Category: Faith

Hold the Bridge

The last 48 hours have torn our social fabric into pieces.

Again.

It is such a human, natural reaction to take sides and dig in.  To hold the line.

In my tiny little slice of the world, I have huddled like a turtle in my shell, watching my social media and the comments of news articles. My friends who are people of color are speaking a painful, challenging and sacred rage out into the holy space and demanding change. Our beloved Medford Police have gone almost silent in their presence, out of respect but also fear and care.

 In my circle, because I know all my people, there are no pitchforks.

No pie forks either.

Folks are wary. Waiting for someone else to make the first move and dictate the mood.

This is not the way.

Philando Castile was a good man serving children. I can carry his loss in my hands at the same time I carry the horror of those officers in Dallas who came to a protest without body armor to show that they were not the bad guys—and were shot down in the street.

I do not have to take sides to fight for justice. I can carry both.

We can carry both.

And when we carry both as a people, we do the most important work of all—patiently and steadily holding the bridge. We’re going to need the bridge later, to repair and heal.

Others may hold the lines drawn on the battlefield. There is a season for that. We have all found ourselves holding the lines.

But if that is not where your heart is called, and if your hands are large and loving enough today to carry both, come hold the bridge.

Pitchforks

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We used to play a game with our students before we read Arthur Miller’s The Crucible called Pitchforks or Pie Forks?

We gave the kids a list of the characters with brief descriptions and then asked them to judge if the character deserved a pitchfork (visit from an angry mob) or pie fork (accepted friend).

It was a predictable exercise at the beginning.

Abigail Williams, who had an affair with a married man: Pitchfork.

Elizabeth Proctor, the pregnant, long-suffering wife of the married man: Pie Fork.

Reverend John Hale, famous witch hunter: Pie Fork.

Tituba, voodoo practicing slave: Pitchfork.

But then we’d come back to the list after we’d read the play and re-evaluate. It was amazing what happened after we’d walked a mile in a character’s shoes.

Which was, of course, Miller’s point.

It was never lost on my students that the world was upside down in Salem and the good guys were really bad guys who hid behind their Bibles and their authority to cause the deaths of 19 people. Someone would always ask “Why were the people so stupid?”

Because they were scared.

Fear, when it has nowhere else to go, becomes anger. And anger, in the hands of master manipulators, becomes deadly.

The events of the last month have kept this lesson in the front of my heart.

The backlash against the Stanford rape victim.

The backlash against the parents of the boy who was killed at Disney World.

The backlash against those who died in the nightclub in Orlando.

The backlash against an entire religion based on the actions of an evil few.

The lack of backlash against the murder of a politician in England because of her political position.

The constant calls to raise our pitchforks, against our neighbors, our freedoms and maybe even our way of life. The angry mob, marching across social media sites, accusing and condemning those who disagree or are different.

It’s cliché, but George Santayana was right when he said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Beware the people who call for pitchforks. They tend to lead angry mobs into dark and evil places.

 

 

 

 

 

A Survivor Speaks

‘The guilt of feeling grateful to be alive is heavy. Wanting to smile about surviving, but not sure if the people you are with are ready. As the world mourns the people killed and viciously slain,

I feel guilty about screaming about my leg in pain because I can feel nothing,

like the other 49 who weren’t so lucky to feel the pain of mine. I never thought in a million years this could happen.

I never thought in a million years my eyes could witness something so tragic.

Looking at the souls leaving the bodies of individuals,

Looking at the killer’s machine gun throughout my right peripheral,

Looking at the blood and debris covered on everyone’s faces,

Looking at the gunman’s feet under the stall as he paces.

The guilt of feeling lucky to be alive is heavy. It is like the weight of the ocean’s walls crushing uncontrolled by levees. It’s like being drug through the grass with a shattered leg, and thrown on the back of a Chevy,

And being rushed to the hospital and told you’re going to make it when you lay beside individuals whose lives were brutally taken.

The guilt of being alive is heavy.’

Patience Carter, Orlando Shooting survivor

 

Keep your hands open. If you are ready, stand in the grief. Witness the pain. Pray. Tell your elected and church officials how you are feeling. Be kind to your neighbors.

Dana and I are sending love.

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Last week, I took the kids to the park. I watch my neighbor’s kids after school, so there were five of them. We had a great play date—the park was packed and the weather was gorgeous.

Just as we were leaving, I heard Gabe yell. I turned my head in time to see Ross, 8,  hit the ground, shoulder first. His feet were still hooked on the rope of the jungle gym. He was completely silent for a moment and then he started to scream, a thin, high, continuous sound. Gabe kept saying “It’s bad mom, it’s bad”,

This is what happens in my head at moments like this: EVERYTHING. All the things. At once.

Ross and I had a conversation that he doesn’t remember. I was holding him still, which he didn’t like, but I couldn’t tell which part of him was hurt. I figured out it was his arm, or shoulder. Gabe and Ross’ sister Sarah, who’d magically morphed into  EMTs, were chirping in my ear that I HAD TO call 911. Or Mercy Flight. And Ross’ mom.

I managed to get all five kids back to the car. I put Ross in the front seat. While I was buckling Annie, Ross panicked.

“Ms. Jen, you aren’t going to buckle me, right? Please don’t buckle me.” Then he started sobbing.

My brain was screaming at me to buckle him, because it was bad enough that his 8 year old self was in the front seat, and the seatbelt would not have touched his hurt arm.

I started to explain but he rolled his eyes up to heaven and yelled “Ms. Jen, can we PRAY????”

Uh, ok.  

I hesitated, but not because I didn’t think we needed prayer. If there was ever a time for Jesus to take the wheel, this was it. But I assume my guardian angel holds a place in the prayer line during emergencies until I can get around to the praying. Right at that exact moment, we needed to get around to the painkillers.

But since it was his pain and he wanted to pray, we prayed.

I can’t say his prayer word for word. He asked God to take his pain away and to be with him.

Then he sure did end with this: “Please God, please. Tell Ms. Jen RIGHT NOW that she doesn’t have to buckle me. Please. PLEASE.”

I almost laughed out loud. This kid–he knows me. He knew I would pray with him and he knew I didn’t want to hurt him and he tried to use God to seal the deal.

But I am a mama, and Jesus had a mama and she was fierce. He knows what’s what. If someone said “Lord, we have a request to change her heart on the seat belt decision”,  the Lord would say “Are you crazy, man?  She’s a MOM.”

When I prayed, I seconded Ross’ request that God ease his pain and come be with him. I asked God to calm his heart and his fears and help me drive quickly and safely to his mom at the ER.

I finished with “Lord, please help Ross understand that I have to buckle him for his own safety. Amen.”

And then I did it, before he knew what was happening.

In prayer, as in life, the mama knows best.

Ross had a broken elbow that required surgery the next day. Two weeks later he has a rad, neon green water proof cast. I took them all to the pool yesterday and he swam like a fish. He’s counting down the weeks until he has his arm back, which will be–thankfully–before the Fourth of July. 

Summer saved.

 

Making the Pieces Fit: The True Story of My Quilt

In 2012, my recovery from postpartum anxiety coincided with the first Fall in 35 years when kids went back to school, and I did not.

Instead, I stayed home with a 5 month old who still took two naps a day. I found myself with a lot of time on my hands—twitchy hands that needed something to do.

At first, to battle the guilt and stigma I still felt, I allowed them to feed me. Graham crackers and Nutella. In November my friends ran a Nutella intervention but by then, the 15 lbs of damage was done.

I needed something else to do.

I’m going to make a quilt, I decided.

I know. Of all the things. But when I was younger, we had a third grandma named Opal who lived down the street. In the quiet moments when she sat to watch a show, she had a stack of quilt pieces next to her that she patiently hand-stitched together into flowers and then transformed into quilts.

I can do that, I thought. I can make those flowers.

All that late Fall and Winter, I sat on the couch while Annie slept and hand-sewed flower after flower with tiny little stitches, until I had a stack of 20.

Then I discovered that by making the flowers first, I had sewed myself into a corner. I wrote about it here. I showed you these pictures:

I hoped it was all coming together.

It didn’t.

Instead, I ended up with this:

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I stopped. The next summer was rolling in and my feet were under me. I hit my stride as a stay at home mom. I joined the gym with Dana. I started writing about my postpartum experience. Shea and I had an idea that maybe we should move to Oregon.

It was a busy and fruitful time, and I didn’t need the soothing, quiet stitching. The pieces sat for almost two years.

Last Fall, when Annie joined Gabe and Kate on the first day of school, my guilt came back. For three hours every day, I was alone while everyone else in my family worked. I started feeling anxious again. My twitchy hands came back. I did not buy Nutella, but only by the grace of God.

One morning, I pulled out my sewing box to mend a shirt of Gabe’s and there it was: my pile of flowers.

I am going to finish this quilt, I thought. I’m not going to read any directions either.

Whatever happens will be enough.

I knew this was about more than a quilt. It was therapy in those early months, soothing stitch after soothing stitch, quiet and productive. But then it became a reflection of me, shattered into pieces, and trying to fit them back together again.

When they didn’t fit back they way they were, well. It took a while for me to understand what that meant.

It was supposed to be queen sized. It ended up 2 feet by 3 feet. The edging is ugly on one side, although in the process of doing it wrong, I learned how to do it right next time. I used white thread on blue cotton, which is very unforgiving. I threw away more of my flowers than I kept, hours of hard work into the scrap bin. It doesn’t cover anyone completely.

But it’s enough.

I was supposed to be Mom Invincible. From the outside, I looked pretty good, but underneath was a mess waiting to happen. I was the woman everyone could rely on, a reputation which is very unforgiving in a personal crisis.  Then I was forced to show my crooked stitches  to survive. Some of the things I held onto were unnecessary and I cut them away.  I don’t have to be so big. Lots of things are not my job. I am scarred and have spoken my scars.

I am enough.

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Some people would never show this quilt, but I do. It sits on the big chair in the living room, visible to everyone who comes through my front door.

It’s the truth about me, and so many mamas just like me. We had a vision of what life could be. For a while, the pieces didn’t fit, or make sense.

Maybe we thought about quitting.

But we didn’t, and through love and prayer and hard work, we put it back together into something whole. Crooked. Wiser. Messy. Precious.

May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month. Perinatal mood disorders can start in pregnancy. They can look like depression, mania, anxiety. If you have a history of mental health issues in your life or your family—as I did—you may be at higher risk. But PMD can strike any women in any pregnancy.

Here’s what you do:

If you need immediate help, please call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

#askher: Ask the pregnant and newly delivered moms around you if they are ok.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call the Ob/GYN first and then visit www.postpartum.net for support. If the doctors cannot or do not help, call Postpartum Support International at 1-800-944-4773.

PSI Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month Blog Hop