Tonight my heart is full. Full. It's the feeling for which English does not have a word—both profound contentment and intense sorrow, a love heightened by venom, the sated waiting that invades my rest and drapes a lull over my waking.

This week, I observed a life coming into the world and a life leaving it, a life subjected to judgment and a life torn asunder. And Advent has begun, when a cold pallor settles into my surroundings and a chill into my limbs and a sickness into my soul, and my appeal for deliverance from this body of death draws nearer to its zenith with each tinkle of each silver bell.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Random, Muddled Musings about Relationships

Last night, Kevin and I spent several very pleasant hours with four of our friends, and we went to bed with smiles on our faces. This morning, we woke up and went to church, and I spend the Sunday school hour chatting with another friend, a great treat because we attend two separate services and never see each other.

Then we came home, ate lunch, and retired for a nap. And we woke up, and Kevin got to work on some important things. And the house is so quiet.

Now, hear me: I love quiet. But this quiet—it's not a comfortable quiet. It's the quiet left behind by the absence of something good, something intangible, a you-can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-it sort of something, a void that Must Be Filled, but because you don't know what is missing, you don't know what will fit. It's the quiet that makes you want to turn on every light in the house.

And so I wanted to call someone, to talk about nothing, just for a hand to hold. But I didn't. I thought "Hey, I'll call ________. That'd be great. I'd feel much better then." And then I thought "Oh, no you don't." And then I thought "Now wait. Why not?" And my dumb reply was "Because. Shut up. Just don't." And that's as far as I got with myself. I'm so stubborn.

And I started to think about why I refuse to satisfy my urge for relationship so often. It seems that when I am at my most vulnerable and most need to reach out to the people in my life who support me is when I am least likely to go to them, because I feel that I am at my least attractive and don't want to be burdensome or to be mistaken for a Needy Person. In fact, I almost deleted everything I just wrote because I'm deathly afraid to reveal that I sometimes feel this way, because I don't want to be burdensome or be mistaken for a Needy Person. (Have you ever heard The Cranberries' "Ode to My Family"? When Dolores O'Riordan whimpers the line "Do you like me? Do you like me standing there?" Damn. That song kills me.)

Why is it so taboo in our culture to need each other? (Is it? Or should I shut up now before tip my weirdo hand any farther?) Why does it feel so ... dirty? Is it common to feel wholly unworthy of the friends in our lives and to feel like "I should just leave so-and-so alone today, so I don't make a pest of myself"? Is it common to grit one's teeth against the sting of loneliness and bear it solo because the thought of being seen, even by trusted companions, in weak and unattractive moments is just plain terrifying? Is this just garden-variety fear of rejection? Are we really unattractive to the people who love us when we are weak?

I mean, I think the people I love are positively stunning when their weaknesses are on display to me. And I can think of no greater honor than "Hi, Amy. I really need some company right now. Do you have a few minutes?" I also fancy myself to be far more unique than I really am.

And another thing.

I hate that most of my friends don't know each other and live in such diverse places that they probably never can know each other. There's really no cure for this, and I'm just venting. But wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone you loved loved everyone else you loved?

And another thing.

What the heck is wrong with dtr talks??? I had a boyfriend once. He was actually a secret boyfriend, for reasons that are for another post. Before we were a secret couple, we were secret friends. He flirted a lot, and pushed me away just as much. I was so confused! But when I hinted that maybe we ought to talk about what we were doing openly, he mocked me, asking if I needed a dtr talk, like dtr talks are for kids and stupid people (dtr stands for defining the relationship). Little did I know, he was just scared. But I still have a complex from that interaction. What's wrong with sitting down with people and saying, "________, this is what you mean to me. I think you're great, and here's why"?

Here's what I think. I think we should say wildly nice things to each other, and give little random gifts to each other, and say "I love you" when we mean it, to everyone we love and not just our sexual partners and immediate families. I think we should tell people how beautiful they are. I think we should tell people when we're thinking of them, write affectionate notes to people and leave them in mail boxes, let them know when we feel their absence and that their presence in our lives is important to us, tell them when we miss them, even if we saw them last week and it seems totally silly. (Am I the only one who misses people I just saw?)

I'm sorry. I know people don't like to hear shoulds. I don't like to hear shoulds. Anyway. That's what's on my mind tonight.

After Giving Thanks

On Thanksgiving Thursday, we Americans reflect on all that we have and try to be grateful for it. We offer our prayers of gratitude to our gods and we issue a collective sigh of contentment through a haze of tryptophan and wine and refined carbohydrates. We love our loved ones and we momentarily forgive our enemies.

And then the very next day, we rise at 4, 3, 2 in the morning, rush out in hoards and droves, and purchase ourselves into glutted, indebted, consumerist oblivion, wanting and needing and not thinking of everything we already have that fails to sate our relentless craving to have stuff. We trample the weak and slow in order to snatch our material prizes, because this is what the television networks and toy manufactures and conservative economists say is our sacred right and solemn duty as middle-class Americans.

Does anyone else feel manipulated? My response to this state of affairs is to stay home and read.

Last night, as we sat down to our cold turkey sandwiches and leftover pie, I had just finished talking to my mother, and I felt the most overwhelming sense of satisfaction and gratitude. She usually spends Thanksgiving by herself, and I usually spend Thanksgiving thinking about how she's by herself. I don't dare go to her, but I can't enjoy the day when she is alone. But yesterday, she spent the day with friends. She has friends right now. I can't begin to describe how relieved and happy this makes me.

And as I released my guilt and grief over my mother's loneliness, here are the things that flooded that space in my heart.

I'm thankful for my life.

I'm thankful for a husband who is as wonderful as husbands get, who listens to me and respects me and will make any sacrifice for my well-being. Who married me even though I think for myself and who wouldn't dream of having it any other way. Who eats the vegetables I feed him and turns off the TV when it's been long enough because he appreciates my efforts to do what is best for us and wants to take part. Who wants to know me and who is gentle with my very fragile heart. Who makes me tea every morning, pays the bills, cuts the grass, goes to buy our drinking water, changes the oil, brings in the mail, fixes the house when it breaks, and does whatever housework I ask him to do. (You are my world, honey. I love you.)

I'm thankful for my intelligent, responsible, passionate, loving, kind, talented baby sister, who thinks far more highly of me than I deserve. I really need that. (Don't we all?)

I'm thankful for my friends. I often feel so very alone, but I never am. Friends, your presence in my life keeps me afloat, keeps me humble and my heart open and full. I love each of you so much, and each of you is ineffably precious to me, whether I've known you for a few months or for twenty years and whether I saw you last week or haven't seen you in a long time and whether I know you intimately or have only just penetrated the shell of your public persona. I want to honor each of you by name, but that may be for a different post. If you're thinking "I wonder if that applies to me," it does.

I'm thankful for all the women who have been mothers to me in some capacity, including my own. I'm thankful that together they have taught me how to love my children.

I'm thankful for my education. I'm thankful for every museum I've visited and every library and every lecture and every book. I'm thankful for my teachers and fellow students and for all the people in my life who challenge me to keep learning.

I'm thankful for humor and whimsy and beauty and the ability to experience the emotional and psychological complexities of human existence through them. Humor and whimsy and beauty keep me sane.

I'm thankful for Ben and Rachel, who masterfully coax the vegetables I eat out of the ground, without intervention from Monsanto.

I'm thankful for my little white house on a hill. I'm thankful for my bed and my books and my kitty and my computer and my car. I'm thankful for my kitchen and my table, where I cook meals and share them with beautiful people. I'm thankful for my job and for my health insurance. I'm thankful that I can take yoga lessons now. I'm thankful that I have clean water to drink and enough food to eat, food that is good for my body.

I'm thankful for the amazing world in which we live. I'm thankful for trees and oceans and rabbits and daisies and rocks and apples and onions and tea and wine and warmth and sex and birth and the way sand feels beneath my feet.

And I'm thankful to the God I worship, whose name is Jesus, because I believe he is the source of all things and that he loves us, all of us, and wants us to love and care for each other.

I hope each of you has a blessed, full, contented, peaceful Black Friday. Shalom. Namaste.

Smile!

Seriously, I cannot stop watching this. (I know you've all already seen it, but, dude, watch it again. You know you want to.)

(I also can't figure out how to get it to embed without cutting off about an inch of the little window, so you'll have to go to YouTube to see it. Sorry. If anyone can help me with this problem, suggestions are welcome.)

I Have No Gift to Bring

Here we go again.

Every November, I begin to fold myself up. It's an annual ritual of self-preservation, during which I hibernate, emotionally, against the impending onslaught of guilt and hostility and aloneness that rides to me on the backs of these holidays that everyone seems to love so much. I don't love the holidays. They aren't special for me. The traditions in which I take part are not my own, and the memories aren't warm or full of love. Most "Christmas" music makes cry. I don't have any drive to deck the halls with or bake anything.

Please don't think I'm a Scrooge. I just can't love something that brings me so much grief. I think about the lonely people. I think about the people with no homes. I think about the wonderful parents who cope with so much devastation because they can't afford to give their kids a mountain of stuff (and for what?). I think about the people I love whom I can't see. I think about the people who are alone because I won't let them see me. I think about all the different Christmases, in all the different places, with all the different families to which I never really belonged, who are all currently preparing to carry out all those family rituals in which I took part while I was there, and who are not thinking of me at all.

I put on the show every year, go along with whatever is expected, and I smile, and I pretend to be having a good time. And in some ways, it is a good time, and maybe some day I'll grow to love the things that seem to bring so many people joy. But for now, every November, I begin to long for January, when it all goes away.

December does have one thing going for it. "The Little Drummer Boy." It's one of my favorite songs. I sing it to myself all year. It captures Christmas for me in a way none of the other carols can, and it helps me to see a little place for myself in this swirling typhoon of tinsel. "'Come,' they told me; 'a newborn king to see'": a humble, timid little boy, being dragged along by the exuberant, confident people around him, expecting him to be excited about expressions in which he is too poor to have any business participating. "I have no gift to bring that's fit to give a king." But he goes along with it, because he has to. When they shove him into the spotlight before the king, he offers, his head bowed and a blush on his face and tears in his eyes (in my version of the story), the only lowly scrap that he has—himself. "Shall I play for you?" And Mary nodded.

The last lines of the song are a searing hot dagger of of everything unbearable right through my heart, every time they pass through my mind. I love them. I love them so much. "I played my drum for him. I played my best for him. And he smiled at me. Me and my drum."

At Christmas, I feel so terribly poor in the midst of wise men and kings, offering their frankincense and myrrh, their lights and trees and traditions and songs about chestnuts and reindeer. But when it comes down to just him and me, and all I have is this little drum, I think he probably still smiles. Because what I have is enough for him, if for no one else.

Untitled

Well, I took my first yoga lesson today. It was good. Yes, I know that's a very weak adjective. I won't be able to hone in on how I really feel and so describe it better for a while. But I do know that it was and is good.

I don't know what kind of yoga it was, and I don't think I'll try to find out just yet. In my reading, I sensed some elitism among practitioners of one type or another, and I don't want to feel discouraged because what I'm doing is somehow inferior to what someone else does. So if I describe it at some point and you can figure it out, don't tell me unless I ask. Yes, I know that yoga should not lead one to compare oneself to others. But comparing myself to others is what I do, and in my mind I always come up short, and I need to avoid going there. I really want to let myself have this.

I feel calm and energetic and focused enough to be writing this at 6:30 at night, so that's something. The instructor seemed kind and gentle and welcoming, and I'm going to try super hard not to be intimidated or feel attacked by her (Lord, help me). I didn't freak out internally and slug myself in the psychological gut when she offered me advice, so that's something else. There was one other woman there, a marketing specialist for a local bank named Vanessa. Vanessa really knew her way around a mat, and it didn't bother me. So that's something else. I felt warm and awake and alive, and that's something too.

Raw data like these will help me decide how I feel about taking yoga lessons. After my next premenstrual emotional meltdown, when every negative thing I can possibly feel about it surfaces, I'll be able to categorize it. (Is it weird that I view premenstrual angst as a kind of emotional enlightenment? Maybe I'll write about it sometime. When it's happening. Whoa, Nellie.) In the meantime, hmmm.

A Saturday in My Life

This morning I went grocery shopping. I love to go grocery shopping.

I woke up at 7:05. I languished in bed until 7:45, staring at the darkness and listening to the silence. It was grand. I got up, made my tea, and talked to my husband for a few hours.

I picked up my beloved friend Jeannie at the studio where she teaches pilates. I watched her work for a little while. She was so gentle and encouraging with her student, and the music was peaceful, and the room has century-old brick walls and gorgeous wood floors and mood lighting. I think I'm going to start taking yoga lessons there. Like, this week. This is something I've wanted for a long time, and I think it's time to stop dreaming about it and start doing it. Which, of course, is common sense for most people. But I live most of my life in my head, and it often doesn't occur to me to translate my fantasies into action. I know, silly, right? But it's just ... me.

We traveled to Goshen, which is 30 minutes away. 30 minutes for groceries? Yes, 30 minutes for groceries. 30 minutes, because Goshen is where I meet the woman who grows my carrots and woman who gathers my eggs and the woman who presses my apple cider. I hand them my money, and they hand me the food that they've driven not ten miles to the market, an unpretentious wood-and-cinderblock building, where I buy it. Nothing there has a label on it. There are no advertisements or grating announcements or logos or chemical additives or politicians who work for Monsanto. Everything comes from the sun and the rain and the soil and the sweat of a person's brow. I love to hand my money to the beautiful people who produce my food. I love to take part in a healthy, sustainable system that does as little harm as possible to God's earth and his creatures and his children. And I love to share it with a dear, dear friend who really gets me and supports and shares my deep convictions about these things. Who says grocery shopping can't be holy?

I bought vegetables and fruit and eggs and cider and yogurt and butter and a few odds and ends. Then we visited the Clay Artists' Guild's fall exhibition, where I strained desperately not to buy anything. I think I will probably join the guild and start taking lessons from its master potters in the fall. [Picture me jumping up and down and clapping as I tell you this. Another case of stop-dreaming-and-start-doing. Yay for me!]

This afternoon, Kevin and I are going to visit the trees (which is how I think about a walk in the woods. It's like visiting friends.) Dinner will involved squash and baked apples. Yum. I'm so glad to be home and back to my routine and my kitty and (some of) my friends and my work and my kitchen and my bed and my life.

Shalom to you all.