Give Me Grace

Dear Joy,

This morning, we had thirty minutes before we needed to leave the house, and I hadn't put dinner in the crock pot yet. I threw on a movie for the little guys (Phonics Farm, to relieve some of the mom guilt? It's educational!!), and started running around the kitchen, whipping up paprika and thyme and garlic, chopping onions, mixing it all together with a whole chicken and hoping to myself that I could come up with a good (edible) sweet-potato recipe by 4pm. Pleas for "SNACK!" came from the living room, so I grabbed a bag of pretzel thins from on top of the fridge, turned to race into the other room (why? why was I racing?), and... CRUNCH. THWACK. I somehow managed to karate-chop an open kitchen cabinet door with my knee. It cracked in half (so much for investing in those "solid core all-wood doors") and landed with a THUD, skidding across the dining room floor.

I stared at it in disbelief. I went into the living room to give the kids their pretzels. I came back to stare some more at the gaping hole where the door used to be ('twas a big cabinet), and the cabinet door, lying on the floor, handily splintered in half. (I achieved black belt status in Tae Kwon Do approximately seventeen years ago, so for all intents and purposes, I've still got it. Hi yah.)

Sometimes, things just don't go like I want them to.

And then there's this (you know this): I'm pregnant. (I'm pregnant!)

For anyone who's counting, we have two little boys, ages 3 and 5, and now, coming in the deep Chicago-style midwinter, a little girl is on her way to us. We are thrilled, literally tickled pink, but I'm also well-aware of myself, this third time around. I'm aware that I don't do what I want me to do, kids don't do what I want them to do, and life doesn't do what I want it to do. Like a kitchen cabinet door, crushed by my knee, the unplanned takes me by surprise, and I'm left wondering, How in the world is this even physically possible?

An older woman I barely know came up to me several weeks ago and said, "Nice to see you! So, are you pregnant? Because I told myself, either she's pregnant, or she's getting fat."

[crickets...]

These sort of remarks come with the territory, I suppose. At a recent baby shower, standing next to the dessert table, another person just finished telling me how exhausted she was after her second child was born, then looked me straight in the eyes and asked, "I mean, seriously, how do you think you're going to do it?" I have no idea, lady. I have absolutely no idea. Want a cream puff?

Earlier, I said "I'm pregnant" twice, once with a period and once with an exclamation point, because it's how I feel. Imagine the first, said hesitantly, quietly, with a little duck of the head. And imagine the second delivered with a giant smile, arms thrown wide open, me spinning around, giddy. I'm hesitant, apprehensive, because I know how difficult it is, because I have friends all over the place walking through seasons of pain and loss, and because babies don't come easy for me. I'm happy, and a little giddy, because, well, it's a baby, and we're all excited, and this time around, I get to dress my little one in shades of fluffy pink.

I'm learning how to wrap my arms around that strange, tangled mix of sober-yet-joyful emotion, as I start to get fat (thank you Lady #1) and figure out how in the world I'll chase after a third wriggling human being (good news for me: babies don't move much for the first couple months, which buys me some time). In this season of life, I know more people dealing with deep, personal heartache than ever before. My friends have had miscarriages, struggled with infertility, and dealt with the excruciating wait of pending adoptions. I watched one dear friend lose her beautiful baby girl, just hours after she was born. Others struggle with their marriages, difficult pregnancies, or with children diagnosed with cancer or significant developmental delays. I've written a bit about our difficult walk through the world of pediatric neurologists and alternative therapy, and you, Joy, have been gracious, honest, and articulate about your own journey through secondary infertility.

I e-mailed a friend last week to tell her about my pregnancy. We hadn't talked in awhile, but she's a treasured friend who recently experienced a devastating loss. I wanted to tell her about our new baby, but I was really afraid of causing her pain. Here's part of what she replied, after expressing her congratulations with a boatload of exclamation points:

I wouldn't say it's altogether easy. But it's not painful. In many ways, it's almost healing. Sure, there may be tough days where seeing what others receive is difficult. But as much as I celebrated both my pregnancies, I long for other moms who have healthy pregnancies to be able to celebrate their little ones who are on the way... and all the ways they will change the current dynamic of their family.

So, I celebrate with you, just as you mourned with me.

I felt peace wash over me as I read my friend's gracious reply, amazed at her kind, tender heart. And I realized, finally, that grace is exactly what I need.

Grace, when I say something insensitive to someone who's hurting deep inside, and my words unknowingly cut like a knife.

Grace, when well-meaning acquaintances are attempting to make small talk, and don't realize that their remarks are making me feel like garbage.

Grace, when I'm too tired, and the house is a mess, and Netflix is running strong, and cabinet doors are flying off the hinges.

Grace, when my patience is gone, and I'm snapping at my husband and my babies, and everything seems impossible.

Grace, when people hear about my problems and think, That actually isn't very hard, or when I hear about other people's problems and think, That actually isn't very hard.

Grace, because God has lavishly dumped his grace on me, so that I can first accept it, receive it, revel in it, and then freely extend it to others.

I have no idea what three kids will look like for us, in our two-bedroom home, with our one-and-one-sixteenth income. Babies mean snuggly bundles and sleep deprivation, morning kisses and midnight fevers, more work, more love. I've been told that going from two to three is easy, piece of cake. I've also been ominously warned, "With three kids, it's that extra pair of shoes you have to buy. That extra pair of shoes is the killer."

So I'll pray for more grace, and that extra pair of shoes. I'll pray for moms who want more babies, and moms who can't handle the babies they have. I'll pray for the foster moms, the adoptive moms, the waiting moms. I'll ask for the grace to love and accept others like I so badly want to be loved and accepted.

Grace, all over the place. I like the sound of it.

Love, Sherah

Gardening on Mars

From unsplash.com, no permission necessary, though I feel the need to clarify that there's no way in heck I took this photograph. 

Dear Sherah,

The other night Pete and I went to see The Martian. He's been talking about it for weeks, and I've always responded with a casual "sure, sounds fun" without giving it much thought. Honestly it wasn't until we were on our way to the CocoaPlex in Hershey (adorable, right?) that I started to get nervous. 

I hate outer space movies. 

I don't like what this says about me, but I would so much rather watch a movie about, say, a woman cooking every recipe from of The Art of French Cooking in her Brooklyn apartment than watch astronauts do, well, anything. Gazing at the night sky fills me with enough wonder and dread to keep my perspective perky; anything involving telescopes and mathematics freaks me out. We took Anders to the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. a couple weekends ago, and I suffered an existential crisis in the half-hour IMAX special about stars, narrated by Whoopi Goldberg. Which is to say that a feature length film about an astronaut abandoned on Mars is not my cup of chai, even when the astronaut is Matt Damon. 

We settled into our seats as the previews started, and I plugged my ears and averted my eyes for all of the horror films and most of the apocalyptic dystopian ones. It's not that I can't handle watching teenagers rise to a challenge that requires training in a sprawling underground facility, because I can; it's just that I can't handle it right before I'm going to watch a movie that will likely show someone clinging to the outside of a spaceship, untethered. 

The previews ended, and I leaned over and whispered, "I can't believe you talked me into this. You know outer space terrifies me."

He paused a moment, then leaned back in. "You do know that we're hurtling sixty-seven thousand miles per hour around the sun on a planet in outer space right now, yes?" 

My jaw clenched and my eyes shot open. I turned back to the screen and inhaled.

Despite myself, I liked the film. Watching Matt Damon grow potatoes on Mars using human excrement and spare spacecraft parts inspired me to try YET AGAIN! to grow houseplants. Beyond the gardening inspiration, I appreciated the cosmic exploration of human themes (notably lacking in that IMAX documentary), like loneliness and connection, depression and determination, the will to live and the willingness to lay down one's life. 

At one point a NASA official, struggling with the ethics of spending resources and risking lives to save a lone astronaut (Saving Private Ryan in Outer Space, if you will), says in an authoritative tone, "Space travel is much bigger than one person." To which another NASA guy answers with equal and opposite confidence, "No. It's really not." That piece of dialogue poses the question and the story posits its answer, which I interpreted like this: It's only by serving something bigger that our individual lives have any meaning. But as soon as we dismiss an individual life as a casualty, we render the bigger story meaningless. 

Speaking of stories, and meaning... 

I very much identified with your last post, and it reminded me of an interview I recently heard with Elizabeth Gilbert. She said that when she meets people who want to do something creative and they're not, they usually have good, legitimate, real-life reasons why. But if you dig a little deeper, she says, the real reason is always and only fear. Always and only fear, she repeated. 

In case you can't tell by now, I'm a somewhat fearful person. Some days more than others, I'm keenly aware that I'm gravity-plastered to a planet in outer space. ("We're driving a car IN OUTER SPACE!" I said as we pulled out of a theater. "WE'RE LISTENING TO MUSIC IN OUTER SPACE!") I'm not a brave botanist astronaut who volunteered for this mission; I just appeared on the scene, and now I'm trying to figure out the meaning and my place in it all. We all are, in our own ways, in our own stories. Writing is how I figure out the meaning part. I write because I can, because I like it, because (just say it, Joy) I'm good at it, and because I suck at higher level math. (Even when I'm not being cheeky, that last part is still true.) 

You adequately plumbed the often blinding, mostly illusionary fear of "what other people think about me." (I'm working on my list.) The other fear I have, the one driving the "I can't justify the time" dynamic that's hounding me with every single keystroke, is that it doesn't matter. I'm afraid anything smaller than the big story is just noise, that I'm just noise, that it's not worth my time or attention to create or connect. So when Damon said, "Yeah, I'm not going to die here," something inside of me jumped. He could have said, "There are much bigger things going on in the world than me. I'll do everyone a favor and stay quiet, eat whatever food is left, watch TV." But no! He drove a rover over to a 1990s communication device, fixed it, and made contact with earth.* He did it while accepting the fact that he was probably going to die in the process. So maybe - just maybe - I can stop coming up with excuses not to, you know, blog. 

My favorite reminder these days is "Do it afraid." Or to crash your soccer metaphor: if you can't punt the fear, dribble it. 

Next week, same planet, same field. 

Love,

Joy 

* I asked Pete if the vehicle Matt Damon drove on Mars was a "hovercraft," and he answered by burying his head in his hands and then telling me I'm very pretty. So I'm going with "rover."