Enjoy! (Tales of Chaplaincy, Waitressing and Motherhood)

After graduate school I worked for a year as a waitress at the Olive Garden.  Dressed in black pants and a pressed white shirt with requisite greasy necktie, I carried heavy trays of dishes to my waiting tables, taking care to place each meal with precision before its corresponding diner.  I liked waitressing in the same way I like online arcade games like Big Money and Bejeweled.  It was, once you knew the menu and wine list, fairly mindless work. 

One of the easiest ways to increase your income as a waitress is to increase your speed, cycling as many diners through your allotted tables as possible during your given shift.  The litany at the Olive Garden went: orders, drinks, salad and bread, entrees, dessert, check and repeat.  Since we were limited to three "open" tables at a time, some servers I knew took things a bit further by slapping down the check and cashing the customer out as soon as the meal was served so they could pick up other tables.  With typical bawdy restaurant humor we jokingly referred to this practice as “pre-mature echeckulation.”

Every time I served a meal I ended my delivery with a cheerful, “Enjoy!”  I said it often and repeatedly without thinking until one day I noticed the phrase as it slipped from my lips, “Enjoy!”  From then on I heard it every time I said it, an open invitation. 

*  *   *   *   *   *  

After my stint as a waitress I worked as a Chaplain at Penn State Hershey Medical Center.  The job required considerably more mindfulness, though here too there was a litany to follow which, when paired with my own self-imposed pressure to increase productivity, kept the days moving along at a rapid clip. 

One morning in the midst of a conversation my supervisor, who was nearing retirement age, said something like, “Now that I’m getting older I find myself wanting to, trying to, savor life.” 

Savor.  The word sat there on the table between us like a tempting morsel, something invitingly heavy and rich.  I picked it up and bit into it, rolled it around in my head for weeks, months, years, savoring it, I suppose. 

Now I held in my hands, my heart, two invitations, “savor” and “enjoy,” that seemed utterly opposed to the way I'd learned to play the game of life.  These words offered a time-out in the midst of the litany of run, run faster, run harder, run until you don’t know where you came from and can’t recall where you’re going.

*   *   *   *   *   *

The litany has changed again, but the feelings haven’t.  Now I’m at home most days in a job that involves an endless list of coffee-fueled cleaning and carrying and ferrying of people and things, from dawn until dusk, then repeat.  There are days, of course, where it becomes a game, where I make it a game in order to survive.  Days that I push my children through with the efficiency I learned as a waitress, the productivity I learned from my time working in the medical system. 

Still, everywhere I go, people call out, “Enjoy it, it’ll be over before you know it.” and “It goes by so fast!”  These are usually passing strangers, grayed and bent with age, looking longingly, hungrily at my bouncing, bopping, hopping children as we pass on the sidewalk or in the aisle of a store.  Their carts hold the humble needs of a household of one while I struggle to push a veritable Big Mac filled with as much food as we can afford.

When my oldest was an infant these comments annoyed me to no end.  Those were days that I struggled, seeing no future but only a ceaseless unsavory present.  Like the waitress waiting for her big break and the chaplain struggling to believe that offering presence in the present was enough, I pushed through my days barely daring to pause for fear of what I would find. 

I get it now or, I should say, I get it more than I did then.  Or maybe it’s more that I hear a voice in my own heart echoing that of those around me, “Enjoy!” and “Savor.”    

*   *   *   *   *   *

These are the last days of summer, the heavy days, slow and fast at the same time, the fleeting ones.  These are the days before my oldest is off to first grade and my preschooler will be gone three mornings a week.  The days before the twins will be really walking, then running, in opposite directions from each other.  These are the days before whatever comes next, be it welcome or not.  These moments that come and go with the slamming of the screen door.  These are the days to savor, to enjoy. 

Ah, God, still our souls, awaken our senses to these days.  Help us to sit down, sink down into them in all of their blessing and struggle, for this day, these days, are the days that the Lord has made. 

The Blessing: On the Eve of Your First Birthdays

Walking out onto the dock, I feel it welling up around me.  It’s not the first time I’ve felt it. 

It’s the last day of our summer vacation at the bay and I’m distracting the kids while my parents and husband load up all our gear.  The big gate’s packed away and there’s no safe “pen” for the twins anymore, so I’ve loaded them into the double jogging stroller and am walking them around the yard in wide circles.  The morning’s cool and fresh with dappled sunlight casting moving shadows on the ground as tree leaves tremble in a gentle breeze. 

I call the older kids for one last walk on the dock that extends far out into our little piece of the bay.  The land all around is flat and open with a gentle slope leading from house to shore.  We march down in a grand procession – me leading with the stroller and the older two following behind in the wiggly, bouncy dance that’s passed for walking ever since we arrived a week ago. 

Just as we step out onto the dock, I feel it.  It lasts only a moment and feels like space falling open around me, a heavy fruit falling from the tree.  All I can say is that in that moment I can feel the blessing of my children rising up around me.  I feel the blessing of this tiny parade, me the momma duck with her brood waddling along behind.

It’s so clear to me in that moment – the blessing that’s there whether I choose to receive it or not. 

*   *   *   *   *   *

I wasn’t ready for a third pregnancy, in fact I was quite sure I had miscarried by the time we got around to scheduling the first ultrasound.  But there they were, two hearts beating side by side, tiny legs and arms already forming.  Baby A and Baby B. 

We struggled to absorb the information.  We drove around in circles for an hour doing the math – multiplying every part of our lives by two more.  The surrealism and the worry of how we would do it was overshadowed by the fact that I didn’t want twins.  I didn’t want to be a mother of four, didn’t want to make room in my already full life.

I told my employer in a pile of tears. I let John tell our friends, I wasn’t ready to.  When I saw some at the store a few weeks later I couldn’t talk about it without crying. 

People are quick to label most pregnancies a blessing and to name God’s hand in the matter.  But it’s taken me awhile to come around.  Months into it all I tell my spiritual director, “This is not the blessing I would have chosen.”  I think of the writing, teaching, graduate school, my job at the church, the training program in spiritual direction, all the things I had in mind for myself. 

There are blessings that feel at first blush like dying.  Blessings that take us through the shadow of grief and loss before making their light known.  I’m so thankful for the friends who listened without judging as I passed through this shadow. 

*   *   *   *   *   *

Standing on the dock, I wonder again at this blessing that’s dropped unexpectedly into my lap, my life.  For some reason Leah from the book of Genesis comes to mind, the spinster sister who’s given in marriage to Jacob by her father’s sleight-of-hand. Leah longs for Jacob’s love, but he only has eyes for her sister Rachel. Leah doesn’t receive the blessing she would've chosen and it takes her years to come to terms with it. 

At first the children God gives her seem like poor consolation for the blessing she wants so dearly.  It’s not clear how many years pass, but the names she gives each son reflect her journey as each birth moves her from hope, to despair, to one last bit of hope.  For her, the mourning process is long and she sees the children only as a means to that which she cannot have – Jacob’s love.  Finally, with the birth of her fourth son, she turns a corner saying, “This time I will praise the Lord.” 

I wonder when it happened for her.  When were her eyes opened to the blessing that rose up all around her?  Maybe it was watching those boys running in from the fields or listening to their heavy breathing as they lay sprawled all around her in the quiet of the night.  Leah moves from mourning a loss to seeing, feeling, accepting the blessing she’s given and her response is to “praise the Lord.”

*   *   *   *   *   *

There’s a scene in the movie, Stranger than Fiction, where Will Ferrell’s character, Harold Crick, is given a plate of warm cookies by the girl he’s beginning to fall in love with, Ana.  Harold argues with Ana, refusing the cookies, though they're warm and gooey, fresh out of the oven.  Harold explains that he doesn’t like cookies and further conversation reveals that Harold has never had a homemade cookie.  

Ana refuses to take no for an answer and slides the plate in front of him despite his protests.  Harold eats, at first with caution, then with growing enjoyment.  After he finishes Ana asks, “You like them?” to which he replies, “I do . . . thank you for forcing me to eat them.” 

*    *    *    *    *    *

“This is not the blessing I would have chosen.”  I can see now how large the “I” in that statement looms, the “I” who chooses, the “I" who knows best without having tasted, without daring to imagine something beyond what's familiar and known.  Over time, over conversation, the prayer continues and grows in wisdom, “This is not the blessing I would have chosen.  But who’s to say that I would’ve chosen best?  And, it is a blessing none-the-less.  Please, God, help me to receive it.”

These babies are my cookies and God has placed them on the table before me. “Sit down, now,” God says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good."  And I do like them, I love them in fact, and I can say nothing more, but “Thank you, and thank you, and thank you.”

Baskets of Leftovers

I'm continuing a series of short pieces on abundance (this is the fourth, you can find other posts in this series here: Scarcity and Abundance).     

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After all of this, I come downstairs one Sunday morning and am greeted again by the same pile of leftover baby food that sits on the floor in the corner of our dining room day after day – only this time I finally see it for what it is. 

Every day, three times or more, I gather up the large pile of leftovers that accumulates beneath the twins’ high chairs.  Smashed peas that bear the prints of pudgy fingers.  Canned green beans that missed a mouth and tumbled from fist, to lap, to floor in a flurry of consumption.  Crushed cereal pieces, bits of banana and pears.  Eleven-month-olds eat with abandon, not worrying if there will be enough, so much so that the more you give them, the more they waste. 

Three times a day I sweep up this pile.  It’s bigger than even I can believe.  My husband and I marvel at it and joke about renting our neighbor’s dog to walk-through and eat up the scraps each night.  But until today I’ve not been able to see it.  Today is when it hits me.  The scales fall from my eyes and I smile in recognition and wonder how long God has been holding his breath, suppressing a giggle, waiting for me to get this cosmic joke. 

Every day I’m gathering up baskets of leftovers.  Every day.  

Mark 8 tells the story of Jesus feeding the four thousand with seven loaves of bread.  Just after this the disciples get into a boat with Jesus and we're told that, "they had forgotten to bring bread with them, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat."  Later, the worried disciple sum up their view of the situation saying, "We have no bread."  These are the same people who've just seen Jesus feed four thousand people with seven loaves and gathered up seven baskets of leftovers.  They go from swimming in a sea of bread, to drifting anxiously in a sea of fear and doubt and worry.

Isn’t this the way it goes? Every day Jesus is feeding the four thousand, the widow, the orphan and the man who's out of work and his family too and we, his people, are picking up the leftovers.  Yet all the while we grumble among ourselves like the disciples in the boat who look at the one loaf they do have and say, “We have no bread.” 

How would our world change if we really believed and lived the truth of the kingdom of God where abundance is the norm?  I think of the surprised smiles on the porch as we watch the cardboard being unloaded.  The thrill of half-price chicken, of partaking in a meal that’s pure gift.  The shouts of exclamation in the garden, “Any time we get hungry, we can come and eat.”  Would we really have time to fight over resources if we were busy gathering up the harvest that comes and comes and continues to come if only we have eyes to see it? 

I am so prone to hoarding, so firmly do I believe the lie of scarcity.  Oh, God, my faith is but a tiny mustard seed.  But here it is, take it, because with you less is more and, small as it is, it’s enough. 

Ok, so this is more than a day's worth.  What can I say? It was a busy weekend!

Dinner for Six

This past month I had the opportunity to write a post for my friend Matt Tuckey's blog, Y Thoughts.  Matt is a good friend and the Associate Executive Director of our local YMCA.  You can start reading the post here, then click on the link to continue reading on Matt's blog.  While your there, read around and leave a few comments.  Matt writes thoughtful pieces on the intersections between faith and culture and how the many decisions we all make on a daily basis effect both our social and individual well-being. 

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It started in a moment of frustration as so many things do when I find myself home alone with four young children during the “witching hour” of 4 to 5 pm.  I was buzzing around the house tossing cereal in front of the twins in their highchairs and ferrying snacks to the older two who were camped-out in front of the TV while also trying to make dinner. 

Chop, chop, chop, . . . scrape go onions into the pan.  Grab another handful of cheerios for the babies.  Turn, and chop, chop, chop, . . . scrape go carrots.  Then the call from the front room, “Can we have some more snack . . . and some juice, please?” 

Click here to visit Matt's blog and read the rest of this post: Y Thoughts.

Here's what the kids made:

Solomon made "Dinosaur Tracks"

Sophia's "Princess and the Pea Salad"

Stories of Abundance: Feast or Famine?

I'm continuing a series of short pieces on abundance (this is the third, click through to read the first two: In the Garden and Sowing and Reaping).  Sunday evenings and Monday mornings can often be a time of anxiety for me as I worry that I, we, won't have what we need for the week ahead.  What are you needing as you head into this week?

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God has given us another crazy idea for the summer – the idea of hosting a meal every week in our home, providing a main dish and, more importantly, a place for people to be.  This is the seed. 

But I worry so and fight against planting it.  Money feels tight this summer as we whittle down through our savings, each withdrawal advancing the date at which I’ll need to return to paid work.  I argue with God endlessly. 

“There won’t be enough,” I tell God.  “How can we feed others when I feel, weekly, the pressure of feeding my own?” 

But God won't be cowed and keeps pushing the seed of the idea gently and firmly into my palm.  “Just plant it,” God says, “See what happens.  Isn’t it possible there’s more to this than what you can see?”  I finally let go and drop the seed into the ground to see what will come of it. 

*   *   *   *  *  *

I head out to the grocery store to prepare for our first dinner.  I am resolved to make a sweet potato and black bean dish, minus the chicken to cut the cost.  Despite having consented to plant the seed, I am distracted by the weeds of doubt that crop up dense around it and remain unsure that I’ll have what’s  needed to water it. 

As I rush through the store, pinching my pennies, my little white envelope of cash labeled “groceries” peaking out of my purse, I kid you not, I hear this over the loud speaker, “Hello, Giant food customers, Rotisserie Chickens are now buy one get one free, that’s right, buy one get one free, as long as supplies last.” 

The message is so clear, it might as well have been the voice of God.

I stop where I am in the aisle, still counting the cost of chicken, then turn and head toward the rotisserie stand.  There are two other women there, pulling in their harvest of half-price chicken, their unexpected good fortune.  I’m trying hard to hide it, but I know God’s laughing at the fun of it all, at my exasperatingly slow ability to get the message that abundance, not scarcity, is the norm in God's kingdom. 

Stories of Abundance: Sowing and Reaping

Over the next week or so I want to offer a series of short pieces on abundance (this is the second, if you want, you can start by reading the first: In the Garden).  All of these events occurred over the course of a few weeks.  As these stories echoed around, bumping up against each other in the periphery of my life, it became clear that this was a message I needed to hear and hold onto.  Maybe you do to?  I would love to hear your stories of abundance if you have time to share!

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We all sit on the porch eating our ice cream cones on Sunday evening, the first day of our cardboard collection project.  A neighbor has already dropped off two incredibly large boxes filled with cardboard in the less than 12 hours since we started the project, and yet, I worry.  I worry that there won’t be enough.  No one will put anything out for my kids to pick up.  Their hearts will be crushed.  The project I’d hoped would teach them (would teach me!) about the way God shows up and turns the little we have into more than enough will backfire and lead to difficult questions and disappointment. 

I’m busy tending my own little garden full of the weeds of fear and doubt and failure in my heart, my head, when I notice a car pull up across the street.  A woman gets out and pops the trunk of her car and proceeds to pull out enormous flat pieces of cardboard and pile them on the side of the road.  Someone from within the house jogs out to help as we sit staring in disbelief.  These are neighbors we don’t know, I don’t even know their names, but John had stopped by the day before with the kids to hand out our flyer and explain the project. 

We sit and stare, mouths practically gaping, as they unload and we process what it means.  We talk excitedly amongst ourselves, “Could it be?  Is that card board meant for us?  For our little project?”  We look at each other and laughed at our bewilderment, at our excitement, at the wonder of it all. 

We planted the seed of an idea God gave us and it sprouted in the imagination of our neighbor.  Our neighbor remembered a friend with cardboard to spare.  A phone call was made, a seed planted in someone else.  Card board was loaded and keys placed in the ignition.  And here we were to harvest a crop of abundance that we had neither watered nor tended. 

And yet, when the kids went out a few hours later on their collection route, I paced the house in anxiety.  Still not believing in the miracle of seeds and planting.  Still not believing God’s strange math of multiplication whereby Elijah and a widow and her son can survive on a few drops of oil and flour, or a crowd of four thousand can eat and be filled from seven small loaves of bread. 

Gentleness Saves

The following is a brief and quickly written post in response to Barbara Brown Taylor's question, "What is saving your life right now?"  Explore other bloggers' answers to the same question at Sarah Bessey 's blog.  For me, this was a good prayer experience.  What would your answer be?  Consider commenting, journaling, or posting the question on your facebook page.  Here's my response:

All I can say is that we are in transition again.  It’s presence hangs like a heavy cloud just over the horizon.  The twins turning one in two weeks.  School starting, a first grader and a four year old gone three mornings a week now.  And me, on a precipice again, or at least it feels that way.  Barreling down a river toward a waterfall, I can feel the current gaining speed and we’re not ready, I’m not ready.  So I am lashing things down to our little raft, holding us all too tight and making everyone miserable in the anticipation and not knowing. 

A friend stopped by this morning and pushed it all back for a few minutes, spoke over the roar of the waters, made space for the flood I was holding back. 

After she leaves and I am standing doing last night’s dirty dishes an old verse comes to mind:

Do not remember the former things,

or consider the things of old. 

I am about to do a new thing;

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? 

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert.  Isaiah 43:18-19

Maybe.  Maybe this is what’s saving me in the wilderness and desert of my unknowing and fear.  The promise that God is always, always, always doing a new thing, that there’s no turning back with God, that what lies beyond the fall is better than what came before.  And that maybe the ride is for enjoying.  This, saves me.

But then, when I forget again and fight and struggle and cling to my raft counting down the minutes to my own sure demise, there’s another voice that saves me.  This one whispers beneath the roar of the waters, “Be gentle with yourself.  Be gentle.  As gentle as you are with your shaking son who’s dreamed a dinosaur in his room at four am.  Gentle as you are when you lay down the other two who’re dancing and jumping and yelling in their cribs.  Gentle because you know they’ve simply forgotten how to let go and stop fighting the steep fall into sleep.  Be as gentle with yourself as I am with you.” 

I write these words that are saving me in black ink, going over it three or four times so it stands out bold and place them in the center of my refrigerator,

“Be gentle  (for love and for joy).”