Ho Ho Ho!

This week we took stepdaughters one and two out for dinner to celebrate the completion of the first quarter of the year for one, and the first college quarter ever, for the other. They were in fine feddle, picking through their Italian meal in a five star restaurant. As we were waiting for the waiter to bring our desert, I reached into my purse and brought out a cellophane bag of chocolates, with a jaunty red ribbon tied around it that said, "Ho Ho Ho" on it. One of my colleagues had given it to me earlier in the day and this seemed to be the perfect time to try one of the Dove chocolates.
The ribbon was a beautiful shade of red and had wire in the edges, so it could be bent into lovely curls. I unfurled it and stretched it out on the table.
"Look at this," I said, holding it up for the girls to see. "Isn't this a sweet little gift?"
Briana's eyes bulged and a look of horror crossed over her face. "Did a student give you that?" she asked cautiously.
"No. Another teacher did."
She regarded the ribbon for a moment and added, "What an awful thing to give someone!"
Now I was surprised. "Why?" I asked. "It was really nice of her. I love chocolate."
"Ho Ho Ho?" she asked, slowly, her voice pregnant with suggestion.
I scrunched my forehead, thinking. What on earth could be wrong?

Sarah rolled her eyes. "You dork, Briana."
Briana drew back with a suddenly flushed face. "Sarah, you don't give someone a gift that says you're a 'ho on it."

Leaping across the generation gap, I finally understood what she saying. The only 'ho she knew about was from rap music (ho = a crass reference to a woman of sorts).

Oh my word.

"Are you kidding? Santa Claus says "Ho, ho, ho!"" I remonstrated. "There's nothing wrong with a ribbon that says "Ho, ho, ho!""
"Like you don't know that," Sarah elbowed Briana and looked away with disgust.

The conversation disolved into nothingness as we savored the chocolates. When the waiter came a few moments later with our tiramisu and chocolate mystery desert, "ho, ho, ho" was not on the radar screen. For the girls. But I thought about it the rest of the evening.

I am now on the other side of the great generation divide. I am officially middle-aged. Given my options, I don't think I'd rather be anywhere else.

What am I supposed to do?

There are times when it is hard to know what to do or what choices to make. Several months ago I met with a student who, when she met me, fairly shouted, "Barbara, I know now why I met you. You are in my life to be my mentor." I didn't have a sudden rush of positive feelings, but since she approached me, and since I work in higher education, I felt duty bound to be of help to her.
I also greatly admired her for being so forthright about seeking out what she wanted, at the risk of looking silly.

So I've been meeting with this young woman every week for an hour. It's not for therapy; it's for talking about whatever she wants to talk about. She'd like to go back to her home country and start an educational institution for impoverished women who face a future of near slavery and abuse. It's a marvelous goal and I've done all I can to encourage her in setting everything in motion. So we've talked about how to realize her dream: go talk to the dean, talk to people who can help her set up a workable curriculum, find a grant, work with a benefactor to help fund her students, etc. It's been very exciting.

And I started feeling beyond my depth. I had no answers for her. I know nothing about starting schools. I'm a simple country girl from Upstate New York who lives very humbly in a fast-paced world. As I've listened to my student every week, I've wondered to myself whether or not our time is serving her well.

She's very excitable, eager to create helpful programs for her compatriots, --and she wants to do it all last month! There are days when she comes to see me when I can't interject a comment for a good 25 minutes, so ebullient is she. So I sit back and wait, fighting the tenseness in my shoulders and my shallow breathing as I try not to feel impatient. She is going so fast, almost as though she is trying not to give a moment to her fears. Or that she feels that if she can plan everything out herself, it will naturally, happen. When finally she stops, she looks at me with expectation, but with some disgust--maybe that she's talked so long, or that she knows that her excitement will be difficult to translate into action, or bracing herself for a rebuttal from me.

Every week I hear myself saying the same things:
Knock on every door and then wait.
Don't be afraid to take risks in asking people to help you.
Ask God and see what He opens up for you.
Keep your determination to help your people at home.
Seek out ways to be content while you wait.
Line up options and then wait.
Recognize that wherever you go next (after graduation) may be the perfect training experience for you to run a school.
Wait.
Pray.
Wait.
Stay active.
Keep faithful.
Wait.
Set things up that can help.
Wait.
Wait...

Wouldn't it be nice, if, as an old pastor from my subculture used to say, "...God could just throw a brick at you with a note tied on it?" I would love it. For people who are not used to a God or Higher Power who actually does something when they ask, this can be agonizing--an exercise in futility. What am I supposed to do? Unless one has a history of seeing the providence of God in situations that open up fortuitously and has experienced that stretch of faith, waiting brings up all the doubts and old stuff of the past, like nothing else. So I try to support her during these days, as she tries to create this school. Part of the challenge is keeping her from going off the deep end with her anxiety. And part of it is helping her to wait until the plans and connections she has made have ripened into reality.

Any more, I end up saying the same things every week. "Cecilia, I can tell you one thing without any shadow of doubt whatsoever. It's something I know is more true than the fact that I'm sitting here. And that is, that God is absolutely trustworthy. Keep setting things up and investigating possibilities. But you are working too hard creating options for your life and then asking God to choose one of them for you. Just ask Him to show you what to do, make the best choices you can with what you have to work with, keep praying, and wait to see what will happen. You will know exactly what to do at the right time."

Cecelia squirms in her chair and launches off verbally in another direction. Then she stops short and says, "I know. I just hate this waiting stuff. It's horrible."
"Yes, but you will not rush into doing something that is foolish and ill-advised, and you will have more options, the longer you wait. If you are to go a certain direction or make a certain choice, you will know it and do it before it disappears."
"Do you think?"
"No. I know it."
She sighs, frowns and looks at me with that same expression of disgust from earlier.
"I think you need to be my therapist, Barbara."
"No. I can't do that. It's not ethical to provide therapy to my students."
"But I don't take any classes from you."
I regard her the same way every week: sideways, looking up through my eyebrows. "Cecelia, just wait. You will see what you need to do next." She is a master of changing topics, and like a waterbug, flits across conversations with lightning speed.
"Cecelia, slow down. You will know what to do."

So we sit together every week and ponder what to do next. That's her story.
Mine is that we sit together every week and share the unfixability of her situation. She needs to sit and wait. She doesn't graduate for six more months. She will be fine. She will know what to do, and everything will come together for her because everything has ripened into reality at the right time.

I know it like I know few other things in this world.

Forgive Me

One time I was invited to address a group of Christian singles on the topic of forgiveness. Going to singles events was not high on my list of priorities, but speaking was. So I went to great pains to put together a scripturally based, very convincing presentation about what forgiveness means and how to do it.
People loved it. I was pursued by a bunch of single people (men and women) who appeared to want a romantic relationship with me. I dodged them all and came home alone.

Later that same day, I was reflecting on the meaning of forgiveness and praying about my day. It suddenly struck me that I had harbored mean and angry feelings toward a former boyfriend who should have asked my forgiveness, but never did. I was outraged by his lack of concern for my feelings--feelings that had been dashed to smithereens when he was diagnosed with active AIDS, contracted from another man. Now he was in the hospital for what would be the last time, and I was trying to cope with the ignominy of having dated a gay man in front of my entire community. I was livid. He should have at least apologized for using me as a front. He could have told me from the outset that he was gay and that he merely wanted to have my friendship. He could have told me about his ever-present male friend and I would have stepped aside. He shouldn't have lied and tried to convince me that he was straight. But he did none of these things and I was duped and angry. I was waiting for him to confess his behavior before I would deign to forgive him. And I was becoming more and more emotionally disconnected on the inside. It's not smart to wait for someone else to ask forgiveness first because then you can't move ahead unless they do. Holding myself hostage like that was not good emotionally, socially, or spiritually. This is not how God does forgiveness with us. He offered it to us before we were capable of knowing it.

I had clearly not forgiven him and I needed to be forgiven for my resentment of him. So that night, accompanied by much tearfulness, I wrote him a letter in which I asked him to forgive me for my fury toward him. It was now my firm resolve to forgive him, but it is a process--a gift from God--and I could only give him little bits of forgiveness now. The relief I felt was enormous, although I assumed that he'd be put off by my letter.

But it was enough for him. He thanked me over and over for my letter even though he never apologized. When he died a few weeks later I knew that he didn't feel under condemnation from me. My bitterness was gone. I was hurt and confused, but not hideously angry at him.

Why do I tell this story here? Because we are all in desperate need of forgiveness--those who hurt us and we who are hurt by them. When someone does something hurtful to us we both can become entangled in a circular pattern of resentment and non-forgiveness. It is only when we recognize the darkness of our own hearts that we can extend forgiveness to anyone else. Only when we realize how much in need of forgiveness we are, that we can give that to someone else.

Today my heart is sagging because I need forgiveness from somebody else. I have been vindictive and mean. My behavior was unacceptable and I am guilty of treating someone in a way that they didn't need to be treated. I am humbled in the knowledge that when someone was mean to me, I was mean back to them. I was wrong, just like they were. Part and parcel of being human. Time to reach for the Divine.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Matthew 6:12

Hyacinths

If thou of fortune be bereft

And of thy store there be but left

Two loaves, sell one and with the dole

Buy hyacinths to feed the soul

I don't know who wrote this, but I know that I grew up hearing my father repeat it frequently. Whenever he'd buy something that was not a necessity, he'd grin at mother and repeat this poem. "It's hyacinths!" he'd explain.
That poem has stuck with me. In fact, I use it in couples therapy a lot, of all places.

When life takes hold and we are caught up in the daily grind of making a living, keeping the kids in clothes (that they'll want to be seen in and that we can afford), caring for elderly parents or just trying to keep up with the mountain of laundry, we can completely lose sight of hyacinths. What I mean is that we can easily get so bogged down by living from necessity to necessity (time or material goods) that we fail to nurture our soul or the soul of our spouse.

John, one of my former clients, recently emailed me and asked me how he and his wife could keep from fighting. We'd ended our course of couple therapy on a good note. They'd made excellent progress and felt satisfied with the way they were now able to relate and communicate with each other. And now there had been a fresh outbreak of arguments. "How can I make Marissa truly know that I love her and that I'm attracted to her?" He felt that he had somehow fallen down on his part. A very logical fellow, I could see how he could view affectionate lingering through the lens of cold time efficiency.

Marissa needed hyacinths.
I wrote John a lengthy treatise about how to deal with his situation and ended with this:

"Most women realize their husbands love them, but very few hear it enough. Even fewer feel appreciated by their husbands. Those women who often hear how much they are loved and appreciated are very happy women. Marissa needs hyacinths to feed her soul--things that aren't practical: poems, little notes in her pocket or on her pillow, a passing hug and kiss, comments, the gift of time.
So let the grass in the backyard grow up to your knees if you must, but sit and watch the sunset with Marissa, or in passing give her a quick massage across her neck and shoulders, or when she's washing dishes walk up behind her and put your arms around her and kiss her neck or just hold her to you. She needs to know--to feel--that if you could take all the women in the world and line them up, you'd come back to her every time."
Verbal hyacinths are very powerful indeed.


In the 1982 movie, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney declared his love for Marguerite in a most outspoken manner. When Marguerite remonstrated with him, he said expansively, "If I were to tell you that I adore you, would you have me do so stintingly? Or would you have me declare it as I feel it--with all my heart?"
There they are: hyacinths aplenty.

Material goods are necessary. But our souls shrivel without hyacinths.
Show me a person who knows they are loved and I will show you someone with a handful of hyacinths.

Living in joy

This is a picture of my parents on their 56th wedding anniversary. They are wearing matching shirts that my mother made for them, and mother has on the orchid that my father got for her to wear to church with her suit. This was my father's favorite picture. I came across it last night as I was looking through some files on my computer and it caught me up short. We had this picture sitting out for my father's memorial service.

It breaks my heart.

But this entry isn't about my sadness per se. It's about the process we all go through as we begin to realize that the world is a difficult place. When we lose our adolescent idealistic ideas about how wonderful and painfree this world is.

Last evening, Sam and my two older stepdaughters went out for an early dinner. In the course of conversation Sam mentioned that we had fallen into bed the night before around 8:30. Stepdaughter #1 rolled her eyes and shook her head with that I can't believe it! expression on her face (she does this better than anyone I've ever known). What followed was predictable as rain.
"Dad, that's really sad. I'll never do that!"
"Oh, you can say that now because you're young."
"No dad, I can't sleep before 8:00, except if I'm really tired!" (he had just told her that we were exhausted...)
"No, you wait. One day you'll do the exact same thing as we did. You'll see."
"No dad, you always say that and it's just not true. I'll never be like you."
"Oh yes you will! When you get older you'll do the same thing."
Sam took a breath and I knew what would come next: "I used to say to myself, "I'll never be like Grampa." And here I am, doing a lot of things just like he did. And you'll do things just like me, too, even though you'd rather die. You'll understand that when you get older."
She eyed him with disdain (another thing she does extremely well) and shook her head again, looking off in the distance as if to purge the image of Sam she had in her mind and escape such unpleasantness.

Watching her last night, it was clear that she still feels that she has the ultimate control over Life. That if she wills something, it happens or doesn't happen. That pain occurs from poor choices only, and since she's so responsible, this won't happen to her. That she will live forever. That painful joints and gray hair happen to others, but it will never happen to her. She is 21. She is supposed to feel this way to a large degree.
Looking at her, I wondered if I was envious of her straightforward sense of expectation of what her life would be like, or if I am merely still caught in a wave of grief from my father's death. Or perhaps after seeing so much senseless suffering and loss, I expect that pain is inevitable in life on this earth and that we can't paddle our own canoe on the course we'd always choose.

I used to have a very starry-eyed notion of how life worked. If we are good, only good will happen. This idea is an example of justice philosophy: the idea that bad things don't happen to good people. If I prayed enough and was living the way I believed that God wanted me to, that nothing bad could happen to me. I would be under the constant watchcare of angels. And I couldn't in my wildest dreams, imagine myself ever aging or getting wrinkly or gray-haired.

I remember an older pastor saying things like, "We live in a vale of sorrows." I used to nod, thinking of all those other people who had losses. I didn't really understand what he was saying. But then my dear friend Maria died tragically in Yosemite, as her husband had a massive heart attack and the car plunged down a ravine. My first love had leukemia and will probably die early because of it. One of my student's husbands died last week. He was far too young to die. A beautiful woman in her late 50s who used to accompany me when I sang, had back surgery that went terribly wrong. Now she walks with her legs flayed out and she's all hunched over. Another friend had a stroke two weeks ago and lay on her bathroom floor for a day and a half until someone found her.

If you tell a person in their 80s that so-and-so dropped dead of a heart attack, they will feel sad and be surprised. But the sense of shock an elderly person feels about these things, I believe, is less than the shock that someone 18 years old would feel about an acquaintance dying. The sadness and horror would be the same, but elderly people begin to expect people to fall ill and die. Young people generally don't live with this expectation. Though not true of all older people, we seem to be able to view life more realistically: bad things happen in this world, and it is still good to be alive.

The challenge is in living with abandoned joy while realizing that there is death and suffering all around. As a Christian, I view pain and loss as the results of sin in this world. It is inevitable here. And at Christmas in particular, when Handel's Messiah is sung, the answer to living in joy surrounded by a world full of suffering becomes apparent:

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory.
"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God!
He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:51-56

Change

I learned two days ago that my job description will probably change in the next couple months. There are no words to explain my relief!
In the current job I direct a teaching clinic, teach, supervise, and act as liaison with community agencies that train our students, write the yearly academic report, and try to write articles on the side. ("What side?" you rightly ask...)

I knew something was wrong Friday when I came home from work, walked in the house past Sam and said menacingly, "Don't talk to me, don't touch me, leave me alone, don't follow me. I'm in a foul mood and can't even talk. I'm so angry I could explode." I've never said that before to anyone and it was alarming. I'd spent the entire day working on an article for publication. I finally got it revised (for the third time!) and sent off to the editor for a final review. In the process of working on that article I couldn't get to the clinical things or deal with the crises in the clinic that arose. It was truly more than I could keep up with.

My chairperson called me at home that afternoon to ask me a simple question about something and I started blowing smoke at her. "This job is structured in such a way as to be impossible. It's too much for one person--maybe even two. I've found so many messes to clean up since I've taken over for the last person--isn't anyone keeping track of these kinds of things, or were you saving them up for me?" I recalled saying that about another place I'd worked. Maybe it was just me. Maybe I'd also been hired into places with the expectation of saving the day. That was told me in clear terms when I arrived here. So I gave my chair an earful.
Then I learned that she wanted me to transition to full-time teaching and get out of the clinic. Nothing could make me happier. Then I can teach clinical courses in the clinic but not be responsible for the operation of it. Even better.

There are times when life goes in funny directions. I'm thinking that the direction I'll be moving toward will be an excellent one. More to come on that.

All I Need

My friend sounded very frightened on the phone today. "I don't tell anyone this but you," she began. "Because you're my friend..." I was silent, waiting to hear this privileged information.
"Are you there?"
"Yes. I'm just waiting."
"Oh. I don't tell anyone this. But I have no food. There is absolutely nothing in the fridge, nothing for the boys to eat. All my money is gone because I was sick."
"How are the boys eating then?"
"Oh, one of them has a credit card, or they go to their father's house to eat."

I have felt rather sorry for myself over the last couple weeks. I have made sure that my stepdaughters have the things they need for school, now that Sam and I are officially responsible for their care. And I have not been able to get the things I need for myself--not to mention, tucking money away in savings. Just yesterday, I was crying against Sam's chest. "I just want something to show for all that work getting a PhD. But..." I couldn't finish.
"Is it this house?" Sam knows that this house is a daily discouragement.
"No."
"Is it not having the clothes you want?"
"Yes. ...and other things."

All of this was lost in my consternation for my friend today. I had been contemplating sending money abroad for mission work, but here seemed to be a need in my own backyard. And the fact that my clothes are out of style is irrelevant when a person I know and love doesn't have food for herself and her family.

A couple hours later, as we put bag after bag of groceries away in her sparsely furnished cupboards, I realized just how much I do have. I'm healthy, happily married, employed, fulfilled (most of the time) at my job, respected in the community, and have the knowledge that I am loved on earth and in heaven. I have all the things that really matter.

On top of having all I need, I also have the pleasure--and it is a huge pleasure--to be able to give to someone else who has a need. As a child in a financially modest home (read, poor here), I despaired that I would ever have anything to give to anyone else. My mother baked bread and gave it away, along with vegetables from the garden. And that has always been my model for generosity. But this time I had the wherewithal to go beyond that, and it was a true gift.

I told this to Sam as I explained how I had just spent all that money. He is such a dear. "Now we know why God allowed us to put away that extra money in savings, don't we?" He paused and took a breath, looking kindly at me. "There are reasons for everything. We just can't always know why at the time. But look!" He threw out his arms for emphasis. "We know about this one."

We have all we need, and now someone else does, too. I am so blessed and so grateful.

Glory

This morning I went off to church alone, as Sam and Briana were both under the weather and still in their beds. The sanctuary was full of beautiful Christmas decorations and the Advent candles were up front on a table bedecked with gold and red fabric. The choir was listed to sing Christmas music and I realized with a start that this is the first week in December, so we'd be getting to sing carols.
The deacons asked us in our row to press together and make room for two. He held up his two fingers in a peace sign and pointed to the space next to me, as he beckoned someone from the back of the church to be seated. A very large man shoved his way into the pew and sat down. I leaned over to welcome him and he looked away. He was out of breath and clearly had not liked walking down the center aisle all the way to my -pew.
Oh well. He was in church and that was what mattered.
An old friend came to the microphone with his guitar and invited the congregation to sing "Angels We Have Heard on High." I love that song because of that long "Glo-ho-or-or-orrrrr-ee-uh" at the end. It's always been a challenge of mine to see if I can hold out the note all the way to the end of the phrase instead of gasping in the middle of the word (a pet peeve of mine).
As I started singing the second verse ("Shepherds, why this jubilee?") I heard a loud soprano voice rising over everyone else's singing. It had a bit of a hooty quality to it, but the woman was spot on pitch. I was having such a swell time singing myself, that it wasn't until the second "Glo-ho-or-or-orrrrr-ee-uh" that it dawned on me that the soprano voice belonged to none other than the man sitting next to me. As I glanced sideways at him I could see an acqaintance on the other side of him looking at him with an expression of wild surmise. He was enjoying himself, eyes closed, leaning back in his pew and this high voice coming out of his puckery, cherubic lips.
I almost choked.

As I came to the last chorus, I began thinking that it's only because Jesus came to this earth that we have something to be happy about. He has broken the power of evil and sin and death in the human race. Because of His life, death, and resurrection, all of us can live in hope. We know that this is not all there is.
The man next to me was singing like he realized this, too. His voice slid down about two octaves, and he and I finished out the song.

Glo-ho-or-or-orrrr-ee-uh!

Squished

"Squished," found at this interesting blog

I can't believe that it's been nearly a week that I've not been back to my blog. I've been pushing myself very hard since I have an article due on Friday, and have been working day and night to get all the revisions done. Oh, and I also have a book chapter to submit on Friday. So that's what I've been about. My free time has become squished and I am squashed under all of my responsibilities. It's a time when I wish I could be teaching instead of running a clinic, teaching courses, supervising students, making site visits, doing research, and writing.
Next week I can hang Christmas lights around the house, put up the Christmas tree and start making Christmas gifts that need to be done in one month (say it's not true!)
Don't go away! I'll be back Friday night (with great relief!)

Thanksgiving Reflection

Yesterday as I was baking my annual pumpkin cake, I heard a loud popping sound. Otis jumped and looked worriedly out the back window. I saw a wisp of smoke coming out of the neighbor's chimney and chuckled to myself about what he must have had in the fireplace to make that noise. A few minutes later I noticed another neighbor going around the house, knocking on all the windows and yelling, "Steve, are you there? ...is anyone home?" A small stream of smoke was now coming out of the back bedroom window. The vertical blinds over the sliding glass window had melted and were in a pile on the floor.
An hour and two broken windows later, the fire department and my neighbor were picking through the burnt items on the back bedroom floor by lantern light. Something had exploded in that room--his computer, I think. So today, Steve is thankful that he still has a house and that he just has smoke damage, not a total loss.
Snug in my own smoke free house this morning, snuggling Otis and inhaling the warm smells of good things in the oven, I am grateful for many, many things. May all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, and bask in all that you are privileged to enjoy.

Incidentally, you might enjoy this cake. I can't make a crust to save my life, so a pumpkin pie is an ordeal in my book. But this cake is like a custard with a lovely crust below and above. It's from my friend, Martha and it has no calories:

Mix 1/2 cup melted butter and 1 egg with 1 package of dry yellow cake mix. Set aside 1 cup of this mixture. Press the rest into the bottom of a 9X13 glass baking dish.

Mix 1 large (29 oz.) can of pumpkin with 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 2/3 cup milk, and 3 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice. Add a dash of salt. Pour into baking dish over the cake mix crust.

Mix 1/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 cup of saved cake mix mixture. Crumble over top of cake. (optional: pour 1/4 cup melted butter over the top of the cake and swirl around--this really adds to calories and doesn't appreciably improve the cake, so I'm not sure why it's recommended).
Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes, or until the cake doesn't jiggle in the middle when gently shaken. Serve warm with non-dairy topping or whipped cream.

This cake can be frozen or will store in your refrigerator for 2 weeks. Enjoy!