A Little Story

Everyone knows the story of Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem and being unable to find a place to stay.  Everyone thinks they'd recognize the dire need of a husband with his wife, heavy with child.  However, we need only look back to the poor mother who lost her two sons in the water of Hurricane Sandy to see, we are frightened creatures who often shut doors we should not.  Yes, all of us are just as capable of saying, "there is no room at the inn."

How do I know? 

This past week, we lost a baby at what would have been 8 weeks.   Honestly, I'd spent the first three weeks of knowing saying to God, "You've Got to be Kidding!"  I'm 46!  We have no room in the van.  We have a large house but there's no room in the house!  I tried playing kid tetris, shuffling children in the bedrooms.  I didn't want to wrap around the idea that our lives would be reordered yet again, that at least three more years of diapers loomed.   Taxes, college, carseats... it wasn't my most generous moment as a woman of faith or a mother. 

But I was very grateful for the gift of the wisdom and teachings of our Church.  That let me march forward, take my vitamin, schedule the appointment with the doctor and go on with life.  I'd come around I told myself.  And every once in a while, there was a bounce in my step, a giggle under my words as I managed the brood and their needs.  But also every once in a while, there was the feeling of the bite of the world.  "I'm overwhelmed." I told God.  "I know we're supposed to love in abundance and be lavish and generous and open to life like you...." but then my voice would crack in my head, "I'm not you!"  and the world felt very dark indeed.  I kept opening and shutting the door in my heart even as I held the child in my womb.  I would have to wedge it open.  

God was very humorous, "So Sherry, ten was fine but eleven too many?"  "Okay."  (It was hard to argue).  But it was still only duty, not a joyful one.   I'd be fighting this for a while I could tell despite many resolutions in my head to not fight.  And then I felt honestly, rather lost.  This was not a happy place to be, to know that my will was fighting even as I obeyed.  There was never a danger to this baby, she was always coming, but then Tuesday, I saw her. 

Her heart was slow....like mine.

I was miscarrying.   Suddenly every step, every heart beat forward was one step away from a healthy child, to a dying one.  Suddenly, I was willing her to stay alive, begging her to stay.  I've had two other miscarriages, but this one hit harder than the other two or maybe like labor pains, I've forgotten. It's probably a mixture of both.

Like any mother who must walk to the end of a miscarriage, I felt all the crazy unfamiliar hard musings. We hadn't even told anyone yet.  How to explain a loss we hadn't yet pronounced as a gift? Sadness...I held her but not as fully in my heart. We should have screamed about her to the world. We should have celebrated her while she was here! There was shame over the twinge of relief that the part of me that didn't want more, didn't have more...embarrassment at not wanting more of God's heart in my life....and hurt at the real knowledge that when the knock came to my door. I didn't answer, or at least not well.  Guilt --could I have done something or not done something to keep this one here? 

Wednesday I took my son to basketball practice and went to the adoration chapel to clear my head, to cry, to complain, to pray the baby would be okay, that somehow, this would all just be a blip, a hiccup in the pregnancy.  I didn't get to make that prayer.  I fell asleep. Three times. (It's warm, it's quiet, it's peaceful and as a dear priest told me, if you fall asleep in Adoration, you're just like the apostles, and perhaps God knew you needed the rest).  As I was preparing to leave to go back to the gym, I found a guide for adoration I'd never seen.  Reading it, I felt like I'd somehow missed what I was supposed to do in Adoration...rather like how I missed what to do during this pregnancy.  

Then Thursday, I went back to the doctors.  The baby did not have  a heart rate anymore.  She was smaller than she'd been on Tuesday.  I could see the difference.  I remember seeing the screen with her heart rate on it, and knowing then, the heart rate was wrong before they'd said anything.   The dramatic in me likes to think she died when I was sleeping in Adoration, that even broken and failing, I'd brought her to where she should be.   And in doing so, she did the same for me.  

I can't promise my heart will remain a stable stable for the rest of my life, but for only 8 weeks, she was a masterful instructor in the purpose of Advent.  I'll remember her, and therefore her lessons. We are to be a people waiting in joyful hope.  That is how life and being pregnant should be, a source of light and warmth in a thorny cold dark world of business and tasks and difficulty.   We told our children. We told our parents.  We named the baby, Kateri Joy, Katie Joy for short.   It fits her, it fits the season we are about to celebrate and I think her name is musical.  One of my daughters liked it so much, she said she'd name her daughter the same.  She has never voiced the idea that she would have children before. 

When we get to Heaven, we will be asked, "How many did you bring?" like the servants who were to invest the talents and multiply the Master's fortunes.  I now have another lobbyist in Heaven to get all of us there.   She's an expert at wedging open the doors of hearts. 

P.S. The perfect P.S, her due date was July 14th, it is apparently, Saint Kateri's feast day...I just found that out.

Writer's Block and Spiritual Dryness

When I can't think of anything to post, there is a moment of absolute panic in my brain, like nothing will ever come forth that is smart, funny or interesting again.  I've said all I can say, it's all been poured out and the well is empty.

Writing on paper, I crumple up page after page.  Reading for inspiration reminds me of the fact that I am not inspired.   Then, the real desperation sets in, as I grasp at everything and anything, trying to do life such that I can then turn it into an article.  That only works if I actually forget I'm doing to create an article and start doing for real.  As long as I strain to create an experience to write about, the experience remains false and the words, uninteresting. 

No one writes about boredom because boredom is a great pain. It is also the plague of the modern age.  We seek stimulation because we want something we know not what, and think if we just click on the right link, we will feel less dull, less disconnected from the world, from others.  We want so much to belong.  We do not anymore understand the alienation we have being in this world because we no longer consider the reality of our own fallen nature, we no longer acknowledge that the world or ourselves were created to be something fuller, better, more beautiful than what we are as a result of sin.  We do not understand the holes in our hearts or lives because we no longer recognize them as holes.  We think those holes have always been there, they will always be there, they are simply part of who we are and what we are, like belly buttons, so we drift from page to page, from activity to activity, hoping at some point to feel more of that aliveness we know we're supposed to have.

Creative boredom is the acute feeling that you will never create again, and to any artist, it is akin to purgatory.  You may know the feeling will pass, but at the moment, the feeling feels permanent. This feeling is of course, vanity, as much if not most of writing is willing one's self to put words to paper, rather than waiting for inspiration to flash and drive the prose.  Even the art one previously created seems alien, like someone else did that, because the person now trying to create, could not approximate what was done then.  

It may seem silly to compare not having the thrill of crafting a whole world or a painting or whatnot, with receiving graces and blessings and spiritual gifts via a disciplined rigorous prayer life, but the artist is a creator and God is the ultimate artist, ergo lacking the creative spark to create is in a sense, losing a touch of the Divine that one dearly dearly loves.  Not having it at one's fingertips is akin to forgetting how to play a particular piano piece or throw a baseball or ride a bicycle, we don't think we shouldn't have this ability, we know we had it, ergo it is frustrating to not have it now. It isn't that it is lost, only that it is veiled and we do not know how long we will have to endure this separation from that particular divine gift.

In prayer life, spiritual dryness also results in a panic, a sense that the emptiness will always be empty, the disconnect will never be resolved.  You stare into your soul and see the cavernous hole and wonder how in Heaven's name, it can be made holy.   Prayer feels dull and routine.  You do it anyway, hoping at some point, you will forget yourself in the process and grace will take over.  But the spiritual dullness, like the creative dry spell, is an odd sort of gift, demanding that the soul persevere in the process absent the joy of inspiration.  It strengthens the will to obey, to grow, by not giving the simplest of rewards, the "feeling" of peace/grace that can come from prayer. 

One has to be secure enough in one's faith to know, this dark night of the soul is by design.  This dark night of the soul is a rare gift given to illustrate the soul's devotion to God.   The dryness of inspiration in the artist life is also a time to till the mental soil, feed the brain, trust that the talent will reveal itself again if one only persists.   But modern living distrusts stillness, distrust waiting, distrusts not doing, ergo it has trouble recognizing that this stillness in art or in prayer life, can be the fertile soil for much deeper work.   It is a hard thing to accept.  It is harder still to trust. 
The easier thing to do is give a fuller voice to any doubts, worries or anxieties that come with being a creator.  "You were never any good." "No one will read this." "You turned everyone off." "No one cares about what you write."  All of those ugly doubt locust thoughts that usually get packed in a box and sent to the farthest corner of the brain, sense weakness and come crawling out to eat at whatever is left of the heart. They will only feel satisfied when the artist gives up and they can burp smugly and say, "Told you so."    "You should never have tried in the first place." 

The spiritual dimension of the attack on the artist seems clear when one considers these same sorts of mental pests plague any soul when they feel they've somehow wondered out into the dessert and God seems very very far away.   My best advice?  Pray.  Work.  And don't worry.   The inspiration will come when you are least expecting, like falling in love, you will be struck by beauty and seek to create it.   Rest.  You may be exhausted.  Worrying about not being able to create will not help you become creative.  Allow time to grow your creative juices and trust that they will come.  

Lastly, start creating. Anything. Use colors or clay or legos, write a letter, a poem, or a stupid parody, Don't worry about if anyone will like it, children create to enjoy the creating process.   Write because the words are like blocks and you want to create a really cool castle with them.  Draw because you love the color.  Dance because you love the song.   Pray because you love the God who made you. 

The doing for its own sake, is the whole point.   

The Payoff

Every once in a while, I pause to wonder, is any of this stuff sinking in?  This sort of question especially vexes after a mass experience where I spend much of the homily "shusshing" the child who wants to give me the roving reporter's eye witness account of what appears to be a scuffle between two children about whether to kneel or sit, followed by an extensive discussion by said reporter with me for not receiving her bulletin with due diligence.   

It pops up when after hearing about who raised their hands at mass and what they said, there is a fight over who gets to sit next to the baby on the ride home and a near rebellion when the request for a snack at the drive-thru is denied or when I've washed the hair, used conditioner, even washed the Barbie's hair, brushed, dried, blown dried, read stories and brushed teeth and get, "I hate going to bed. I'm Never Going to Bed. If you Loved Me You'ld NEVER send me to bed." as a response.  

When every day you still have to remind people to put on their socks and shoes, no toys at the table and to brush their teeth, make their beds, do their homework, turn off the TV...blah blah blah.  Is anyone listening? Even I'm bored by my constant endless loop.  

Then you get the payoff.  

The other day, my daughter explained that the tired old canard about Jesus not multiplying the loaves and the fishes because everyone just happened to pack along a picnic lunch that they could share with everyone had come up.   "So you're telling me, you believe Jesus rose from the dead but couldn't multiply the loaves and fishes to feed the 5000?" she asked.  Her friends agreed.  

That whoop you just heard in you head, it was me.