“It Not Affect Me”

(Old, partial post from December 12, 2011)

My husband is out of town.  This is the first time we’ve been apart since being married.

I was pretty sure I would be completely fine. Only 3 short months ago, this was our routine.  We only saw each other once a week, so I felt confident that I could fall easily back into this mode.

Not so.

It’s only been 4 days (well, 3 whole days), and I’m already going crazy.  I’m afraid I’ll be unrecognizably chubby by the time he comes home because I find that I am back into my emotional eating.  I still have to endure 4 more days until his return, so I’ll devote myself to compiling some quotations from my adorably, yet unknowingly funning, little siblings.

Playing tag football, little 5 year old Philip gets tagged and dramatically throws himself to the ground.  Unfortunately he mostly misses the grass and gets mostly concrete.

Me: “Woah, Buddy….are you ok?  You landed on the concrete.”

Philip:  ”No no….it not affect me”.

Walking outside to get the trashcans from the driveway.

Philip: *Sniff* *Sniff* “Toria, I smell and owl flying with its head”

Olivia: “Toria, can I have a Free Mustacure?”

Me: “uhhhh………….” *Confused, but then realize she’s asking for a Three Musketeer bar.

True Friendship

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation” – George Washington

 

Thankful for my true friends!

Confused as I Stare into A Void

I am facing an event that I know is grave.  I know that it is sad.  Yet I also know that every single human who has ever lived on this earth has experienced it.

 

 

It is so common, yet so foreign.  It is an essential part of our human existence, yet it is so un-human.

 

Death….

 

 

A week ago, my 93 year old Nana fell and broke her hip.  She has always been a tough cookie, resilient like nobody’s business.  At first she was doing well; up and walking the day after her operation.  But I found out today that she is rapidly declining and may not have long to live.

 

In addition to her hip fracture and old age, she also has Alzheimer’s disease.  She has long outlived the expected time for people diagnosed with this form of dementia, yet even she is not immune to its ravaging effects. With all this change and upset to routine, she is confused.  She is combative, she is lost, she is resistant.  She hasn’t been eating or drinking and has ceased to participate in therapy.  Her lungs are beginning to show signs of pneumonia. The palliative care doctor explained that she probably has a few weeks to live at most.

I know that death exists. I know that it is inevitable.  I just don’t know how to respond to it.

 

I have been spared experiencing any deaths in my rememberable childhood.  My other grandparents passed away when I was very young, and we were distant from them, both geographically and emotionally.  My relationship with my Nana has been equally distant.  She wasn’t the lovey, dovey type of grandma who tells stories and makes you cookies.  And so I don’t feel the same sort of closeness that others might know with their grandparents.

However, in her old age, and my young adulthood, I have come to care for her in a different compassionate sort of way. Like I might one of my dear patients.  I helped her whenever I was home. I would visit her, show her pictures, reminder her of who I am and how her family loves and cares for her, ease her fears, calm her anger, and listen to her incoherent tales.  I love my Nana. I don’t doubt that.  But I just doubt my ability to understand death and the fact that it is potentially so imminent for her.

I don’t wish for her to die, but I don’t wish for her to be sad and in pain.

I don’t know how this will make me feel.  I don’t know if the way I feel will be right.

How do I support my family through this?

 

I feel fortunate that I have been spared experiencing death up until this point.  Yet at the same time I feel so afraid and confused as I stare into this void.

 

Monotony As Ministry?

As I was washing the dishes this evening, I broke out the Jack Jezzro “An Acoustic Christmas” album – a classic at the Myracle family home.  If you are looking for some mellow, folksy Christmas music, I highly recommend it.  As I lost myself in the music and stumbled into thought, I found myself asking this question: “How does this – me washing dishes and listening to Christmas music – help further the Kingdom of Christ?”. There’s the great commission that tells us to go out and spread the gospel, and doing dishes seems like the furthest thing from that.

A seemingly strange and completely random thought.  Yet it stumped me.  I have yet to find an answer.  So I am hoping that writing about this conundrum will help me come to some sort of conclusion.

As I mulled over this question, I thought about my husband and his job as a pastor.  He is a worship leader and also leads the college/career and children’s ministries at our church.  I then realized that this makes me a pastor’s wife.  (Eugene has been a pastor for almost our entire relationship, yet I somehow never came to the realization that once we were married I would be a pastor’s wife.  I think this reality doesn’t get through to me as I see myself as an entirely unfit human being for this role.) I then began to think of other pastors’ wives that I knew  and acknowledged that when THEY do the dishes and clean the house and make the food and raise the children, then are doing ministry by proxy because they are supporting and enabling their husbands to preach and spread the gospel.  So their efforts at home are a secondary, yet direct form of ministry.

Somehow though, I don’t see my doing housework as ministry.  Maybe it’s because I fail to identify myself as a  pastor’s wife.  Maybe this is because Eugene is still in school and only doing part time ministry.  Maybe this is because I just feel completely inadequate for the admirable, demanding, full-time role of being a pastor’s wife.

Maybe it’s because we don’t have children, and so housework still just seems selfish.  I can’t tell anyone “I’m doing this for you so that you can play and have a fun childhood and learn and grow to be a good person!!”.  I’m just doing it for us.

I know that the dishes must be cleaned.  I know that the laundry must be folded.  I know that the floors must be vacuumed and the beds made.  And I also have a pretty good feeling that this stuff is good and that God is happy when we do it.  It’s about good stewardship.

I just don’t see the correlation.

Not yet anyway.

So, can monotony be ministry?

Sin According to Martin Luther

‘Homo in se incurvatus’

Mankind curved in on itself

 

 

Simple, but so precisely true.

“Find a Way to Thrive”. . .

. . .said one of my occupational therapy instructors last week.

It was inspiring, beautiful, and hit a spot deep within my heart.  Yet, I feel as though despite how much I look for how to live fully and meaningfully, I can’t seem to find it here.

Today, I simply feel as though my soul is dying.

Physically I feel weak, yet my limbs move on robotically.  Emotionally, I am empty, yet so full of concern.  Mentally, my thoughts incessantly swirl yet I find no peace.  And spiritually I am dry.  As dry and dead as the dust and concrete wasteland that I live in.

How do so many people live here?  Why do so many people live here?  There is such a glaring lack of good and true beauty here that I can hardly imagine living through another day of it.

I feel that my soul is crying out against this ugliness.  I need beauty in my life.  I need life.  Everything is dead and empty here.  Occasionally there is a glimpse of  hope in the smile of a stranger, or the sun trickling through a scare tree or two.  But for the most part, I feel as though this place is barren, blank and soulless.

I need clean air.  The fresh, lively scent of dark fertile earth, the brush of leaves, bark and flowers, the rush of an ice cold stream.  I need signs of life!  Both natural and human.

I need something to tell me that despite how short and sad and difficult this passing life can be, that it is all worth it.  The times of joy, beauty, goodness and truth are worth it.

This is beginning to sound like a hippy, earthy ecological rant and it’s not.  It’s just a cry from my soul longing for what’s real.  I want peace, life, beauty, love, goodness and truth.  But despite what I may think, I’m not going to find those in a weekend in the mountains.

My soul is crying out for what is real.  It’s longing for something deeper than this shadowy, tainted reality that I know.

I yearn for heaven.

For all the pain, sorrow, and evil to cease.

But not in this life.  This life is full of brokenness.  So I will cling to the moments of goodness, know that there is more to come, and find a way to thrive.

Under the Sun

I just updated my Facebook status with the lyrics from an OkGo song, “White Knuckles”.

The lyrics were: “Nothing ever doesn’t change, but nothing changes much”, and as I contemplated them, I realized how precisely they express the thoughts and feelings within me.

The two complementary/contradictory statements in the phrase reflect my current grief: Change is here and change is hard  AND despite all the trouble, things never really improve that much.

Change is always happening, and it is typically with reluctance and pain that we endure it. Change is an inevitable, unstoppable, juggernaut that is both exhilarating and terrifying.  In my mind, I know that change is good; it is all in God’s hands and so I can trust that whatever change occurs must be for our ultimate good.  However, it is just plain annoying.  Change is exhausting to me.  And as much as I am excited about the path that my life is taking, I feel as though I simply don’t have the energy to keep up with it.

The other sentiment is that “nothing changes much”.  Despite the process, the transitions, the growth, the trouble, pretty much life will always be the same.  Babies are born, and people die.  There are happy moments, yet bad things always happen. The sun rises and then it sets. There is never enough time in the day, and entropy always wins.  My life is consumed with my graduate program, yet in the end of it all I’m really no different. I’m still just a girl with a limited time to live.  Each day is different.  Each day is the same.

I feel as though I am walking the thin line between excitement and cynicism, and I fear that soon I may tire and fall to one side.  Nothing is untouched by change, but its impact scarcely translates.

This is becoming metaphysical mush, so I should sleep now.  Only to get up again….