The Year of Failure

“I’m tempted to declare 2017, The Year of Failure.” 

This is what I messaged to a friend minutes after opening a long-awaited email informing me I was no longer in the running for a coveted job.  My emotions were high; melodrama rose with ease. Looking back over the year, I identified a series of significant failures that lined up month after month in a neat and tidy row: 

• the book proposal and draft I spent months writing and was rejected.

• the library job I thought would be a good long-term fit, but wasn’t.

• the chaplaincy job I spent two months applying to and interviewing for and didn’t get.

The longer and harder I looked, the more failures I found.  Each failure represented energy spent without any easily identifiable reward; each failure was followed by a significant period of disorientation.  Why not chalk it all up as a miserable, frustrating disappointment?

Slapping a label on the entire year offered a tempting satisfaction, and the word ‘failure’ simmered with an oddly appealing blend of self-pity and shame. 

I’m not accustomed to failure. 

Partly because I’m amazing (wink wink), but mostly because I avoid significant risk like the plague.  If you only ever attempt what you know you can accomplish, failure is rarely an issue.  But, then again, neither are surprising successes or the experience of being comforted and carried by those who love you anyway after a difficult fall from glory. 

My friend replied, “Oh, I’m sorry.  That is so hard.”

She didn’t push back.  Her response left space for me to move around a bit, and I quickly realized other names might apply to this year as well.  Like, The Year of Risk-Taking, for one.   Opening myself to the possibility that other labels might just as easily apply helped me identify my real struggle:  I wanted to understand what had happened and to know whether my energies had been misdirected.  If I could figure those things out, then maybe I could make 2018 The Year that I Finally Do Everything Right (or something like that, only with a little more finesse).

I wonder whether, in all of this, it might be better in the long run (although, perhaps more intensely uncomfortable) to just say, “I don’t know what happened or why things happened as they did, but I’m committed to continuing to show up, to ask the hard questions, to look and lean and leap.” 

Still, sometimes, I feel that label – Year of Failure – hovering like a shadow in the periphery of my vision.   I sense it most when I feel uncertain and insecure.  But, for the most part, I’m resisting pinning it to my lapel or scrawling it across the front of my now-almost-finished 2017 planner. 

Even now, as I’m writing, other possible labels continue to present themselves.  Like, The Year of Withholding Judgment or perhaps, best yet, The Year of Believing There is More Happening Than I Can See, by which I mean, of course, The Year of Faith.  

That has a better ring to it, don’t you think?

The Kingdom of Heaven is Like a Tree

What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it?  It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches. Luke 13:18-19  

A large, brown seed sat in our cupboard for a good month or more.  Sealed in a zip-loc bag, surrounded by moistened paper towels, it was my husband's experiment, the result of a moment of possibility. 

It seemed, at best, forgotten.  

Then one day, after an online search for instructions, he planted it shallow in a white ceramic pot.  He watered it and placed it on the windowsill. 

Something maternal in me must have kicked in then, because I watered it faithfully along with my violets and ivies.  I watered it too little.  I watered it too much.  The sun came and went and, still, it sat there just the same - half-buried and silent, like a stone sleeping in the barren brown dirt. 

I can't tell you how long it took - weeks? months?

I watered.  I watched.  I waited and forgot to wait.  Inside the seed, secret life stirred, hidden, invisible.

Then the seed split.  It cracked open, right down the middle, and out curled a small green shoot, bent but rising, like a head that had been bowed in prayer for such a long, dark time, but now lifted to take a look around.  

//

The kingdom of God is like this, Jesus said, and then later also he added, "the kingdom of God is within you."  

//

Maybe we too are like that seed, like trees planted and growing, seen and unseen, in the midst of a busy and barren world.  We are watered, too much at times, or not, and the roots grow first, hidden, pressing down blindly, like worms in the dirt and secret places of our lives. 

Then we too are cracked open, split right down the middle of our lives.  We are the shoot that rises, the seed splitting, the roots rooting down deep.  We are the ones drinking in light and water and growing, always growing, into trees of every shape, color and size.  

And the birds of the air - those lonely, wandering, homesick birds - make their nests in our branches.  

May it be so.

Discipline & Struggle

We go up to heaven and down to hell a dozen times a day - at least, I do. And the discipline of work provides an exercise bar, so that the wild, irrational motions of the soul become formal and creative. 
- May Sarton in Journal of a Solitude

Seated in the corner of my office, I close the internet window on my laptop and hunker down to write.  With just a half hour left before I leave to meet a friend for lunch, I ought to have enough time to squeeze in my goal of 500 words for the day. 

I need to write something for the week’s blog post and, hopefully, for my newsletter too.  Neither need to be very long.  The problem, though, as I begin, is that, well, I don’t know where to begin.  I don’t have a story to tell, not even the faintest glimmer of an idea to explore.  I had a couple of ideas flitting around last week, but failed to capture them and now one is stale, like bread left out overnight, and the other is shrouded in fog too dense to be explored in this limited amount of time.

Still, I close the internet, sit in my chair, and begin. . . . (pop over to author and editor, Andi Cumbo-Floyd's place to read the rest of this piece).  Leave me a message there, then take a few minutes to look around at all the lovely tools and supports for writers Andi has going on. 

Love Big, Love Wide

My twin boys, now six, are still little enough to let me sneak a snuggle. 

So, I do, as often as I can. 

I tuck their sleep-warmed bodies close in the morning and press my aging cheek to their soft skinned faces.  I drink in the profile of their noses and eyelashes, still boyishly soft, perfection.  I ask for monkey-hugs after school and end the day with bedtime kisses on cheeks, hair and foreheads.

It was during one such snuggle session, with my heart full-to-bursting, I told Levi, “My love for you is so big.  It’s as big as this whole room!”

He turned in my embrace and eyed me with a look of serious appraisal.  “You mean, the whole house?” he asked.    

I paused, afraid my expansive expression of love might not measure up.  “Yes,” I said.

But, he caught my hesitation and asked further, “Is that what you meant?”

Found out, I replied, “Well, I meant this room.”

Quickly, he added, “And the whole galaxy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s how it is for me too,” he concluded, then turned and settled back into my lap.  

I felt my heart expand, my love grew ten sizes larger, returning to a size somewhat closer to what it must have been when I too was a child of six, still willing to seek a snuggle. 

Children love on an epic scale, maybe this is why Christ tells us to turn and return again to a child-like heart.  Here's hoping your heart grows a little larger today, too.  

I (Still) Hate Skittles

(Re-posting this story, originally written when the twins had just turned four, because every year I dread the CANDY, CANDY, CANDY of Halloween and, every year, my kids' joy and excitement help lead me through.)

I hate Skittles. 

I do not want to, as the slogan suggests, "Taste the rainbow."

If a Skittle accidentally fell into my mouth, I would spit it out.  This is how I feel about most candy, except for Sour Patch Kids.

My twin boys, though, like every other four-year-old on earth, LOVE Skittles. 

And M&Ms.  

And Blow Pops. 

And all the other crack-in-a-wrapper kids get at Halloween. 

//

The candy-consumption-negotiations began bright and early the morning after a late night of Trick-or-Treating.  Isaiah came out of his room with his bag of candy slung over his shoulder, like a little Santa's sack.  He stumbled down the stairs, focused on navigating the precious bag, as though it was worth its weight in gold.  

Before I knew what had happened, he deftly negotiated the potential consumption of one piece of candy after lunch.  He then proceeded to remind me of our deal before breakfast, after breakfast, before preschool, after preschool, before lunch, etc.  

The candy of choice?  A full size bag of Skittles. 

He and his twin brother waited all morning for their agreed-upon candy.  This, for a four-year-old with candy on his mind, is like waiting a lifetime.     

Finally, a lifetime passed, and the candy was distributed in the few minutes we had to spare before leaving to watch their brother's school parade.  Isaiah tore into his bag in the blink of an eye and before I could get a handle on the situation, it was half-eaten, then spilled and picked-up, twice.  

Foreseeing the potential for a disastrous candy spill at the parade, I turned to get a zip-lock bag for both boys so I could pour their candy into separate preschooler-compatible packaging.  I sat Levi's candy on the counter, hoping to open it for him and avoid a repeat of Isaiah's spill-and-pick-up performance. 

I forgot, though, that a four-year-old tears into a candy-wrapper like a squirrel attacking a plastic feeder full of sunflower seeds.  Place a thin layer of plastic between a toddler and a handful of sugar and stand back – all sorts of destruction is sure to ensue.

During the brief moment my back was turned, I heard Levi’s bag of Skittles explode.  A rainbow of sugar shot all over the kitchen floor.  I spun around and discovered that he'd ripped open one whole side of his bag with one swift, semi-miraculous, yank.  Skittles rained down, and scattered (or would that be “skittled”?) under the island, across the rug, and behind the heavy iron radiator. 

This was a crisis of epic proportions.  Children hunt spilled candy like the women hunting her one lost coin in Luke's gospel; kids hunt lost candy with the kind of determination and passion that God’s hunts lost souls.

Levi immediately started crying while Isaiah quickly began grabbing and eating every one of his brother's Skittles he could find.   

This was less than twenty-four hours after Trick or Treat and I had already had it Up To Here with sweets.  I wanted to explode like that bag of Skittles.  I wanted to hunt down the person who thought it was a good idea to give little people bags of candy bigger than their faces.  I wanted to scream and stomp on the candy in a fit of rage.

But, I didn't.  

I dug deep inside myself and caught a glimpse, for a brief moment, of the rainbow shining right in front of me.  I saw how every moment has a rainbow and - everyone knows -  rainbows lead to hidden treasure.  Rather than breaking the moment further, I somehow saw and embraced the invitation to be the hero  - I reached for the pot of gold.  

I knelt down beside the crying boy and the thieving boy and began gathering candy.  With due diligence, most of the loss was recovered.  We put the rainbow in a new bag and I zipped it tight.  Then, we ran out the door together, two boys clutching baggies of brightness and one Mama carrying a rainbow in her heart.

//

By the way, we did miss one red Skittle.  This, I know, because the dog found it . . . and spat it out. 

Even the dog knows better.          

How I Have Seen Men Treat My Daughter

(Sophia, happy as a clam, in her Daddy's pick up truck.)

A heavyset, gray-haired man, short and jovial, honed in on my cautious, serious daughter the moment she arrived.  She was eight or nine at the time.  He was a volunteer at Vacation Bible School that week, she was just entering a room full of kids she didn't know in a church we don't attend and her face reflected the concentrated reserve of an introvert confronted with a room full of strangers. 

“Smile!” he commanded before welcoming her or offering his name.  Reluctantly, awkwardly, she obeyed, he was in charge, after all.

Standing nearby, I felt a strong desire to whack that man in the face.  Maybe not exactly, but mostly.  The mama-bear in me recognized, immediately, the inappropriateness of his command and, in it, I heard the echoes of all the men who've commanded me to smile over the years. 

I too was a quiet, serious girl.  I cannot tell you the number of times men, mostly in passing, reminded me to smile. 

“Smile!” they demanded, as they passed me in the mall, in the lunch line where I worked, or walking down the street with my friends.  "You're too serious," they would sometimes add, "you'd be prettier if you smiled." 

Sometimes it felt like a harmless flirtation, a backward compliment of sorts.  At least I had a chance at being pretty, if only I would be less, well, less me.  I didn't realize then that these comments and complaints had nothing to do with me.  Nothing.  I didn't understand they reflected masculine insecurity, the desire for me to be easier, but not, of course, too easy. 

Over time, I got the message that it wasn’t ok to be me.  To be a woman, young or old, who rests serene in her own quiet seriousness is to shirk cultural expectations of the bubbly, giggly girl who lights up the world around her, flashing her pearly whites.  In tending to my own internal fires, I was letting down the male egos in the room, those expansive egos so often in need of continual support.

//

About a month later, I took my daughter to the pediatrician. She was suffering from a baffling array of symptoms and we had no idea what was going on.  Was it allergies, a cold, a stomach bug?   

She sat alone on the high examining table wrapped in a paper gown, while one of our favorite pediatricians, a gentle, thoughtful man, tried to puzzle things out.  My daughter was inordinately worried about the possibility of needing a strep test.  She fears and dreads the test, gagging every time and occasionally vomiting on whoever administers it. 

Finally, reaching for the large q-tip in its white paper packaging, the doctor announced that he wanted to test for strep.  My daughter's eyes grew wide in fear and, seeing her anxiety, the pediatrician offered a few simple tricks to help endure the swab.  Then, he asked whether she wanted to sit on the exam table or in my lap. 

She climbed down from the paper-clad bench, hopped into my lap, and I wrapped my arms around her.  Pulling up a chair, the doctor leaned in with the swab, but my daughter held out her small hand and stopped him mid-motion with a clear and simple request.  

“Can you wait until I’m ready?” she asked.   

“Yes,” he said and sat back, waiting for her command.

She paused, gathering courage, then blurted a quick, “OK.”  She gagged a little, but then it was done, and while we waited for the results, I sat there marveling at this girl of mine.

I was amazed at her centeredness, the way she drew from her own deep well to tell the doctor to pause, to make the space necessary to do difficult things on her own terms and in her own time.  

Reflecting on the situation now, I can see how the pediatrician helped protect and reinforce my daughter's sense of strength and autonomy in a vulnerable situation.  He took her concerns seriously and then helped to allay them by offering concrete strategies for dealing with the awkward swab.  

He was not offended by her fear; not belittling or dismissive.  With his ego completely off the table, he didn't feel the need to chide her into compliance or, worse, to barge ahead with the swab (as I've seen other pediatricians do).  He made space for her to connect with her own resources - sitting in her mama's lap, setting her own timing - and, in the end, my daughter was empowered by the experience. 

This, I want to tell her, is how it works.  This, I want to remind myself, is how it should be.  This is how two people interact with grace and respect, how a healthy man doesn't ask you to weaken yourself to fortify his own ego, but rather lends his strength to create a safe space for you to be who you are - loud or quiet, smiling or not.        

The Road is Wide, The Rain is Falling

Cold rain turned his thin, white t-shirt translucent as he bent his body, like an umbrella, over the double stroller.  The newborn baby cried and he cradled it against his chest with one hand while rooting in a diaper bag with the other.  The girl, a big sister at three or four years old, sat quietly in the stroller - her brown eyes wide, her dark hair and pierced ears glinting in the early morning light.  

Hundreds of strangers had lined up throughout the morning, eager to bargain hunt at the annual thrift sale benefiting United Way.  A friend of mine, a veteran shopper of the sale, had arrived at the door by six thirty.  Among the first in line, she had staked out a coveted position as the best deals went very, very quickly. 

I rolled in a few minutes after seven, with a mug of coffee in hand, and took my place thirty to forty people behind my friend.  I waited behind a young Hispanic man with two children in a stroller and in front of an old-timer who'd brought a plastic crate to sit on.  The line stretched out, single-file, across the parking lot, growing steadily as we waited for the doors to open at eight.  

Time passed slowly.  The old-timer held my spot for me while I went to find a toilet.  The newborn in the stroller woke and cried and was jiggled back to sleep again.  Pleasantries were exchanged in that guarded but polite Central Pennsylvania way.  

The old-timer behind me carried on a long conversation with a woman two people ahead of me, bemoaning his no-good sons-in-law who couldn't keep a job, couldn't even change a tire.  The woman, in exchange, revealed she'd recently been laid off after twenty years on a job.  "Ain't nobody wants to hire you when you're my age," she said.  "Believe me, I know."  The general consensus between them seemed to be that young people weren't worth much these days.  The Hispanic man and I, both younger by far, exchanged uncomfortable glances.

By 7:30, the sky was growing darker, not lighter, and the forecast of possible rain turned certain.  I ran back to the truck and grabbed my rain coat when the first drops started and my friend, still stationed at the front of the line, brought me her extra umbrella.  

Scattered drops turned steady and an icy wind picked up.  About fifteen feet away, the building we were waiting to enter offered a small triangular overhang.  The old-timer was the first to take cover, leaving his plastic crate to hold his place in line.  The father followed soon after as the wind forced rain past the double stroller's shabby shades and the baby woke again, crying and hungry.  

He pushed the stroller the ten steps to the overhang and sidled it as close as he could against the wall.  The old-timer scooted over to make room in the tiny triangle of shelter.  The rest of us in line, some with rain coats and umbrellas, watched this father without a coat, trying to protect his children while also mixing a bottle of formula.  We were rooted in place, rubberneckers, observing one small family's drama unfold. 

//

I can't name the force that held us in line, that kept us from offering to help or heading, en masse, to wait under a large catering tent nearby.  Whatever it was - fear, longing, desire - the feeling was palpable, like a force-field keeping us all apart, causing us each to suffer the storm in isolation, single-file in the passing cold and rain.  This force, I believe, thought I can't put my finger on its exact shape or name, is one of, if not the signature evil of our times.  Under its sway, as Naomi Shihab Nye predicts in her poem, 'Shoulders,' "the road will only be wide, the rain will never stop falling."

Somehow, we must kindle the courage, the imagination, necessary to enact an alternative to our chosen isolation.  What will it take for us to break out, to break through, to one another?

//

It was the way he curved his body over the stroller, the rounded defenselessness of his back as he leaned, rooting in the diaper bag; it was the way he sheltered them that caused my feet to move, that broke me out of line.  My feet moved, of their own accord, and then I was there, behind him, my body blocking him from the wind, my friend's umbrella held high at an angle over the two children and their dad.  

He turned, slightly, at my approach, acknowledged me with a nod, and carried on preparing the bottle, then feeding his infant son.  We stood close, awkwardly close in the small space, and didn't speak a word.  I smiled at the solemnly shy little girl with her deep brown eyes that drank in the world.

The rain passed, the sun peaked out, and we moved back into line.  The old-timer caught my eye.  "That was a nice thing you did," he said, "real nice."

//

Somehow, we must kindle the courage, the imagination, necessary to enact an alternative to our chosen isolation.  What will it take for us to break out, to break through, to one another?