Happiness is More than an Endless Supply of Tissues (The Myth of Money)

Given the addition of twins and my choice to stay home, most months find us juggling bills, making tough financial decisions and waiting for miraculous provision in one area or another.  Recently we overspent in the beginning of the month, which made the end unbelievably tight, so I vowed to “get by” on what we have.  This included, among other things, not buying tissues.  Given the number of allergies in our house and the propensity for every cold within a five mile radius to tear its way through all six members of our household, this would prove to be no small feat.

So we’re in the great tissue spending freeze and I’m pulling boxes from all around the house and vehicles as we slowly work our way toward a long awaited payday. We’re down to one box now and I’m hoping it’ll somehow multiply like the loaves and the fishes or the widow of Nain’s jars of flour and oil.  This isn't the first time I've done this sort of thing - one time I decided to stop buying soap until we'd used up every last drop in the house, including the oatmeal bars we made ten years ago, the random gifts of body wash from my second baby shower, and the tiny bars of Dove snatched from the free samples basket at the pediatrician’s office.      

I’m prone to fret and fuss about money.  I hide it, count it obsessively, and shuffle it between envelopes and jars, storing up for times of need.  So when I see people who I know have quite a bit more money than we do still complaining, worrying, and fretting about money and life in general, I find myself thinking, “What can you possibly have to complain about?"  At times like that I have to refrain from blurting out unhelpful things like, “Are you kidding me, we can’t even buy tissues!” 

God dealt with me on this awhile back, this belief that somehow things would be easier, that life itself would be better if only we had more money.  It had become a real issue for me, breeding bitterness, jealousy and envy that threatened my relationships with those I perceived as having more.  God spoke to me one weekend as I sat in a friend’s new home and listened to the unhappiness there, the fear and anxiety that weren’t so different from what I knew.  It was one of the few times when God has spoken so clearly to me and the message was, “Kelly, you wouldn’t be any happier if you had more money. ”

I told this to my husband as we drove home and I felt set free, delivered from envy, delivered from the lie that money brings happiness.

*   *   *   *   *

While I was training to be a chaplain I learned to type up and analyze conversations from my visits with patients and their families.  Part of the analysis involved noticing what myths the patient or chaplain were operating under during the conversation.  It was often easy to tell which myths were driving the conversation, which ones ruled over the patient’s life with a watchful eye, delineating truth, establishing boundaries and taboos with unquestioned authority. 

We all have certain ideas that may or may not be true or helpful, yet somehow persist in shaping our view of ourselves and the way we ought to operate for things to go well in the world around us.  Although many of the patients I spoke with, prayed with and sat with were in crisis situations, it was also clear that much of their personal emotional anguish came from their beliefs about the world. 

It may sound Pollyanna-ish, but attitudes and beliefs are often at the heart of our happiness and misery.  The things we believe about ourselves and the world, especially those that migrate slowly, gaining speed, from our hearts to our mouths and out into the air around us, hold great power over our lives. 

*   *   *   *   *

God delivered me from the myth that money brings happiness, for awhile anyway.  But recently, visiting friends again, I found myself slipping, judging those with more, lacking compassion for their deeply felt fears and anxieties because I felt that the fact that they had more than me should solve the problem.  Internally I argued, reminding myself I’d been set free from the myth, but I could feel myself waffling, could feel my compassion and my own capacity for joy constricting.    

Then we came home.  Home to our cramped quarters, littered with toys and socks, divided by wobbly gates to keep the twins safe, home to our emptying refrigerator, to our last box of tissues and I felt the tug of that old lie more fiercely yet.   I pushed back on it, though, and tried to remain centered in the truth until the moment when my husband turned on our PC. 

The computer wouldn’t start, not in safe mode, not in regular mode, not in any mode.  We ate dinner and got the kids to bed and ran a test that revealed the worst – the hard drive was shot, dying, dead.  Then, oh my, did that old myth ever get loud.  It rolled its way round and round in my thoughts gaining speed, gaining momentum, gaining power as I gave in to exhaustion and frustration. 

Then, in the quiet of looking for candles and flashlights to see us through hurricane Sandy, in the preparations for having, making-do with less, I heard that voice again only this time it said, “Everyone feels this way.” 

Everyone feels frustrated, overwhelmed, powerless when their computer crashes.  Everyone feels like they ought to know more about it, ought to be able to, with money, control that which they cannot.  It helped me to see that the way I was feeling wasn’t due to a lack of money, but rather a lack of control in my particular situation. 

I’m writing this because I don’t want to forget, don’t want to slip back into that old lie about money and happiness and I have a hunch I’m not the only one who’s fallen prey to it.  For me, the disciplines of presence and thanksgiving play a large roll in helping me to remember and remain rooted in the happiness and beauty of the life I do have. 

Do you find yourself giving in to the myth that money brings happiness?  If so, how do you overcome it?

 

Great Tissue Spending Freeze Update: Just the other day I got ten boxes of Kleenex "for cheap" at the local bent and dent store. I guess we'll really be living large now, blowing our noses whilly-nilly, without a second thought, just for the sheer fun of it. Crisis averted. 

 

A Chain That Lifts Us (a family activity and FREE GIVEAWAY)

I could blame the fact that Halloween and the days that followed were filled with the planning and execution of an unexpected trip to North Carolina.  Or I could blame the jolting shift to daylight savings time which has the twins waking at five in the morning and my husband and I struggling to stay up later than the older two.  I could blame the virus that ran through the house, having its way with us, or the endless loads of laundry and trips to the grocery store, but no matter how I look at it, we're behind.

Every year for the past three we've commited the month of November to the practice of giving thanks.  Each night after the dishes are cleared, we pass out slips of paper and put our hands, our minds, our hearts to the task of writing or drawing something we're thankful for.  Then we staple each slip into a circle creating link after link on a chain. 

In this way we commit ourselves to growing in gratitude and there have been years, like the one in the picture above, where the chain has stretched clear across the living room. 

When I first heard the idea I grabbed on to it like a life preserver.  I was just beginning to understand the roll that gratitude might have in my life, the way it frees me for hope and joy, the way it stares defiantly in the shadows of fear and anxiety and the way it eases the endless battle between control and resignation that crowds my mind on any given day. 

Too often I've arrived at Thanksgiving distracted, unprepared and tried to conjure thanks through guilt.  "Well," I'd tell myself, "I ought to be thankful."  So I used guilt to badger a weak, limping gratitude from my distracted heart.  It was a celebration that fell flat and I was relieved to move on to the distracting demands of Christmas.

As a parent, though, I didn't want my kids to come to Thanksgiving empty, because a meal, no matter how well prepared, can never fill an empty spirit.  So we started practicing.  There are no rules, no limits, except that everyone has to list something every night.  On Thanksgiving, before or after the meal, we all sit around the table and read the slips, taking turns guessing who wrote what, reminding ourselves of our filled souls even as we feel the weight of our full stomachs. 

Like I said, though, we fell behind this year.  Yesterday started with crying babies at five a.m. and the house was a mess and as we cleared the table last night, as we faced the dishes and baths and waited for the twins to stop fighting sleep, I had to admit that I simply didn't want to practice the discipline of gratitude.  I wanted to hold on to my list of complaints, hold on to the hope of controling tomorrow.  I didn't want to surrender to grace even if my resistence meant starving my soul. 

Thankfully, though, I have children, and their eagerness often draws me along forcing me to let go, forcing me to surrender what I would not naturally.  So we sat, settled down to that moment of acknowledging what we'd received and I wrote, "I'm thankful it's almost bed time." My spirit lifted just a little, so I added, "I'm thankful for the right to vote and for homemade apple-pear sauce and spaghetti sauce." 

I wrote my son's list for him and watched while my daughter ticked off a list of five things, one for each finger on her hand.  Our four year old helped with the stapler and my daughter asked, while still writing, "What's this called again?  A chain of what?"

"A Thanksgiving chain," I said, "a chain of thanks."

As I spoke my son stood thinking and looking at the links we'd already added, the words on paper that held us together, that promised to grow and stretch in the days ahead. 

Pressing on the stapler, looking at that feeble collection of papers and words, he said, "It's a chain that lifts people out of the bad, right Mama?" 

I recognized the truth as soon as he spoke it.  A chain of gratitude, a book of thanks, a journal of a thousand gifts, seems foolish, weak and insignificant, but my son's right, it's a chain that lifts us, a chain that lifts me, out of the worst of myself. 

"Yes, Solomon, that's right, it's a chain that lifts people out of the bad."

I don't know about you, but I know I need to be lifted.  Lifted out of fear, out of anxiety, out of the tantalizing pulls of control and resignation, lifted onto the sure ground of the gospel which declares that all we have is gift, which confirms that for freedom we have been set free, that compells us to serve the greater good of love, even when it appears to be foolishness. 

In giving thanks we're lifted, repositioned, into joy and hope, which may not sound like much in the face of the world's ills, until we realize faith, hope and love are always the starting point for every good thing.  When we start and end our days with thanks, with faith, hope and love, there's no telling where tomorrow will take us. 

I'd love to hear, how does your family celebrate thanksgiving?  What are you thankful for right now? 

The first five people who comment will receive a free Chain of Thanks packet to help get your family started.  If you'd like this free gift, please make sure to leave your email address so I can contact you to arrange delivery.  It's never to late to start giving thanks!

Inherent Unmarketability (why the gospel gets so few votes these days)

Inherent Unmarketability

How do you make attractive that which is not?
How do you sell emptiness, vulnerability and non-success?
How do you talk about descent when everything is about ascent?
How can you possibly market letting-go in a capitalist culture?
How do you present Jesus to a Promethean mind?
How do you talk about dying to a church trying to appear perfect?
This is not going to work
(which might be my first step).

Richard Rohr in "Everything Belongs"

The Grouchy Ladybug (How I Died a Hundred Deaths this Halloween)

(this should be a cute picture of my son and I in our costumes,

but that's another longer story for another day)

It’s rainy and cold and we’re all keyed up and worn out from being trapped indoors for two days by Hurricane Sandy.  I wake up, too late, and squeeze in a shower while the twins, still in dirty diapers from the night before, wander around the living room.  Their whining amplifies to full pitch as my shower cues them in to the possibility that I’ll be (gasp!) leaving for the morning.  The preemptive separation anxiety continues through breakfast and packing everyone into the van to take my oldest to school. 

After drop off I cart the remaining three kids back into the house.  We mull around, waiting anxiously for the babysitter who'll be staying with the twins while the four year old and I head to his Halloween party at a local nursing home, an event I’ve been dreading since the October calendar came home.  The twins settle for a few minutes, their anxiety lulled by the fact that I haven’t left at my usual time and almost simultaneously my son's anxiety about the party begins to rise.  He peppers me with questions, 

“Will there be people from the nursing home in the party?”

“Um, I’m not sure, honey.”

“Will they see me in my costume?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to dress up?”

“No”

“I don’t want to wear a costume.”

I've been “against” this party from day one and I know that my son, so robust and cheerful at home, will be shy and clingy in a new place.  So I've consented to hire a babysitter for the twins and am committed to accompanying him, despite my own teeth-clenching, foot-dragging antagonism toward it all. 

“Solomon,” I say, “what if I wear a costume too?”  I emerge from the back room wearing the fuzzy black antennae from my daughter’s ladybug costume.

“Ok,” he says, brightening, “you can be a black beetle.”

Then, I can feel myself giving in, letting go a little more as the idea strikes and I say, “What if I’m a ladybug?  I can steal Sophia’s costume.”

He approves and I have just enough time to gather the red and black-dotted wings and my camera as the babysitter arrives and the oldest twin dissolves into a raging stream of tears, protesting my impending departure.  I run in circles grabbing things, carrying the littlest one and nearly run out the door with him, before the sitter stops me and grabs him saying, “This one’s staying.”

Then we’re off to a party I don’t want to go to, but also don’t want my son to miss.  We drive through the rain and find his friends in a large room coloring at a table while elderly people in wheelchairs are set in a wide circle around them.  The residents watch, their eyes hungrily absorbing the beauty and innocence, the luxury of so much youth in one small space. 

My son is clingy, shy and tired, overwhelmed, it seems by the noise, the crafts, the games and I do my best to get into the spirit of things.  I help with glue and tear bits of tissue paper, I assure another child that it doesn’t matter where he puts the eyes on his pumpkin.  I laugh with the other Moms over the resident who rides in on a wheelchair, pretending to scare the kids with a mask, all the while giving a growing peep show as his robe slides further and further open.  I take a smiling picture with my son, a little Iron Man snuggled up on a ladybug's lap. 

By the time we get home, though, I’m over-stimulated and frustrated at my inability to love Halloween, to love loud parties and candy.  The twins are exhausted and hungry when we walk in and they’re drawn to me like magnets, pressing their tiny bodies onto me in desperation.  It’s all I can do to untangle myself, causing more tears and desperation, as I head to the kitchen to make lunch.  Solomon is sorting and dumping candy, dancing and singing and blowing the whistle from his party bag and the twins are screaming in their highchairs, desperate to make it clear how deeply my absence has wronged them. 

Then I’m yelling, “Stop it” and throwing an apple-peel all the way across the kitchen til it bounces off of one twin and they both sit staring, shocked into silence and my son, that sweet four year old boy, offers to play his whistle to settle them down. 

*   *   *   *   *

There are days when being a mother feels like dying a hundred tiny deaths.   A hundred letting-gos, a thousand surrenders to more noise, more movement, more demands than I feel capable of handling. I’m not complaining, I simply want to be honest about the stretch of motherhood and how quickly, how fiercely, I shrink back from it.  

I died a hundred little deaths this morning and will surely die a hundred more before nightfall on this, the day of the dead.  But I know, thank God, that this dying, this surrender makes me new again.  I may die a hundred times a day, but I'm just as often made new, reborn in the face of a chubby, gap-toothed grin, a gentle hand seeking mine for reassurance.  Just today I was resurrected by the voice of my son calling cheerfully from the back of the van as we made our way home, “I can’t wait to be old so I can go to the nursing home to live.”

*   *   *   *   *

Later in the day as I'm making chili for friends who're coming to trick-or-treat with us, as the twins again stand whining at the gate that divides them from me, my Dad calls with the news that my maternal grandmother has died in the nursing home where she's lived for years now in North Carolina.  As I stand over the stove, stirring the chili, I find myself surprisingly grateful.  Grateful that, though I couldn't be there with her, I was here, at a nursing home with my son, the very same morning.  I think of my Grandmother's life and the many little and big deaths she endured.  I think of the ways I get so focused on what I'm giving up, that I nearly miss what I have right here, right now in front of me.  It occurs to me that I live such a grace-filled life, full of opportunities for surrender, continually pressing me toward the edge. 

Dinner is finished, the kids and husband are home and the poor older twin, who just can't pull himself together, sits crying on the floor.  So I scoop him up and settle in the rocker and watch as he drifts into a heavy sleep.  I love the moment, the rocking, the sleeping child, so rare, then he lifts his head and looks around disorientedly before throwing up all over both of us.  Then he leans forward, laying his head back on my chest with that pile of warm, smelly goo laying like a layer of glue between us.  I died again in that moment and rose again to hug him tight until my husband came to help us both get cleaned up. 

Every day of the dead, every Halloween, gives way to all saints day and I wonder if we too, dying in our little and big ways, aren't also being moved, continually, from death to new life.  This dying is a surrender, a stripping bare by letting-go until all that remains is love. 

Lightship (wind and rain and holding your place)

What can I say except that, as a mother of four, I spend inordinate amounts of time reading children's books and quite often I hear God's gentle quiet voice speaking to me through them.  This keeps me convinced that God will use whatever medium available to speak to us!  In light of hurricane Sandy's approach, I thought I'd share a favorite with you, Lightship, by Brian Floca.

Lightships were used in places where a permanent light house couldn't be built.  The ship and crew "held their place" during good and bad weather to serve as a guide to other ships.  Something about the lightship's calling deeply resonated with me and my sense of calling.   

In the past year, since the twins were born, my spiritual images have been filled with boats and water and floating - sinking and swimming became a metaphor for trust as grace has begun to feel like an ocean that surrounds our every waking moment.  For me, the spiritual journey has become one of learning to let go and rest in that grace. 

So here it is, minus the glorious pictures (check it out at your library if you get a chance - it also has a great section on the history of light ships).

*   *   *   *   *

Lightship, by Brian Floca

Here is a ship that holds her place.
She has a captain and a crew,
helmsman, oiler, engineer
deckhand, fireman, radioman,
messman, cook and a cat.

She does not sail from port to port.
She does not carry passengers or mail or packages.
She holds to one sure spot as other ships sail by.
She waits.

Her crew lives in small spaces, works in small spaces.
Always there is the smell of the sea . . . and the rocking of the waves.
Always they hear the creaking of the ship and the slow
slap, slap, slap of water on the hull.

Down below deck,
deep inside the ship,
there is the smell of fuel and machinery.
There are motors, engines, generators.
The oiler and the engineer keep them clean and running.
They keep the whole ship powered.

Above the deck there is a horn.
High on each mast there is a light.
The crew keeps them ready. 

The higher the waves,
the harder the work;
the harder it is to climb the stairs,
to check the charts,
to drink the coffee,
to visit the head.

But the crew keeps the lightship anchored.
She holds her one sure spot.
They keep her anchored in sun and calm . . .
and snow and cold.
They keep her anchored when other ships
come closer than they should.
And if the waves move her off her mark,
 . . . the helmsman moves her back.
The crew resets the anchor.
Again the lightship holds her one sure spot.

She does not sail from port to port.
She does not carry passengers or mail or packages.
She holds to one sure spot as other ships sail by.
She waits.

And when the fog
comes creeping in,
the crew knows what to do.
They sound their horn, so loud the whole ship
SHAKES
BEEOOH!
They shine their light,
so bright
it reaches all around,
far and wide.

Then other ships sail safely,
because the lightship marks the way
through fog and night,
past rocks and shoals,
past reefs and wrecks,
past danger.

Other ships sail home safe . . .
because the lightship holds her place.

*   *   *   *   *

When storms come and the fog rolls in we all need something or someone to shine light on our path, something or someone to hold us to the course we were made for. Tonight, as the winds surge and rain pounds I wonder, who or what is holding you? 

Praying you will remember and hold tight to the One who anchors your soul.  May your life shine like the Lightship and may others "sail home safe" because you hold your place. 

If you want to read more about learning to let go and float in the ocean of grace, check out Learning to Float (lessons in the art of surrender).

This link is being shared with Imperfect Prose around the theme of "Light."

When I Found Out I was Having Twins (a little somebody and . . . maybe another somebody?)

When I found out I was having twins,

I laughed, like Sarah, 

“Me, God?  A mother of four? 

Surely you must be kidding!”

When I found out I was having twins,

I questioned the angel, like Zechariah –

gave him a good ol’ lecture about the birds and the bees,

about all that is and is not possible.

When I found out I was having twins,

I accepted, like Mary,

the blessing I was given -

"Let it be unto me,

according to your word."

God's always, always, always full of suprises.  I'd love to hear how God has suprised you.  How did you react - did you laugh? cry? question? . . . feel free to leave a comment here or on A Field of Wild Flowers on facebook. 

If you like this post and want to read more about my journey check out: The Blessing.

Silence (of headaches, libraries and boats)

“There is a castle on a cloud,
I like to go there in my sleep . . . 
Nobody shouts or talks too loud,
not in my castle on a cloud.”
from Les Miserables

Today is a headache day.  It’s there from the moment I wake up - pressure in my forehead and sinuses that extends around to the back of my head into my neck and shoulders. 

When the babysitter comes I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by wiggling people.  I’m trying to wrestle a onesie onto a baby as my pre-schooler performs gymnastics half-on/ half-off of the couch.  The oldest is bopping back and forth on the rocking chair as another baby teeters trying to hold onto it.  My head's pounding and I can’t think straight, can’t make a plan. 

When someone asks where I’m going, I have no reply because I haven’t thought that far ahead.  I only have about an hour and a half before I need to round everyone up for swim lessons.  I grab the laptop and my journal and make a quick exit, stammering instructions as I leave.  No one even gets a hug.  Mommy has got to go, NOW. 

I picture neighbors or the drivers of passing cars looking up to see me flying out the door, hair frizzed-out from the heat, clutching my gear as the twins crawl after me and Solomon stands at the screen door calling a cheery, “Bye bye Mamma.  Bye!”  I imagine I look like someone fleeing a burning building as I throw my things into the van, pop it into drive and squeal-out not yet knowing where I’m going. 

I head to the local college library, not more than a few blocks from our house.  I can maximize my time this way, by not driving across town to Panera or a local coffee shop.  Every second counts. 

I find a nice parking spot right in front of the library.  It’s beautiful here.  Tall, old trees, fully leafed out for summer.  A fresh green lawn and the beautiful library full of windows and light and silence. 

I feel better even as I open the door to walk in.  It’s cool and quiet with the humming of the air conditioner providing a steady pulse under it all.  I head past the café where a sign explains that turning left will lead to a “semi-quiet” area, while turning right leads to pure silence.  I turn right and follow signs toward the quiet area like a starving person follows a path of crumbs. 

The headache is still there, but the effect of the silence is immediate.  It’s like aloe on sunburn, cool and smooth, calming.  It’s as though some part of me that’s been holding its breath relaxes and lets out a long, heavy sigh.

*   *   *   *   *

I’ve always needed this sort of retreat, always felt this way about libraries, academia and books, using them as a refuge from the intensity and volume of life.  I remember meeting with a professor when I was in graduate school.  His office was on the top floor of an old brick home on the edge of campus that was used for faculty offices.  I climbed narrow stairs covered by faded and decidedly un-prestigious old carpet to a large attic-like room.  Two more stairs and through the door and there sat his desk with a large window behind it filled with the leafy green branches of a tree.  I imagined myself sitting there – reading, writing, pausing to peer out at the world below – and I loved it. 

Not long ago a seminar revealed that my personality type uses cognitive activity as a way to recharge and regroup.  An observant friend noted the same thing after listening to my life story, “You retreat into your mind when life gets overwhelming.”  Suddenly I saw the Sudoku and crossword puzzles, the endless reading, the love of libraries and their contents in a new light. 

I used to feel very torn between academia and the nitty-gritty of everyday life.  The ivory tower is much maligned by those working in the trenches and I’ve often found myself vacillating between the two.  I don’t believe in the value of what some would call pure academia cut off from the ebb and flow, the flux and tumult of everyday life.  I refuse to climb the staircase of my mind expecting to find there the answer to all life’s questions.  And yet, I love, enjoy, crave the retreat it offers.  The space it gives to look at life, to sort through the onslaught of thoughts and feelings that accumulate as I race along through the day. 

I’ve often felt guilty about this, even ashamed.  I was teased as a child about “hiding my nose in a book” and my need to spend long hours quietly making order of my little room in our house on a hill in the leafy woods.  But more than all of that, somewhere along the way I believed the lie that to be holy meant to be busy, to be fully immersed in the hustle and bustle, the suffering and relief of life without flinching or pausing to look away for even a second. 

I can see now that I will constantly straddle two worlds.  I’m not content to sit in my tower day in and day out thinking deep thoughts – too many people need me in more ways than I can count.  But I’m also beginning to understand that times of retreat are essential to my ability to provide a real presence when I engage with the “crowds,” whoever they may be.   

Jesus did this, of course.  Retreating to a garden or hill or even, if need be, to a small boat in the middle of a lake.  Luke tells us that “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed (5:16).”  Surely no one’s time and presence has been or ever will be more in demand than the son of God. 

 

*   *   *   *   *

It occurs to me that I cannot steer my little ship full of children safely or wisely when I’m constantly drowning.  So, with much grace, I re-imagine my departure from the house.  I’m not a woman fleeing in desperation, shaking off children and tripping on scattered toys as I lunge for the door.  Instead I try to see myself as Christ, edging his way toward the shore and stepping with purpose into a small fishing boat.  Pushing off even as the crowd presses in, hardly waiting for Thomas or Peter to climb in as the bottom of the boat breaks free from the sand.  Leaving the chaos of the crowds for the chaos of the sea, but finding in the tiny boat the space to simultaneously disconnect and reconnect. 

The van is my boat and the curb is the shore.  The library is my “secluded place” and this writing is my prayer.  This retreat takes me not out of the world, but deeper into it to the place beneath the wave tossed surface where love and joy and grace reside.  I paddle out deeper into the cool dark waters to the place where I might find, we all might find, the one thing that’s needed. 

 

I wonder, where do you go to retreat, where do you both disconnect and reconnect?