) doesn’t really stand for After Death like most people (myself included!) think. I just thought it was a quirky blog title. It translates as “in the year of the Lord.” Which I guess fits, too. My life, in the year of the Lord. 

Cracks in the Glass

Thirteen years ago, I graduated from college with a degree in Social Work. Back then, I was still an INFP (for all you Myers Briggs folks), destined to change the world, or at least hopeful to make it better. I was 22 years old when I applied to the Oklahoma City Department of Human Services, and was hired on as a Child Welfare Specialist. I would become the glue that would try to piece together broken families.

My training was extensive and horrific. We learned of parents who "disciplined" their potty-training children by lowering their bare bottoms into pots of boiling water if they had had an accident. I sat in training, mouth agape and eyes wide. I was a baby myself, really, who had lived my entire life up to that point cozily inside my perfectly insulated bubble. What did I know about abuse, abandonment and neglect? My only reference points for those atrocities was in their total absence from my life.

Before I was eligible to inherit my own case load, I endured weeks of paper pushing. I was a governmental peon who reported to work just to make copies and run menial errands. But one day I was asked to go pick up a child from a youth shelter in Northern Oklahoma and transfer him to a similar residence in Oklahoma City. The task would take nearly 5 hours round-trip. I would have done anything to get out of the office. So off I went.

My drive north was long, albeit uneventful. I mentally reviewed the details of the boy I would be transporting: Isaiah, age 12, numerous siblings, ward of the state. I learned that he had been in protective services for most his life, bouncing from youth home to youth home. I didn't really know what to expect, as this world was still very foreign to me. I arrived and went inside to fetch my precious cargo. He stood carrying his worldly possessions: a grocery bag full of odds and ends and a ratty duffle bag. Despite the genuine warmth of the staff as they said their goodbyes, Isaiah stood numb and detached.

We climbed into my beat up Honda and strapped in for a long drive. I tried to start up conversation, but Isaiah said nothing. I worked every angle I could. OU football was booming and I was well-versed in Josh Heupel stats. I tried talking about Nintendo, music, TV, sports, books. Nothing. The boy was silent. So I just drove. About an hour into our drive, with plains and fields stretching for miles in all directions, a bird collided into my windshield. It truly came out of nowhere and it made the loudest SMACK you've ever heard. I screamed and swerved and looked at Isaiah and his eyes were wide open and he also shrieked a bit. And then we laughed. We laughed so hard we could barely breathe. We were hysterical. We went on and on about that poor bird (and my poor, cracked windshield).

We stopped off at a 7-Eleven for gas. I told Isaiah to get whatever he wanted. He spent his time combing over his options and finally brought his meager candy bar to the cashier. I said, "Isaiah, I told you to get ANYTHING!" His eyes lit up as he went back for chips and Gatorade and an assortment of gas station junk food. We got back in my car like we were old buddies. We sipped our drinks and munched our Cheetos. We chatted comfortably for the remainder of the drive. He could tell by the changing scenery and my deliberate street sign reading that we must have been getting close to the youth home. He went quiet again. He said, "Excuse me, Ma'am? Do you think there is any way I could come live with you?" My heart sunk. I was thankful my sunglasses were hiding the tears in my eyes. I cleared my throat. "You know what, kiddo, I wish you could. I really wish you could."

I couldn't tell him that "everything would be OK" or that "things will get better." He has probably heard those empty promises from well-meaning adults his whole life. I left him at the check-in counter of his new home clutching all he had to show for his life plus a few extra candy bars. That was the first night of many that I cried myself to sleep. God sent a bird to crack my windshield and also to crack open my heart. He made room inside of me for the possibility of fostering or adopting one day. He continues to send birds my way-- fluttering reminders of the human experience. I have never, nor will I ever forget Isaiah. I pray for discernment and direction and clarity so the next time someone knocks on my door, I might be ready to let him in.

Greenhouse Effect

March is a splendid month in Colorado. The thick blankets of snow soak into the parched earth where life is beginning to awaken from its winter slumber. The natives are restless. We are birds flapping our wings against the cage door waiting for release into the temperate air.  

I attended a gardening class at the Denver Botanical Gardens a couple Saturdays ago. I am hoping to start small, maybe an herb garden and a raised bed or two. Lately I have been weirded out about all the garbage Americans consume. I like the idea of provenance:  knowing where something came from. There is value in knowing that the salsa I am eating came from my own garden. Our grandparents ate organically because food was organic back then. I don’t remember stories of “my Great Aunt Norma and her lactose intolerance” or “my Great-Grandmother Vincenza's aversion to gluten.” Back then people were fruitful, and they multiplied. Lately I have started to wonder if my own genetics have been modified.

Gardening is the great analogy of life: you plant a seed in rich soil and, with time and consistent nourishment, the seed sprouts, grows, bears fruit and the cycle of life begins again. We learned about phototropism, plants that visibly grow toward the light. Unlike full and rounded Elms or rosebushes, these plants have  arched spines and offshoots that are desperately outstretched toward the sun. I, too, am phototropic, desperately reaching and seeking the omnipresent Light. 

I love walking into nurseries. The tingly smell of fertilizer mixes with the earthy geraniums. Water features are lined up against the back wall, burbling zen-like,  competing with the steady whir of industrial fans. I used to think that these fans were meant to precisely mimic and regulate the climate of the very organism it was fanning. But we learned that those fans aid in a vital process called “strengthening.” The brisk air blows directly onto the fragile pansy and johnny-jump-ups so their stems will survive the transplant--so they can stand tall against the inevitable winds of life.  

Sometimes I don’t think I can take too much more wind. I retract and slink away into my cave. But if I expand my lens to see the bigger picture, I understand that maybe this wind is strengthening us. It is, in fact, equipping us to better weather this storm. 

My provenance is this: I am my mother and father’s daughter. I began as a seed and was germinated in the womb. I have received tremendous nourishment and am being strengthened by the winds of time. I grow and I seek the Light in hopes that one day, I, too, can bear fruit. 

Walk Monica, Walk

I watched Forrest Gump on a layover recently. I watched it as though I haven't seen it a kajillion times-- bawling when Jenny threw rocks at her childhood house and cheering when Lieutenant Dan walked into Forrest's wedding with prosthetic legs. After the movie ended I YouTubed Tom Hanks' acceptance speech for his much deserved Oscar (worth watching if you haven't) and cried hysterically. Something stirred in me that day, a feeling that has taken form and is ready to fly.

Running is a central theme to the movie, seen first when Forrest breaks free from his leg braces and runs to escape ridicule and harm. Jenny is his cheerleader; she urges him to Run Forrest, Run. Later in the film, Jenny is gone. Forrest is rocking in his rocking chair on his sprawling plantation porch, wordless and unblinking, staring miles ahead.  There is no monologue set to this scene, no narration or commentary. Forrest's expression says it all: his eyes have seen the breadth of loss; his heart has learned the depth of grief.  If there were words, they might be to the tune of "What. The. Hell." Or "Enough is Enough." Forrest stands up wearing his shiny new Nikes and starts running.  For three and a half years, he doesn't stop.

Ok, so I am not a runner. (And, please, Runners, don't write me and tell me that I could become a runner.) It hurts my knees and makes my face turn beat red and causes things to jiggle that have no business jiggling. And that's just after the first quarter mile. (Has anyone seen the Friends episode of Phoebe running? Yeah.) Still, I have this desire to move. I want to break free from my own shackles and fly.  Enough already.

Forrest's Mama said, "you got to put the past behind you before you can move on." This implies if not demands forward momentum. I am blessed with an army of friends and family who are nudging me along, cheering from the sidelines. I still haven't determined if I am running from or toward something, or if it really even matters.  I just know that it is high time I put one foot in front of the other. It is time to get going.

Sink or Swim

I have been playing a lot of J.S. Bach. Particularly, I have been pounding out the notes to one of his Prelude and Fugue sets that he wrote in the early 1700s. The piano was not yet invented; these songs were written for the harpsichord- an instrument having very little softness or sustain. I pluck this piece from the tension of the Baroque era and play it in the softness of my home. I have found solace in playing the classics, the same comfort a mathematician might derive from working equations that demand a precisely certain solution. These songs are rigid and structured and closed to interpretation. Unlike emotional and romantic Chopin and Debussy who would follow, there is a bit of madness to the Baroquians. They belong to an era whose very name means “rough, imperfect pearl.” 

I have been thinking about the late 17th century, the century into which Bach was born. There were no fertility clinics, no prenatal yoga (can you imagine?) and no ovulation kits. Simply, if you could not get pregnant naturally, you were not meant to be a mom. The word barren makes people from this century twitch. We are control freaks; we are not comfortable with permanent diagnoses. There is always something we can do. Bach had 20 biological children. (Go Johann, you stud!) If you read the footnotes, though, you will learn that only 6 of them lived to adulthood. Are the tears of the barren women and grieving mothers from the 1600s the same as the tears I cry today? I believe we march to the same drum. I believe I am playing their same tune. 

Eric and I are beginning to discuss the lengths we will go to to manufacture a child. If we were born into a different era, we would not have the options of labs and petri dishes and injections. We would wear black robes as we strolled through our village (because I’m sure they did that!) and would be marked with a scarlet B on our foreheads. Barren. We would love each other immensely, sure. But we would grimace as the little babes in bloomers and bonnets would crawl at our feet as we walked through the schoolyard. 

***

There was a man drowning in the sea. He trusted God to come down and rescue him. As he was flailing and gasping, a large boat appeared and threw down a life raft. “Climb on!” they shouted from the deck. The man said “No! I am trusting my God to save me!” A helicopter hovered overhead and lowered a rope. “Grab the rope!” the pilot yelled. “No! God is coming to my rescue!” The man drowned. He got to heaven and said, “My God! Why didn’t you come down from heaven and save me?” God said, “Uh, DUDE, i sent  you a helicopter and a boat...”

I too am bobbing in this raging sea awaiting rescue. The question is, what is my life raft? What rope do I grasp? Will I get to heaven to hear God say, “I provided you with the option of IVF; why didn’t you try?“ Or do I intrinsically belong to an era of women who trusted God alone to fulfill their maternal needs. A world where your story ends and doesn't begin with a negative pregnancy test.  Maybe I am plighted to be a gritty, misshapen pearl. Maybe refinement lies just around the bend. For now I will tread water and pray for a boat to appear, and that when it does, I will possess the gumption to climb aboard.