Pouring Out

It is more blessed to give than to receive, to be poured out, broken.

That first latch.

Those eyes.

I prayed to be poured out for you. 

For the grace to give.

I am filled to be emptied.  I cannot find more satisfaction than is found in this action.  It houses pain, but so much more joy.  The crystal blue eyes that look up into mine, as I pour out for you. 

The little fingers that grab, grab, grab. 

My hair, nose, mouth, chin, teeth. 

The attentiveness with which you watch my facial expressions.  As you grow into your body, you can interact and engage with a simple look.

We have complete conversations with no words.  Pre-verbal does not mean pre-communicative.

The sacrament of giving, of pouring out, of self-emptying so that you can be filled and live.

It is so much more blessed to give than to receive.  Never has eating served a higher purpose.  This once agonizing act now serves to provide life for two.

I cling to the moments.  You are more efficient now, so the seconds are fleeting.

You are learning how to self-sustain, which will carry you when I let go.  But for now, I carry you.  I pour into you.  He pours into you.

We have struggled.  The sacred act has been at times a wrestling match. 

The arched back. 

The sputtering. 

The showers.

But we persevered, and you have thrived. 

And instead of wondering how long I have to do this, I wonder at the privilege and ache at the thought of it ending.

I am filled with grace, and that grace is poured into you.

Grace fills, and empties, and fills again in the emptying.  It is the ascension of the mountain, only to be poured out all the way down.  And that is why we ascend.  Because it is more blessed to give than to receive.

There are no pretenses, no masks.  We remain unedited for one another.  You have yet to learn how to sensor, and I have no need.

God is in the nourishment.  He is in the pouring out. 

In Him, I am filled, and thus, in Him, you are filled.

We reflect divinity to one another.  So simple, so pure. 

There is hope.

I whisper thanks, and I see Eucharist in your eyes.

Considering Lily

“Consider the Lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin.”

Matthew 6:28

Postpartum OCD is an issue that is rarely discussed in open dialogue, at least to my knowledge.  It is often seen as something shameful, and new mothers fail to reach out for help.  One author says, “I never knew the wheels could fall off of my brain.”  This is how I feel frequently throughout the day.  That my brain is careening out of control, down a never-ending highway of terror and loss.  In any given moment, as I look at my daughter, I see a handful of scenarios that strike terror in my heart.  I feel like I have a glimpse into another dimension, the dimension of “what ifs” that I cannot filter out.  I think that it is somewhat normal to get an occasional glimpse into this dimension, but living there is complete torture.  The fear of what could happen to Lily colors every interaction.  It influences our lives in so many ways.  All new parents have fears.  This is absolutely normal.  Postpartum anxiety and OCD cause fear and stress that can paralyze and cripple.  This type of fear is what I have been wrestling with over the past seven months.  In this midst of all of this mental and emotional torture, I find some solace in the pursuit of gratitude and trust.  May it be known that a chemical and hormonal imbalance cannot always be cured by spiritual platitudes and scripture quotations, but for me, it offers just enough peace for me to hold it together, at least for the next few moments. 

Consider the Lilies...

I can’t protect my daughter.  Something, anything, might happen.  She might be ripped from my arms at any point along the way.  I am not in control.  I can do everything right and something go wrong.  I could do everything wrong, and she could end up all right.  So what gives?  How do I live? 

Consider the lilies…Why did we name her Lily?

They do not toil nor do they spin….She’s not mine.

How they grow…She’s His Lily.

Anxiety has been my anthem for years.  This is the same song, different verse.  My anxiety just picks new people and things to hone in on.  Lily is its prime target.  

But how ironic that God would give her a name so reflective of the garment of trust that He desires to wrap around us.  Maybe God chose her name knowing how much I would struggle with the fear, knowing that I need constant reminding of my daughter's Provider and Keeper. 

Do you not know your Father? 

The one who named your child?

Do you not know that He loves you and He loves her? 

Do you not know that he knows the number of hairs on her head?

Do you not know that her very life is a miracle, one that was birthed out of a broken and dry body?  The medical marvel of fertility after a lifetime of damage?  Can you not see that she is His, not yours?

He whispers to me, “Let go.”

It’s not on my shoulders.  I don’t have to carry it.

Care for her with gratitude, with thanksgiving.  She’s a gift.  Enjoy her.

In Him, she was created, is sustained, and has her being.  Not in you. 

Megan, you are not God. 

In life and in death, we all are His, not our own.  In disaster and crisis, we are His.  When the unthinkable happens, we are His.

The fear and anxiety negate joy.  How can I revel in this blessing when I am riddled with the gut-churning terror of loss?  How can I step out of the terror when it seems to swallow me whole?  In thanksgiving, I recognize that I am not in control. In gratitude, I lay down my sense of my own self-worship.  And then a tint of joy colors my life.

So I still feel anxious.  I have irrational brushes of sheer terror.  I have visions of death. I long for the day that my OCD doesn’t write death all over the screen of my life. But I have thanksgiving and gratitude.  I have joy in knowing that I’m not the one in charge.  So far, I am not cured.  But when my brain is threatening to careen out of control at unimaginable speeds, my heart whispers the truth of why my daughter is named "Lily." 

Leaning into the Longing

I recall an experience with a magnificent sunset.  I was pulled into its beauty.  I literally chased it along the Kentucky trails, until the last light disappeared behind the horizon.  The loss of the sunset felt catastrophic. 

Here in Kansas, sunsets are incredible.   I navigate the road, trying to maintain my driving skills while adoring the splattering of colors draped along the tips of the trees. I feel profound loss as the sky transforms to the darker hues of dusk. 

Still on the topic of glory…Glory is a big thing.  Beauty.  Beauty is a big thing too. The beatific vision.  When you reach, reach, reach, almost touch it….but it is gone.  The loss of beauty is devastating. The good dream from which you suddenly awaken to realize that you are back in mundane reality, and the baby is crying. 

Plato understood this in his cave.  Augustine captured it in his beatific vision.  C. S. Lewis talks about it in The Weight of Glory.  Ann Voscamp encapsulates this concept in One Thousand Gifts.  

Why does beauty produce a longing, yearning?  An old ache exists, a brush of ancient nostalgia, but not for something from this lifetime.  As C. S. Lewis says, this earth is merely a symbol of something else, and we will outlive nature.  The stars will burn out.  The galaxies will collide.  

“Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on a flat paper.”

Why do we as a people long for art, for beauty, for the representative?  We will not be fully happy, fully satisfied, until we can fully grasp the true beauty of Creator God.  While we search  for this complete and total satisfaction on earth, we will not find it.  Could it be that contentment is leaning into the longing?  Is it being happy and satisfied in the dissatisfaction, knowing that it will ultimately be fulfilled in the final Vision?  

“We see now but in a glass darkly, but then face to face.” 

1 Corinthians 13:12.  

Can we continue to run after the visions of beauty, the penciled drawings on scrap paper, embrace the longing, and know that one day, the veil will be lifted?  There is great joy to be discovered in the beauties found in this lifetime, and even greater joy in the awareness that they can’t compare to the beauty for which we were created.

Putting on the "Weight"

For a brief second the veil is lifted.  A crystal clarity cascades in its place.  What is this glory?  

The glimmer solidifies and reality becomes clear.  

The message of the scale shifts, and once again our culture is found wrought with insanity.  This image, our culture’s glory, stands, gaunt, pale, and minuscule.  She is made of gold, and we worship her.  We become her, and we drain ourselves of the weight of glory. 

When did we turn inside out and upside down?  We worship weightlessness and emptiness. We purge the glory of God from among us.  The cold wind blows through our emptiness, lifting our feet from the ground, and we shiver.  In our insanity, we believe that the swelling of the emptiness will somehow satiate our hearts.

God’s glory, “kabod,” is derived from the root word “heaviness.”

When did weight become something that we were afraid of?  

When did lightness become more desirable?  

I want more glory, for God to weigh me down.  I crave heaviness, not lightness.  

God reveals his weightiness, heaviness, glory, through the beauty of nature: 

The mammoth descention of a sunset. 

A swollen, silver moon.

An overflowing waterfall, gushing, bursting forth from a towering cliff.  

When did we decide that the lighter we were, the more beautiful we could be?  Do I want the weight of glory to break my scales and my body to barely tip them?  Is this one way that the enemy makes a jab at God through this culture’s worship of thinness?  Is it a slap in the face of his glory, His Kabod, His heaviness?  The enemy grins with the satisfaction of knowing that he has led God’s people to worship the opposite of glory.  I want to live a life saturated and heavy with the glory of God.  I want fullness and richness.  I don’t want a gaunt, wasted, feather-weight life.   The weight of glory is a weight that is often rejected and replaced with mirages, infinitely weightless, insubstantial, and fraudulent.  So here I stand, holding to the clarity of this brief second, ready to put on some healthy “kabod.”

Why I don't want recovery

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? 

Isaiah 43:19

I cringe when I hear the word recovery. 

Recovery of what was lost. 

Recovery of the old. 

Before the disaster struck.

Before the choices were made.

Before life crumbled.

Before everything was stolen.

Recovery to the previous state of being. 

Like the suffering never happened.

Like the pain was meaningless. 

Granted, recovery is sometimes preferable to the present state of affairs.  Recovery trumps addiction, brokenness, and estrangement.  When life is in shambles, what used to be often sounds infinitely more desirable than what is.  

Recovery means the return of something lost, or the act of restoring to a previous condition.  I may be a bit presumptuous in my hopes and expectations, but I think that I want more than recovery.  I don’t want to go back to life as it was before.  

I want something new. 

Something fresh.  

I want something that looks like a promise, and the promises that I have seen cast large shadows on the word “recovery.”  I struggle to find a word for this promise.  Possibly transformation, or redemption.  The process of healing houses a world of change that steps outside of the realm of recovery.  

No, I can’t go back to where I was before.  I know too much, have been through too much, have seen too much.  

I am being made new.  

I will never be the same.  I never want to be the same.  

The “me” that I experience now is a deeper, more genuine Megan than I ever knew before the eating disorder and everything else.  Forgive me for this statement if it is too brash, but “recovery” would be utterly devastating.  Simple recovery would render my suffering meaningless.  I do not believe that all of this could have been in any way meaningless.  All of this suffering, heartache, and pain is profoundly teeming with meaning. 

I want change.  

I want new life.  

I want fresh.  

Paradoxically, in this newness of life, I discover that I am more myself than I have ever been before.  There is an old Megan, an ancient, ageless Megan that emerges from the rubble of the catastrophe.  She is recovered, but she is so much more.  She resembles the old Megan only in that she has grown into the promises that were once only evasive shadows.  Those promises actualized, she is discovering new promises.  This life is encapsulated in the building of cocoons, emerging new, and repeating the process, until our final emergence from this earthly chrysalis into glory.  

Oh, recovery is so insufficient.  Call me demanding, but I want more.

Morning Goodbye

Your phone alarm jolts us out of sleep.  My eyes wander to the clock. 5:47 AM.  

How many feedings throughout the night?  At least four.  I can’t really remember. 

But I remember that little hand creeping up, tugging my lip and wandering to my nose.  The rhythmic motion of the rocking in the dark room, lit by her little aquarium night light, with her name in pink sparkles on the wall.  Drifting in and out of sleep, waking to see her still eating, still tugging my lip with her little fingers.  She’s compelled to trace the features of mommy’s face in the wee hours of the morning.  

Between tracings, we slept at least a little last night, I think.  

Now, I drift away while you shower, and before you return I hear the chatter in surround sound.  She’s only a door away, but I keep the monitor sound turned up.  Safeguard.  We do crazy things for peace of mind.  I listen, tuning in for signs of distress.  If she is content, I will stay, wrapped up for a few more sacred moments, clinging to the hope of more sleep.  

You come in from your shower.  “I think she’s stirring.”  I wish that you could stay.  

For a millisecond, I have a vague memory of sleeping past 6:30 AM.  I will myself out from under the warmth of the covers, glancing at the monitor one last time before the morning greeting.  

I adore the first recognition of the day.  I stumble in her dark room with a forced cheerful “good morning.” Her smile, the sunrise, greets my blurry vision, clearing it in an instant. Suddenly genuine joy infiltrates my visage. Her baby jabber sounds something like, “YAY! Mommy’s here!”.  My heart leaps.  

The deep comfort of coffee wanders to my nose, and I remember that you have my back. You programmed the pot last night. I am infinitely grateful.  She bounces in her jumper, jabbering at the kitties, who keep a cautious distance.  Her affection still looks like pulling of hair and tugging of tails.   

As I sip the rich dark gift that you left for me,  you hesitate for a few seconds. I know that you would rather stay and play.  I inwardly sigh and say goodbye.  A lingering kiss.  You call her “Bug.” She flashes you a smile, giggles, and returns to the plastic sunshine, bouncing a bit more enthusiastically.  We watch you go, and look forward to your return.  She can't communicate it yet, but she wishes you could stay. We miss you more than you know.

Kairos

Is there time to become engulfed in this second?  

This millisecond?  

Could this moment house a million blessings, or even just one?  

Will I whirl past, unseeing, unknowing?  

Eternity is found in the now: 

In the blink of an eye, in a gasp of breath.  

What is next?  Why does it matter? 

A ray of sunshine. 

A drop of rain. 

A flutter of a wing.  

A sip of coffee.  

I lose the now, entangled in the next.  

Pause...Soften... Listen. 

Glory is here...  

He is here.

It is elusive... 

and now it is gone.  

Don’t hold on too tight.  It slips through your closed hand.  

Bite, chew, and swallow.  

The wind is here and then gone.  

Your “is” becomes “was.” 

Be in the Kairos:  A cosmic collision of the sacred and mundane.  

Chronos retreats when Kairos approaches.  

Kairos, swollen with expectancy, bursts open, spraying meaning over the chronos.  

Kairos, where God hovers over the formless and creates.  

Glory. 

His Glory is here, now.  

Let this pregnant moment give birth to life.

Trapped

Everyone knows that some addictions are destructive, but some addictions make their victims look like heroes.  I am a runner with a history of exercise addiction.  This addiction was literally crippling.  As the weather has gotten chilly, I headed to the gym.  While I have healed tremendously from this addiction, the tendencies still lurk in the corners of my mind.  I have to be constantly on guard.  While at the gym, I often see individuals who remind me of myself four years ago.  The look in their eye is impossible for me to miss.  It makes me want to cry.  I often want to run up to them and tell them that there is hope.  But I know that this would be offensive, so I mind my own business.  These glimpses, however, inspired me to communicate the internal state that I experienced not so many years ago. And if any of you are reading, there IS hope. 

Frenzied, frantic, full-speed ahead.  

You cannot stop, can’t even slow down. 

The numbers, constantly rushing forward.  

Faster. 

          Longer. 

                      Steeper. 

                                   Harder.  

You never get there, because you are stuck.  

Puddles form. The “weak ones” come and go, come and go.  But you keep going.  Playing games, tricking your mind. Not three hours, but sets of 15 minutes.  Anything to make it go faster.  But you are in the whirlwind.  

Reason and rationality give up and wander out of the building, leaving you alone with your madness.  And the machines.  The gods. This is your sanctuary, your temple.  Your gods are slave-drivers, and you are never enough.  

The looks creep over, but they avoid eye contact.  You know that your eyes say, “Stay away.  Don’t you dare threaten my worship.” You are immortal, you truly believe.  The room may spin, stars may dance, but you will not relent.  

You are a king.  

Oh, but you are a slave.  The whip snaps. The tyrant screams. No coach is this inhuman.  You plead with him.  But he never lets up.  Your sanctuary is a maximum security prison, and you want nothing more than to escape.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe next week. Well, maybe in a year.  

You descend, legs jello.  Don’t stumble. Hold steady. No one can know that you are faltering.  

You can do anything.  You can outsmart the machines, the weak ones, the nay-sayers.  You are the exception. And this won’t kill you. 

And it is over.  You are released. Reserves poured out before your gods, you have nothing left for the rest of life, but really, nothing else matters.  You achieved your goal.  You revel in your victory and then remember that tomorrow is only 24 hours away.  You look down to see the ball and chain.  A wave of nausea sweeps over you.  The renewed awareness that you are no master or king, but still a slave.  Your prison, the gym.  

You lift your eyes, searching for someone.  But you scared them away.

Be!

“To be given a name is an act of intimacy as powerful as any act of love…To name is to love. To be named is to be loved.”… “Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named.  And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.”

Madeline L’Engle

“To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it.”  

Alexander Schmemann

What’s in a name?  I touched on this topic earlier in the week, but it seems to be resurfacing. Why is the naming process so important?  Why are there so many books filled with baby names?  Naming a child is one of the most sacred acts of parenthood.  To name is to ascribe meaning.  

I can’t imagine how Adam felt.  I wonder if it was exhilarating, or overwhelming, or both.  You, Adam, get to name every living thing on this planet.  Name every animal, insect and bird that you see.  What a task! I wonder how long it took to ascribe a title to all the animals! I also wonder where he came up with some of those crazy names!

When Jordan and I decided on a name for our daughter, I was so thrilled. Lily was a name to which I had clung for years.  She is light, beauty, and purity. She is Grace, “charis”, love.  God created our daughter, and we have the responsibility and joy of naming her.  In this act, we experience God. Through naming, we communed with Him and with our daughter. 

What if no one had a name?  What if we were numbers? How sterile and sad would that be?  In Les Miserables,  Jean Valjean is known by Javar as a number, 24601.  This identification robs Jean Valjean of his identity.  Historically, “un-naming” people has made it easier to torture and kill.  Oppressors rob individuals of their names. 

In Isaiah 43:1, God says to Israel, “I have called you by name; You are mine.”  In this passage, He also says to “fear not.”  Is there something about being named that eradicates fear?  Madeline L’Engle seems to think so.  In her Time Quartet, the most and destructive fate is the fate of being “un-named.”  In this experience, the individual is snuffed out, or destroyed.  To be named is to emerge out of chaos and confusion. When that name is stripped away, the inchoate and formless state of being re-emerges.

Often, Jesus re-names His disciples and followers.  God re-names individuals in the Old Testament.  Abraham becomes Abram. Saul becomes Paul. Simon becomes Peter.  When assigned new names, these individuals exhibit different characteristics. They seem to grow into their new identities.

These thoughts bring me to a more practical idea. I believe that there are times that we “un-name” ourselves.  Over the years, I have been one of L’Engle’s echthrois in my own life.  My list of destructive names for myself is probably pages long. 

Unloved.

Evil.

Fat.

Annoying.

Stupid.

Ugly.

I have to stop now.  I feel the power of these names even as I type them.  What better way is there to destroy our true identity than to un-name ourselves? 

God has called me by name.  Megan. I am His. 

Beloved.

Holy.

Lovely.

Redeemed.

Daughter.

Friend.

Accepted.

Saint.

Temple.

Righteous.

Heir.

Chosen.

Blameless.

Alive.

Light.

Complete.

Life is bestowed in the act of naming.  Today, I will let God name me, and I will participate in His Divine nature by naming with words of truth and life.

Nap Time

You refuse to be put down today. Besides the occasional pesky need that I have to eat, I don’t really mind. Sleep training can rest for a while. You grasp a small clump of my hair for comfort. It hurts just a little, but I love that you hold onto my hair.  So exhausted, you refuse to close those big blue eyes, vast as the sea. You search my eyes, and I search yours.  That gaze…you take in my soul. Somehow, you seem to know the song of my heart even without language.  We converse through these windows. We pour out our hearts to one another. You desperately cling to wakefulness as you cling to my long hair. I study your almost invisibly blonde eyebrows, which predicted your hair color long before you lost your dark newborn locks. Your eyes flutter and then close, highlighting those lashes that stretch for miles. I brush your hair with my fingertips. Daily, it thickens, as your nascent bald spots disappear.  I analyze the healing process of the scratches made by your wandering hands, as you have yet to grow fully into self awareness that will soon prevent you from clawing your own face.  Your rosy cheeks display the evidence of the dry winter air in their chapped, barely discernable cracks.  Your lips, the most striking reflection of your daddy, rest in a content downward curve.  The remnants of sweet potatoes from lunch linger on the corner of your placid mouth.  As you fade into slumber, you have the sweetest snore, more resonant to me than a complete orchestra. I am alive.

This Gift

The sun was just peeking up over the horizon on a beautiful May morning when I made my debut.  Air flooded my lungs, and I was given a gift.  

Life. 

I am convicted this morning of my intense longing for heaven.  I certainly don’t believe that it is wrong to long for heaven.  In many ways, it is so very right.  Yet, there is a reason why God created this earth and why He gave us bodies of flesh and blood.  There is a reason for this smattering of years that we exist on this planet.  Despite the effects of the fall, I think maybe that God has something for us to experience here and now, in this lifetime.  Instead of a curse, maybe this life is a gift.  

Though it is a cocoon, and though I long for the rebirth of heaven, maybe this earth-bound cocoon houses its own joys.  How do I make the most of this stage?  How can I live with the awareness of the gift of breath and blood flow? 

Brother Lawrence understood something that few of us grasp. God is in the dishes. God is in the scrubbing floors.  God is in the production line.  God is in the changing of diapers. God is in the steaming of milk and dropping of shots.  God is in the smiles and the holding of doors for strangers. God is in the changing of lanes on the commute.  

These little gifts. 

This big gift of life.  

Let me not lose sight of the truth of who you are today, oh God, in the “mundane.” Help me get my head out of the clouds long enough to see a little more clearly that You have been HERE all along.  You aren’t just out there, in the vast beyond of eternity.  You are here in Wichita today in 2014, and you are there, in the New Jerusalem descending when time collides with timelessness.  

Let me not use my longing for heaven as an excuse not to engage in today.  I am privileged with this life.  Help me to live it fully and gratefully.

On Pregnancy after Miscarriage

I remember the day that I found out that I was pregnant with Lily. I was furious.  It was the end of October, a couple days before Halloween.  Previously, I had not known just how fragile these little lives could be.  The discovery of this new life was shadowed by the loss of the previous child. My “baby blue,” as I called it, named after the clear ocean off of the Cayman Islands. It seems so calloused to call my first child an “it”, but I never knew.  I never found out if it was a boy or a girl.  It slipped into the ocean, unknown, unnamed.  But not unloved.

I was not ready to have another baby growing inside of me again.  I could not lose again.  Not another life, not so soon.  I would have been 18 weeks along, past the terrifying first trimester.  But now, I was 7 weeks along.  That tenuous time, where she hung delicately, so precariously.  I couldn’t take it.  It felt like God was teasing me. 

A time of hope and excitement was shrouded by the lingering crippling grief from the loss of my first child.  The child with no name, the child lost somewhere in the Cayman Islands, confirmed by a doctor on the trip that was supposed to be a honeymoon.  The happy vacationers in the cabin next door on that Carnival cruise laughed at the wails of a mother who had just lost her baby.  If they had known the origin of the cries, I am sure that they would have swallowed their mockery. I'm sure that they weren't malevolent. Probably just drunk.   The agony of grief was out of place on a ship called “Freedom.” 

They said that it wasn’t because we went on a cruise.  It would have happened anyway.  They said that it wasn’t because of anything that I did or didn’t do.  They said that it wasn’t my fault.  I didn’t kill my baby.  It could have been anything.  In the Grand Cayman, seeing the empty ultrasound, holding the hand of my grieving husband, knowing that we were supposed to be enjoying a tropical beach excursion, I sucked it up.  Sitting on the little boat, looking into the clear blue water, I felt numb, in shock. 

The claustrophobia of the tiny cruise ship cabin was too much to handle.  The laughter and the celebrations of the other passengers on “Carnival Freedom” juxtaposed the deepest grief that I had ever experienced. 

In the hot months of the summer, I had celebrated that first positive pregnancy test.  The world had opened up for me with that double line.  A surge of excitement and expectancy struck me like a lightning bolt.   The second set of double lines two months and a thousand tears later sent a different surge.  Terror, anger, and grief echoed through my broken and raw heart.  No one had warned me about pregnancy after miscarriage.  I shut down.  I tried not to care. I couldn’t tease myself with excitement.  I couldn’t handle a second broken heart.  If it wasn’t my fault that I lost the first one, I couldn’t do anything to prevent it from happening again.  I was helpless.  I could only wait and hope that my body would not fail this second life.  I held my breath and couldn’t dare to step into celebration or expectation.  

But at Christmas, we made it through the first trimester.  Then the second.  And then she came, perfect.  This child, this little girl, was given a name.  Lily Grace. I love her with every fiber of my being.

It is strange to think that if Baby Blue had not left us on that cruise ship, Lily would not be here.  I love her with all of my heart.  I also love my other child.  Grieving a miscarriage is difficult.  Figuring out pregnancy after miscarriage is also agonizing.  

I remember coming home from the cruise and seeing the September sunflowers lining the Kansas roads.  Kansas is beautiful in the fall.  In my pain, the sunflowers whispered messages of strange joy.  I simultaneously hated and loved the Kansas sunflowers. This fall, Lily was three months old when the sunflowers bloomed again.  Once again, they spoke, reminding me of my Baby Blue and celebrating my sweet Lily Grace.

Humbled before the Word

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” 
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Words frustrate me.  Historically, I delighted in them. I thought that if I used them well enough, learned enough about them, or arranged them in the perfect way, that I would hold the keys to the kingdom.  I just knew that the secrets to life were found in words.  Later, I grew disillusioned with those miserable little excuses for expression.  I am sure that in this frustration I was being arrogant.  It seems that most of my frustration is rooted in some kind of pride. What is more arrogant than thinking that you are “above” human communication? In my anger with language, I grew angry with the Bible.  This seems intuitive. What follows frustration with words but frustration with the Word of God? Ultimately, this would lead to frustration with Christ, the highest Word of God.  It also followed that I would boycott writing, hence the four-year blogging hiatus. Who blogs when they hate language? This anger at language was something that I had never really felt before.  When you get right down to it, what do you have to stand on if you cannot stand on language and spoken word?  I am no linguistics expert, and I cannot pretend to be one.  I have never really studied the philosophy of language.  Ironically, in my anger at language, I tend to be a grammar tyrant.  I guess that we hold onto some form of structure even when we question.  What is more terrifying than a formless void?  I find the idea of a black hole of absence of expression pretty difficult to reckon with.

To me, our language seems derivative.  It is also representative.  Words represent objects or experiences.  The objects or experiences precede the language that is used to represent them.  The concept or idea communicated through language is nothing without its embodiment.  Or is it? There is a need or a longing to be communicated, or “named.”  I am currently reading Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”  In this series, life comes from being “named.”  Beings exist in her universe, called Echthroi, and their primary job is to rob creatures of their names. As the Echthroi un-name, they destroy.  The connection between word and life is mysterious to me.  In my animosity toward the spoken word, I believe that I inadvertently became an enemy of life.  I cannot decide that words are void without on some level claiming that Christ is nothing.   Who is He but the Word, or the logos? Christ, the word, the Logos, was with God in the beginning.  So really, is language truly derivative? God SPOKE the universe into being.  God chose words to communicate and endow life into nothingness.  What greater God-expression is there but the Logos, Christ, the word?  Who am I to choose silence? This human communication that I thought that I was so far above?  Where is this birthed but in God’s communication?  Surely there is more to it than meets the eye, or more aptly, the ear, but on this planet, in this lifetime, it seems that language brings us into greater understanding of God.  Our proclivity toward verbal communication seems to be a reflection of the Imago Dei within us.  The frustration with our limited range of language should point me to the hope of heaven, where I am sure that the Word is much more complete.  At this point, however, I am pretty sure that this awareness should not prevent me from communication and expression through language. So for now, I suppose, my vow of silence is broken.  I will join my Creator’s song in the language that I know, with eager anticipation of the Word that will be unveiled when I see Him face-to-face.