Laid Low Like a Fallow Field

A friend of mine taught me there are three kinds of people in the world: Some who are currently going through a crisis, Some who have just finished going through a crisis and Some for whom a crisis is waiting just around a corner. This rings true for me these days. 

The surgeon tells me a bowel obstruction the size of a hard ball takes years to form. So how long has this crisis been growing in my life and I never had a clue?

It’s probably a good thing none of us knows what’s next, else we would fret and worry and waste the days that are given to us one by one. As I recall, many years ago someone very wise said something about that very temptation:

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today
(Matthew 6).

Someone else's bumper sticker wisdom reminds me: “Every day is a gift. That’s why we call it the Present.”

During this time of recovery, I find myself welcoming each day as an unopened present, wondering what will come to me as I move through each hour. This is quite different for me. 

I used to think I knew exactly what each day would bring; that’s why I had a calendar—to reassure me I knew exactly what would be happening in my future. Now I’m dis-illusioned from the illusion of knowing what the future holds.

I usually have a plan, a list of things to accomplish throughout the day so I can feel useful, so my life will have meaning. Now I’m challenged to remember that my life is meaningful completely apart from what I may (or may not) accomplish.

These are good things, I figure. There are certain lessons we only can learn when the props are removed, when the fullness is emptied, when the curtain is pulled back, when we are laid low.

Years ago—when I was lingering in another liminal space—I read a book by Sue Monk Kidd: When the Heart Waits. Her images of apple seeds and cocoons and fields lying fallow pierced me and have stayed with me through all my various experiences of (what I lovingly call) “forced Sabbaths.” I have done this before. Not quite like this but plenty of crises have laid me low plenty of times so that you would think I would be pretty good at this by now. And I guess I am better at it than I have been in the past. I am especially aware of the grace that I truly do not have anything better to do with my life right now than to rest and to heal.

I am a fallow field.

What will come from this? What will grow in me? What will the future bring?

I haven’t a clue. I’m not supposed to - although my control issues still tempt me to imagine that I should know, that I should be using this time to be “productive.”

But then the other angel on my shoulder reminds me that being productive must include the waiting and the resting and the getting ready to produce. Otherwise the harvest may be shallow and slight. The same wise teacher who tells us not to worry teaches about this temptation as well:

Hear then the parable of the sower... As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for awhile, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit… (Matthew 13).

I suppose like any field, I don’t have it in me to conjure up goodness. Seems to me that’s the work of the cosmos; maybe I am here to wait and to yield and to allow Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer to compost the muck and manure of my life into the goodness and richness I yearn for.

Will I ever serve another local congregation? Will I finish my degree? Will I keep musing about the scriptures of The Story? Will I keep pondering the intersections of faith and culture?

I don’t know. And that’s okay because I know I will know when it’s time to know.

In the meantime, my heart waits. And this resting spirit of mine is what allows my body to wait and rest as well. Every day is better. Every morning I wake up stronger. Every night I go to bed content. Every baby step is a milestone. Every challenge is an opportunity.

Every moment that the field of my life lies fallow for now is a day or a year of richness and goodness coming in my future.

I believe this. I trust this. I will rest in this.

Two Weeks Post-Op

"Time heals all wounds," they say. But also deep sleep, good food, gentle movement and lavish love. I am constantly amazed at how much better I am; each day I can tell a difference.

But it is decidedly odd to be so intimate with my digestive system. Colons are not common conversation; they are to be tucked away discreetly and taken for granted. Well - not this colon, not now and it's fascinating to be confronted repeatedly with evidence and consequence of every single thing I put into my mouth. I've lost the graceful cushion of my body. Instead of a system that compensates and forgives little indiscretions, this current system demands much more of my careful, constant attention.

I am a pretty private person. I know that in my writing and in my preaching, I can be fairly self-disclosing sometimes but I'm always clear where my line is and I rarely cross over into true vulnerability. That's probably due to my personality; an Enneagram Nine, I figure. An Introvert. So I'm pondering my new reality where this hidden, physical part of me is so exposed. I'm pondering the inter-relationship and inter-connection of my physical and my emotional/spiritual being.

The Enneagram tells me I am a "gut" person: I understand the world not primarily by way of my thinking or my feeling but rather by way of some deep, instinctual process. All of us have "gut reactions" but evidently we Eights, Nines and Ones experience life as a kind of gut reaction most of the time. I don't quite understand this but I'm trying. I would much rather be a "head" person,  analyzing my world with a cool, dispassionate rationality. But no - I'm very aware that I am someone who feels things in her gut, who understands (or often misunderstands) things by some deep, reflexive process that defies reason.

So is there a connection to this way of living life by my gut and this life threatening blockage that snuck up on me and shut my gut down? I don't know. Part of my current ponderings.

I'm re-reading Bill Moyers' Healing and the Mind (1993). The science is surely dated these 20+ years later but the conversations are intriguing and all these scientists assure us that - yes - there clearly is a connection between our physical and our emotional. Biochemist Candace Pert said:

"The mind is some kind of enlivening energy in the information realm throughout the brain and body that enables the cells to talk to each other, and the outside to talk to the whole organism."

The "mind" exists not only in the brain, she insists, but in every single cell in the body. All our emotions reside in the body, are stored throughout the body and are triggered by chemical receptors in the cells in response to various events.

"Moods and attitudes that come from the realm of the mind transform themselves into the physical realm through the emotions."

How does this science correlate to my being a "gut" person? I don't know. So many questions.

Generally I love the questions; they have been my salvation again and again. But these days I'm grateful I'm not burdened with unhelpful, unanswerable questions like: "why me?" This is mine - for whatever reason. I will bear it. I will learn from it. I will grow.

And I will definitely encounter each day with a sharper awareness and a deeper gratitude than ever before. Every day as I grow stronger, I am cultivating thankfulness - for time to heal, deep sleep, good food, gentle movement and lavish love. And for the amazing grace of the One who is ever working all things together for the good of all.

Still Surrounded by Grace, Hope and Love

I guess all of us are always surrounded by grace. I know it's true for me that I forget to notice most of the time. But ever since this black hole of emergency surgery and colostomy bags sucked me in two weeks ago, I can definitely say I am very aware how much my life is sustained by grace and hope and love.

I've been remembering the words to an old hymn: "grace greater than all my sin..." It's a nice thought, but what strikes me these days is the mystery of a grace greater than the corporate sin that this entire humanity continues to generate. I'm still reading my news feed with stories of duplicitous politicians, desperate boat people, deteriorating air and water and soil, greed, hate, hurt, betrayal... It's enough to make my gut cinch up all over again. Even so, I want to keep learning how to surround myself with this grace that is greater than all this sin. I want to learn how to acknowledge the world's pain without letting it paralyze me; to feel the pain without numbing myself to it; to let the grace flow. I can't close myself off from all this or else I close myself off from life itself.

I once preached a sermon about biblical hope: Hope with a Big H. Whenever my plans, my desires, my hopes get lost in the chaos of the cosmos and it seems as if everything I have ever counted on is shifting sand, I want to keep learning how to live each day grounded in this Hope with a Big H. I have every confidence that my second surgery come November will patch me back up better than new. But in the meantime, I have a lot of every days to live with this bizarre new reality. In each of these days, I want to live in the bigger, Hope-full reality of grace greater, grace sufficient, grace amazing.

I've been recalling the wise words of the gentle old nursery horse to the velveteen rabbit:

'[Real] doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Some of you don't know how very shabby I really am; I put on a pretty good front in order to look Real. But a lot of you see right through me and know me better than I'm comfortable with. And you love me anyway. This astounds me. I want to keep learning how to love like that; to open myself up to all our failures and infidelities and to love anyway. Hands on, Real Love.

That's what I've experienced from my Jerry - embodied love. That's what I feel from so many of you who have called and visited and texted and emailed and snail mailed... Thank you. I want to keep learning how to let that kind of love seep into my gut and break open my own closed off places; letting Real Love really change me into someone who Really Loves.

Surrounded every moment of every hour of every day with Grace, Hope and Love.