good grief

I found out this weekend that my grandmother in Indonesia might be in her final days. Even though we believe her to be incredibly old (96, but there are no real records to substantiate it), it still felt like a shock. Just last week I was telling someone that I never knew anyone who died. I guess I kind of feel like I invited trouble.

We rushed to get my dad a flight to Jakarta, including multiple calls and maybe one fit of yelling-turned-broken-down-to-crying at the Singapore Airlines ticketing agent over the phone. The distance felt suddenly like something scary. Like maybe the tragedy of my father not arriving in time to say goodbye.

He flew out as soon as he could, the next day, and arrived the day after that. Two days to Jakarta. Then another day to arrange transportation to Padang. We weren't even sure if she would be conscious when he arrived. My grandfather (who I did not know) had died several years ago, when I was in college. In that case, we got the phone call in the middle of the night, and my father never even had the chance to try. This time, I felt paralyzed that my grandmother would die en route and my father's efforts, our whole family's efforts, really, would fall short.

Every time I think of that guilt, I feel pain. Every time I think of my father, separated and motherless in the world, I grieve. When I called my father and told him I bought his ticket, that everything was taken care of, he asked me why? Knowing that this would be painful for him and fearful that he still wouldn't get there in time, he had already given up.

In the past four days, there's been an incredible evolution of emotion occurring inside me. I don't understand it, not even a little bit. I am so affected, but I don't fully understand why. I truly feel like this is a paradigm-shifting event. Like when I watched the twin towers fall that morning, or the night Obama was elected or when I woke up to hear that Saddam Hussein had been captured. That the world is just going to be different from now on. Of course, this is my paradigm shift and not everyone else's. Unlike those other times. Because for me, the world will be different without her in it.

I've only really met my grandmother twice. The first time, I really was too young to remember. My father brought me home when I was five, and both of my grandparents were still alive. The second time, I was 18 years older, living in Bukittinggi and teaching English and I remember it but almost wish I didn't. Some teachers from my school made the trip possible, and while they were too nice to say anything untoward, I got the impression that my grandmother's bahasa minang was not completely translated for me. The things they did say indicated that she was a very old woman who was biding her time. Her husband had already gone on several years before this and none of her children lived with her. She was ready then. I clearly remember that.

She wasn't a doting, loving old grandmother. She was a frail, petite thing with a strong voice and an accusing stare. I felt afraid and uncomfortable even as I appreciated her age and her presence.

And now I will never experience it again.

I feel guilt. For taking my opportunity to know her for granted then, for not even doing what I could to learn anything about her! For not having fond memories. Because there won't be a tangible void in my life because there was not a real presence.

I am grieving. For my father and myself and my children who haven't yet been born. I feel the loss even though I don't understand it, even though it is not tangible here. I've been anxious, awaiting updates from my mother in Texas, from my cousin in Jakarta. Flung out all over the world, we are. I've been isolated from the comfort of those who know. Teary and crying one minute and set on busy-ness the next. The sewing machine, the chopping of my knife hammering away one minute, my hunched over body prone in bed as I stare into the distance or cry into my pillow the next. Poor Mark, so patient, so understanding, even when I do not understand at all.

It's good for me to feel. I think if I felt nothing I'd know I was heartless and that would be worse. I know ultimately grief is good. And in this case, maybe premature. I just heard word this afternoon that my father made it all the way to Padang and that my grandmother was conscious enough to eat something! Hallelujah! He made it. That's been my overwhelming fear the last few days and at least that is gone. It might be my strongest source of comfort to my grief in the days ahead.

when quitting is right

I honestly feel like quitting is almost never right. The stigma of quitting in our society-- the shame, the feeling of failure, the sense of disgust I feel about myself when I've quit but see the success of someone else who didn't quit... It's rarely worth it. But, when it is right, it feels right. It's rare, but sometimes it will save you.

I am a career student. I'm not sure why, because I am starting to understand that I don't learn well in a traditional schooling environment. I mean, the sitting still, listening, no straying from focus, participating for a grade, go home and read 300 pages or else approach hasn't been effective for me for a long time. I'm not disciplined enough, and I haven't found a professor who scares me into submission since 10th grade (in that instance, I was a sophomore in a juniors and seniors only Environmental Science class, too scared of my classmates and my professor NOT to be disciplined enough to get my work done. I was terrified the entire time, though I did get a 4 on my AP Exam). I have to be either truly interested to make the traditional model work, or I have to be afraid of the consequences. I'm afraid I can't get afraid anymore... and even in classes where the subject matter is captivating and relevant, I feel so stifled by the 'system' of the class that I still don't do well.

Don't get me wrong. Even with all my lack of discipline and BS I'm still a B student. Not spectacular, but not anywhere near real failure. And I have enough years behind me as a student that I've got the system down and I know the rules. But the last year and half, working through my masters and now my certificate, I've felt school like a weight on my back.

I know how I must sound, what a problem. So much of the world has no access to education, and here I am, taking education for granted and dismissing the privilege of our educational system. I know that it is indeed a privilege to have access to the classroom, but it has come at a price for me. I heard someone describe this as 'golden shackles' not too long ago, and I feel it is apt. Believe me, I will spend the rest of my life working off the privilege of my education.

In any case, I digress. For me, it is time to call it quits. I have spent four and this semester would make half years working, and I have been unhappy almost the entire time I've been at it. I have put in a good faith effort to make it work and now it's time to know when enough is enough. I hate quitting, but now, it's right. It's time to know that I don't have to wait around to be happy. And I deserve to be happy now! No more school. I'm going to spend my evenings when I come home from work not dreading the assignment due every week, but focusing on things that bring me joy! Discovering new recipes that are healthy and economical, spending time with my husband and friends and creating again! I've really missed my sewing machine.

Since I made the decision, the affirmation that it was the right decision is how incredibly happy I've been since I've made it. Gone is the dread, the kicking and dragging my feet. Gone is the resignation on Wednesday nights for a horrible Thursday. Gone is the post-poned readings, the hurriedly read and then quickly ignored emails and everything else that went along with the class. I have more patience, more energy and definitely more excitement for life. Now it's time for new adventures!

restless

It's nearly midnight on Wednesday. I'm restless and my mind is a million places at once, flitting to unrelated thoughts like a hummingbird tasting a field of flowers. I'm wasting time online, a Lenten no-no, but I can't seem to stop myself. I'm eying the clothes on the chair and thinking about putting them away... and then about giving them away. Then I'm thinking about how I still have just. too. much. How my clothes don't fit as well as they should. Mark's ukulele is sitting on the bed and if it weren't almost midnight I might mess around with it, trying to figure out the chords to Amazing Grace. All the while I can sense my growing panic at my academic responsibilities slated for tomorrow and I continue to repress them because my work responsibilities for the majority of the day felt so stressful that I feel like I deserve to keep 'relaxing'.

I can hear someone playing a guitar through the walls, making me think of Mark, making me think of Mark's song, 'It Made me Miss you.' I turn on some music, I check more blogs, I scroll through facebook. Oh, wow, she got married. She looked gorgeous. I always thought she was a really cool person, I wonder what she's doing now? I want to see Mark's face. He's so handsome.

Mark's coming this weekend, but I can't get excited about that yet because I have a midterm tomorrow and homework due for Friday by tomorrow at noon. Ugh. Avoid. I need to get those clothes taken care of before Mark comes. There's no way I can get those clothes taken care of before Mark comes. Good thing he doesn't love me for my housekeeping.

It's almost midnight. Dang, I have to be up tomorrow and at work by 8:30. My homework's due at midnight. But if I can just get through the midterm, I'll be done at 9:30! Then, Diana's coming over. Then Mark will be here Friday! Wow, March is passing quickly. Crap, March is passing quickly. My thesis is due in... exactly two weeks. Man, I have a lot of work to do. Avoid.

Amazon. I love Amazon. Am I still expecting mail? Just the mixer. From Pioneer Woman. Pioneer Woman is sending me a candy apple red mixer! I can't wait to bake! But, if Pioneer Woman wasn't sending me a mixer I would have bought it myself, because I did six weeks consecutively successfully! And I'm going to keep going. I wonder if I can hit 200 this Saturday. Mark will be here! Gotta get through the midterm.

Hmm... Back to facebook. Looking through old pictures. Dang! It's after midnight! My midterm is tomorrow. And I now have 12 hours to finish my homework for my Friday class. I can't wait for the weekend.

HELP. Please help my restless and scattered brain. Amen.

words to keep in the front of your mind.

I recently read this great peace of wisdom as someone's status update on facebook (of all places!). Despite the medium, the wisdom remains. I have kept these words at the forefront of my mind for a week now and have returned to them more times than I can count. In just a week. They are:

"People will disappoint you. Love them anyway."

They seem simple, and perhaps, even at first a little pessimistic. But the truth is that God created us to be our frail, disappointing (at times), human selves. It is a guarantee that we will be disappointed in life by the ones we love, and equally guaranteed that we will at some point disappoint the ones we love. But despite our humanity, despite mine and yours and the humanity of those who have disappointed us most recently, we are called to love anyway.

I have been experiencing this firsthand as I have been feeling majorly let down by someone who has never really let me down before. I've been struggling to be patient with this person, and I've been confused by my own disappointment (not confused by the fact that I was disappointed, but by the fact that this particular person was responsible and because this particular person seems not to be able to control the cause of my disappointment). I feel as though I have only just begun to react-- finally my patience wore down and I began to feel a response aside from confusion and sadness. I have begun to feel bitter, cynical even towards a person that I love. And that deep hurt has taken it's toll: I've recently grown exhausted of my own roller coaster emotions in this situation and have begun to yearn to be able to dismiss. To dismiss the thing that causes me to hurt, the situation that is ongoing and exhausting, and most seriously, to dismiss the person who causes me to feel hurt and exhausted. And that is a scary place to be, ready to dismiss someone. A person.

People aren't disposable. We can't dismiss them. We shouldn't erase them from our lives, move on and away and fill their places with new people. The least of which is because, hello, new people will also fail us in some way or another. It's guaranteed. It's our human inheritance.

This is not to say that we are all so flawed that we all will fail and that we should give up. Nor is this an excuse for said failure. It is only an honest attempt at reconciling our imperfection with our imperfect expectations of one another.

But what we are called to do, is to look beyond that flaw, that which hurts us. To see aside from the disappointment, the value of the person, and to continue to love. We will be disappointed. We will get angry. We may even grow dismissive. But what makes them human also makes us human. And the holiest thing I can be, is the flawed human thing that God made me to be. And I still deserve love. So does the one who let you down.

These should not be words of imprisonment. They should not be utilized to keep someone in an abusive relationship, or chain someone to a situation that is unhealthy. It is okay, sometimes, to love from afar. But when we let our feelings towards someone take control; when we become a bitter person instead of just tasting bitterness; perhaps it is wise to just remember that people will disappoint us. And that we should love them anyway.

This week those words of wisdom are helping ME to be the holiest I can be, and to move on from my own disappointments to remember that I too am an imperfect disappoint-er (aiming for holy and not holier-than-thou, mind you). It's so much easier to forgive and dismiss a situation than become bitter and try to dismiss a person. God doesn't throw people away, and neither should we.

burnt.out

My mama used to tell me that I overbooked myself to the point that I was burning both ends of the candle. Which sounds like it could almost be cool, except that it means the candle burns up twice as fast—and then the show’s over, because nothing’s left. Well, she was right. I’ve been burning both ends for so long that I feel as though there’s almost nothing left of me.

It’s pointless and I’m tired of outlining the ways in which I overextend myself. Suffice it to say that I’ve never had a true vacation and I’m in my fourth year of part time graduate school and full time work and my immune system is so compromised I’ve been sick six or seven times in the past nine months. It’s unhealthy.

I’ve completely lost my desire to attend to the regular responsibilities of my daily life. I no longer care about being a student, no longer care about learning, and am tied only to completion and grade-reporting. In my work, I operate on autopilot.

And when I’m home, I wander back and forth between the two rooms of my home and feel untethered and idle. Clearly there are tasks on my task list. But I ignore them and search for something else I can’t name, bypassing the extracurricular activities that once brought me joy, finally settling on the numbing and un-interactive experience of watching. I watch television online, I watch movies. I watch other people live through their blogging. All the while I envy their ability to engage, to create, to interact. I watch and feel I cannot act, cannot do, myself. So I stay up late doing nothing. I am withdrawn. I am constantly exhausted. I am too frequently alone. And I am too tired to set my own agenda—or else I can’t see the point in doing more than lying there, when there is no one here to witness.

I know that there are seasons and that this season of life will pass. I know that this season will be short, and that the next season is already hot on the heels of my season of darkness. But I feel, in this season, that I am shut down to really living. It’s the winter in so many ways. Cold and somewhat dead.

I live in the presence of others. I live on the weekends. I live at dinner with friends. I even live on the road to Mark. But during my week, I am a zombie, moving between obligations and doing what must be done, pushing through to the weekend, to the next opportunity to live.

Part of this experience is tied to a sense of loss of community. I am as responsible for this loss as are the members of my community who have left it. I withdrew as they excused themselves, I let go as they left. And what I am left with is a shell of my experience of what robust community feels like. This is why I live on the weekends, with Mark, this is why I panic when he goes home. In many ways he is my most real tie to life.

I don’t know what the point was in writing this. I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want to be encouraged. I don’t believe that this season can be prematurely brought to light. I know that I have to continue, and yes, to try, but more than anything merely to persevere until the season of darkness yields to the season of light and life. I guess I just wanted to exercise my frustrations, articulate my angst over what might otherwise just appear to be laziness and lack of motivation. Those are present, but it’s deeper than that. It’s tied to the wellness of my soul. It’s being alone in Indonesia again. It’s the feeling you get toward the end of a journey, when you know it’s time to move on to some other challenge, some other place, some other part of life; but you can’t get the pieces to work out right when you feel yourself ready. You have to wait, and be patient. Kind of like being ready before your time. Kind of like the surge of the flame before the candle is blown out—you’re ready to keep burning, but you’re at the end of your wick. The light’s burnt out and there’s darkness now, but I’m holding fast until the next candle of my life is lit.

irony

Life is full of irony these days. My life keeps moving in ways that I didn't expect and I keep becoming more the type of person I never before understood. In so many ways, I still feel the way I did in my last post, months ago, swept along with the tide. But in many ways, the issues I was discussing then aren't issues anymore at all. Instead of observing major life changes in the relationships around me, I am considering major life changes myself. In so many ways, I'm just over what I'm doing here, over the things I grew sad about before, and ready to live slowly, everyday, doing something or doing nothing, but doing whatever it is I am going to be doing with a partner. With Mark.

So, Thanksgiving with Mark's family was wonderful and not completely overwhelming. It was good to spend so much concentrated time with Mark-- until then, five consecutive days was the longest time we'd had with each other. After Thanksgiving, it was a marathon rush of papers, work, a cold, and then at the last minute, some shopping and some small crafting. Like always, I'm going to be a few months late with some Christmas presents. I look forward to the day when I can plan those in advance.

Rachel flew down the night before my systematics credo was due, and I can't tell you how it went because grades are still not posted yet. I was relieved it was done, however, and felt like I learned a ton in the process of writing. Rachel did some sightseeing on her own and then some Christmas shopping with me; I'm afraid I wasn't much of a tour guide because there was so much going on. We made it through the weekend and then we departed for Houston on Monday the 20th.

Rachel and me before leaving DC

I got into Houston super late on Tuesday the 21st, exhausted and excited to my family and Mark. He arrived on Wednesday evening and I picked him up from the airport so we could have a moment to adjust and greet one another without the additional pressure of meeting my parents. I know he was worried, but I wasn't (well, maybe a little at the last second) because Mark means so much to me that my family couldn't possibly refuse him. Of course, they didn't, either.

It was so good to spend time with my family, and this was the absolute best holiday with them ever. There were no major blow ups, no fights-- and Christmas day couldn't have been a more happy experience. My family loved Mark and Mark loved my family-- he even bonded with the dogs (and Bubba)! I got to see my niece and my nephew and Mark and spent a good amount of time with them, what with the Christmas eve service, Christmas holiday, Alanna's third birthday, and Erin and Aron's wedding.

Mark and Noodle. I bet Noodle misses Mark, too!

And Mark and I spent 12 consecutive days, 24/7 with one another. We did not get sick of each other. We drove together fine. We ate everything delicious. We had time for him to play guitar and for me to sew (when I could muster the desire to). We went out together and did nothing at home together. We had one fight, and it's only in the interest of full disclosure I share that now (because omission feels like lying)-- and it was the most minor of things, just a few tense/overwhelmed feelings at the prospect of packing to leave. Resolved in twenty minutes or less. I love him so much and I know he was the source of a great deal of my joy this holiday season. The entire time we were preparing to say goodbye, I kept forgetting he wasn't actually coming home with me. It felt so much like we were saying our goodbyes and going home together. How grateful I was, though, to have someone else wipe away my tears as I pulled out of the driveway and rounded the corner, my house and waving parents disappearing from view. I've done that teary departure four times by myself and it truly never gets easier.

We drove on up, into depressing winter (Houston was 75-85!) and I felt my relaxation and happiness dissipate as I began to dwell on saying goodbye to Mark. Our farewell in the long-term parking lot at BWI was truly the worst I've experienced-- him, too, I'm sure-- and I can't help but feel that the goodbyes will never get better than that. When I am with him, I feel like I'm living vibrantly, using all the most saturated colors to paint my world. When he isn't here, the best I can do is pastels.

We got haircuts this day. And then, we put on matching shirts.

I do not know how I am going to make it this semester, as my grief-- I just miss him--makes it impossible to care about the other things I'm supposed to be doing. Insert irony here. Remember before, when I was an independent woman? It turns out, I'm my best me, the most independent, when Mark is around. He helps me to be myself. Without him, I just kind of don't care to do anything. It's not that I need him to do things for me, or that I can't do things without him. It's just that I'm so unhappy when he's not here I lose my appetite for anything else that might bring me happiness.

I realize how that might sound and I am slightly appalled. But I report the truth. It isn't as if I don't have hopes for my future, ambition still. It's just that those things-- success in work, plans-- don't matter all that much if he isn't a part of them.

Mark got me those pearls for Christmas. Matching necklace, too. What a surprise!

Now I feel ultra dramatic. It has been a dramatic week. The climate change, the social change (being constantly around Mark and my family and returning to a shell of seminary, empty since classes haven't really begun again yet), the intensity of being with Mark and then not being with him: I've begun to wonder what I'm still doing here, even as I understand I'm SO close to completion I have to stay. I just have to muster enough energy to complete my degree and then I can leave, can be with Mark, do whatever I want. The frustration of being here, lacking the desire to be here, being here alone-- I've never wanted to leave more. I've never been so devoid of happiness in a place before. I cried all week. And then our family kitty Gypsy, whom we've had since I was in high school, had to be euthanized today because she had a mass on her lung preventing her from breathing. I only cried more.

I am ready for change in my own life, and I'm thinking about changes I had once ruled out of possibility. It's an exciting place, and I'm eager to begin and stop placating myself with just thinking about what will change. The dramatic week is almost over, and although I just got back, I'm going to Binghamton tomorrow. Mark's birthday is Sunday and I get to be there.

I'm still grateful. I'm trying desperately to be grateful both with Mark and without him, but I know I still need to work on it. I'm SO grateful for him, sometimes I feel like it might suffocate me. I don't know whether to call it luck or a blessing, and maybe it's a little of both. God didn't make Mark for me, or I for him, but God is present in our relationship. And without Mark, I was already blessed. Those without partners can also be blessed. So there is an element of luck involved, because I haven't done anything to deserve Mark. Whatever it is, I am counting my stars and praying that nothing intrudes to ruin our happiness.

Mark and me with my nephew David. Both cuties. And, we all matched. I love matching.