I found it pretty presumptuous. Not in the least because my gramma hasn’t called me in a good month and a half. But also because no one on my mom’s side of the family calls me ever, at all, for any reason, unless they guilting me into doing something or want to rub in what kind of wonderful people they are. Up on the gossip and doing their good deed. If, that is, by “good deed” they mean speaking in hushed tones and clucking their tongues in mournful disdain. My life? Is none of their business.

Yes, I have a problem with bitterness.

I’m actually just becoming aware of it, so thank God for His mysterious ways. If you’d asked me last week if I was a bitter person, I would have said absolutely not and spouted some meandering life lesson about letting go of the past. Most of my intimates can tell you I’ve demonstrated such at some time or another in life. Yet still, just reading just those few well intentioned lines made me livid. I felt imposed upon and exposed and misjudged and misunderstood and lied to all at the same time.

If I may exhaust my vitriol, I don’t think my extended family still cares for me. I don’t think it matters to them one way or the other what I do or whether I ever see them again, so long as they can feel sorry for me about decisions I’ve made or successes I have yet to have. I’m speaking about them as a unit, not as individuals. Because as individuals, they are always polite, always polished, always chuckling lightly at some joke and laying the coats on their beds. But I’m not one of them, am I? I’m the guest, not the host.  Not the Friend or the Sister or even the beloved Relation. Just the Guest.

Even that line (I typed “lie” at first on accident-do my fingers know something Idon’t?), about there still being people in the family who love me and my sister is alienating. There are people in the group that care for you, O Out Of The Group One. You are being honored by the collective. Will you, can’t you, won’t you please be nice? Can’t you just come over and be valiant and upstanding and obviously pretending to be as perfect as we actually are?

Ugh.

I know what this stems from. I’ve been angry at them for a long time and it’s simply festered over the years. All that time my mother was so ill, all that time her body was wasting away-O goodly, kindly ones-where were you? Where were you while she was suffering? You only came to watch her die, dragging your mass of bodies into my and my sister and my father and my grandmother’s private space. She was ours, because we loved her, and we watched her life either from the beginning of our own or the beginning of hers, and we saw everything she grew from and into. We saw her shrink in ways we had never imagined after she had spent the whole rest of her life growing in strength and wisdom and promise. We cleaned her up and took her out and went to Wendy’s to buy her chicken sandwiches and sit with her, and talk with her, and breathe her same air. We were the ones she called to lift her up when her body began failing her. We were the ones who bound her feet at night.

And where were you? Except for three days after they had assured us that nothing else could be done, sitting in a stale hospice room with your four hundred pint sized relations who were too young to come and look at death like that, whom you sent to go and color, whom you told without saying so that the slipping away of my mother’s life wasn’t something that was worth their notice, that you knew they couldn’t sit down and pay attention to? And afterward, with your arms outstretched toward my sister and I, to ask for a piano for your church.

It isn’t as though my cousin is to blame for these things. She wasn’t even a part of most of them. She isn’t to blame for anything that happened at hospice or afterward and neither is her brother. And neither are the rest of them really. I know I’m being unfair. I’m being grossly unfair. Part of me wants to object and complain that they never talk to me about her. And the other part of me knows that if they did, I would inwardly rebel and shout that they didn’t know who my mother was at all and how dare they make presumptions. I can’t be pleased . . .

But God will ease.

I am praying for strength to let all these things go. To stop clutching at them with righteous indignation. The truth is no one knows what to do with something like that, and that we all make mistakes, and that we all overlook our own. The Truth is that if Christ can ask his Father to forgive for not knowing, I should certainly be able to forgive for doing no worse than perhaps I would have done if I were they and they, I. I praise God that He can make so many lessons out of loss. I praise Him that He keeps revealing and healing and working on me. He certainly knows I need it.

When I started writing, I did so because I was angry. I’m not anymore. God has such a particular way of absorbing the thrashing of my soul until it is spent and soothing me with the duties that I have to preform, regardless of the actions of anyone else. He is . . . He is . . .

He is marvelous.

My body is making me think about my mother.

I look around me and see all these nice, kind people who are certainly as entitled as anyone would be to their families and suddenly it all seems so grossly unfair. It feels grossly unfair that some people get to have grandchildren. It feels grossly unfair that some people get to have parents. It feels grossly unfair that my daughter will never get to know my mother. It all just seems so terribly unfair.

I know it isn’t. The Lord is sovereign. I know that. And part of me can look at this and be pleased that she isn’t suffering anymore, not only in her illness but with any of the discomforts of just being human. She’s never tired anymore, or achy, she’s never hungry or cold-that makes me grateful. But sometimes I feel awful and rebellious and broken wondering why she had to be sick at all, and for it to be then, and to have to die that way. I know there’s purpose in it. I take comfort in that. To trust the Lord in one thing requires trusting Him in all things and I do, really. I just have these moments sometimes.I am having quite a few lately.

I keep thinking that these rushing feelings of loss will dissipate. And they have in some ways-in frequency if not in form. Sometimes I feel so sorry for myself it’s pathetic. And the Lord is patient in that, which is so gracious. He has yet to give me the supernatural talking to that Job got, although reading through it I see that it still applies.

I feel like a cavern. I feel like empty space. My heart aches.

And so I did something foolish. I reached out to someone in an inappropriate way because I wanted to heal my heart too quickly and with the wrong medicine. In the blush of morning, I am blushing myself. The truth is a boy can’t fix this. The truth is I already knew that, though part of me still wants to be held.

It’s an awkward thing to admit, but there it is. The truth is also that I don’t know how to be interested in anyone anymore. These things, the adoption, the death of my mom, the loss of my friendship with Simon, they’ve all taken a toll on me and have apparently manifested in simply not being able to have my head turned by anyone. I’m disappointed about it. But at this moment, perhaps the cavern is too deep to be filled no matter who might try. Perhaps the Lord is telling me to let Him heal this first.

I am sighing with the breeze. The morning is growing stale. I will try my hand at sleep once more.

I’m just so small.

I’m this tiny creature. I don’t have the benefit of seeing it all from the beginning. I don’t have the benefit of seeing through to the end. I am just this tiny little thing.

I am one of seven billion. I am one of four. I forgot that for a moment, that I am one of four. And in that new one, after the loss of the other one, perhaps the promise of all this will be seen.

But I must remind myself of how very miniscule I am. Because sometimes I get to thinking that as special as He considers me is how special I am by my own merits, and that simply isn’t true.

Do I ask God why He’s done this? Do I recognize how small this thing is? Do I ask, knowing how small it is, but still longing to understand?

I do.

There are times when it is difficult not to worry if I’m doing this right. There are times when waiting on God to move seems like sitting on my hands and I just want to Do Something. To make it better? To make it worse? Sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter. I want to Do Something, I want to make my way in the world.

But I can’t, being tiny as I am. And I don’t know the plans that He has for me, and how I can lead myself astray. I don’t know the way He will work or how things are being brought to fruition throughout this quiet and still time. But . . . sometimes I am pained still, knowing that this is how it must be.

This is the Lord’s doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.

I’m supposed to meet Sarah and her parents and Natalie and Sean for dinner tonight, and I’m afraid. I don’t know what my problem is. I should be happy to see her-it’s been a while. And I am, I really am. But I’m also scared, nervous, anxious. This is all new ground for me. I don’t know how to do this. And she’s at that age where she’s getting very attached and it’s difficult for me to even think about being around her when she doesn’t even know me.

I know the decision was right. I know she’s where she needs to be. But I miss her. It might sound crazy, because I only really had her for four days. But I loved her from the moment she was concieved and it’s difficult to think now how she’s so far away and she’ll never be mine again. Is that selfish? It probably is. But I know that with prayer, God will bring me through this. He has before. He is always faithful and good and providential. But still, this is how I feel. And part of me is tempted to skip the whole thing.

I won’t though. I won’t because I care for her and I want her to know that even though she won’t even remember this someday soon, that I was there. That she was important enough for pain. That she was adopted but never abandoned. That I saw her whenever I got the chance to. She is worth so much more than simple heartache. Every mother knows that.

But sometimes I think it’s the worst to be in this halfway. It’s probably better to either be all in or all out. I can’t move on and forget about her, and I can’t be over there three times a week either. So I’m stuck with seeing her every three or four months and every time being pleased and dismayed at how much she’s grown, proud and devastated for all the milestones she’s passed. It was the right thing to do but that doesn’t make it any easier.

I must remember:

She’s happy. That’s a blessing.

She’s healthy. And that is a blessing.

She has two stable, wonderful parents. That’s a blessing as well.

She has people who love her as if she were still their own that she doesn’t even know about. And that too is a blessing.

These are all good things. These are wonderful things. These are things that comfort me when I feel close to the edge of despair and regret. God has provided, for her and her family and myself. And Sarah is kind and has been nothing but generous with me. I just wish I didn’t feel so weak. I wish I was stronger. But in these moments, in these difficult times when I feel pushed to what I believe is past my capabilities, I learn to lean on God. And in leaning, find my strength.

There’ s nothing noble in

Being corpulent and spent.

Looking like a moody marshmallow or maybe

A sad sack of potatoes,

Who really cares?

You’re too broad to be narrow like this.

But despair looks lovely

On the slender and the slim

Who sit with bony knees uplifting bony elbows

With a board flat abdomen that curves,

The head in the hands is only the point that comes at the bottom

Of the body’s question mark.

And the question is:

What’s the point?

]]> http://ubermarianne.com/2009/04/16/sad-sack/feed/ 3 http://ubermarianne.com/2009/01/13/another-endless-night/ http://ubermarianne.com/2009/01/13/another-endless-night/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:11:16 +0000 Marianne http://ubermarianne.com/?p=91 I want to run away. I don’t want to be here anymore. I can imagine myself in places all over the world, sitting, accepting, some place that is quiet and strange to me. I can see myself breathing out my days with some sense of . . . peace? With some sense of rest.

I can’t sleep at night. I either refuse to go to bed because of some free floating anxiety or I wake up again and again and can’t fall back asleep. Grief is choking me. It creeps up on me while I lay in the dark with my eyes closed and suddenly I hear my mind say, “My mother is dead.” It’s as if I just realized it. I weep. My mother is dead.

There are framed photographs of my daughter in my room, taken during the four days that she was mine. She’s so pristine, so frozen. She seems like a dream, like a memory of something I made up. She’ll be eight months old in a couple of weeks. After that, years will pile up, time will pass, and one day she’ll be a child, and then an adolescent, a young woman. And I may see her from time to time, we may even become friends if God is merciful in his will. But what of all the days in between? What of all the discoveries and abilities and a thousand mental photographs of her that I will never carry with me? The way she will watch television on her stomach on the floor, feet waving lazily in the air? The exact angle of her chin when she refuses to clean her room? Her very favorite dress she will remember from her childhood?

I keep thinking that things are going to turn out differently than they do. I plan, and my plans come to nothing. And, this is the reason that my relationship with Simon is such an ordeal. He’s someone I can do something about. Or so I thought. And in him is wrapped my other losses. I thought he might be my husband, and so, and as such, he and I could have had more children. More little girls whose ins and outs I might have been able to know and carry with me. My mother wrote him an email before she died, asking him to come to visit me for my birthday. Even then to be thinking of me . . . and of course he didn’t.

It’s only two in the morning. It’s really not that late. I don’t want to go to sleep. My heart is aching. I don’t know what to do now. For more than just tonight, I just don’t know what to do.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

It is this practice that I would like to demonstrate for you now.

So here I am, just coming out of the wilderness in a lot of ways (or maybe still in it sometimes, I don’t know) and being led about by God (or at least trying as much I can to follow His leading) and having difficulty recognizing that everything I say doesn’t need to have a qualifier (though I really think it helps sometimes). And I’m looking around, right? I’m looking outward because I feel like I need some . . . help or brotherhood or some kind of human support and I’m writing, writing, writing, all these people that I haven’t communicated with in like a year or something because I felt like my soul was  on the rack and being stretched in ways that were breathlessly painful  and I wanted to listen and be still and maybe just lick my wounds a little. I’m writing and I’m saying I’m hurting and I want you to be there with me, I want to walk with you for a little while and put it down and just try to imitate normal life until life can start feeling normal again. I’m sending out a call and in it I’m telling these people that I was bonded with before about the fact that I miss my little girl and I’m aching because I will never have a mother again, not for the rest of my life, the whole fifty or so years that are left of my life, and I just wanted you to know that I loved you and I want to love you and I want to love someone that I can really have because I can’t have these two people that I really love and . . . ?

And???

Crickets. Tumbleweeds blow by. Nothing. Nothing is returned to me.

And I know I’m winge-ing right now because I’m lucky to have my sister and brother.  I’m lucky to have my Lord who walks with me through everything. I’m lucky to be alive and know that my mother is in a place of perfect peace and my daughter is warm and safe and beautiful. I know I’m lucky. I know I’m blessed. I just . . . wish . . . I wish I felt . . . I wish I was important to these people. I wish my struggles mattered. I wish that I was understood and forgiven and held up. And I guess that’s too much to ask for.

Doesn’t anybody care? And what does this teach me about the importance of caring?

I said: “Wow. You should give a seminar.”

I thought: “I know you’ve been hurt. But will you ever see what He’s made me? Will you? It’s a matter of will at this point, you know.”

He said: “You have forgiveness, but you also have consequence. And not everyone is going to see what I see when they look at you.”

————————————————————————————————–

he said: “I don’t want to get distracted. I’m just trying to sit back and see what He has for me, if you know what I mean.”

I said: “That’s wonderful. I want to do that too.”

I thought: “What He has for you may not be what you want Him to have. What He has for you is up to Him.”

He said: “I told you before. I have a purpose in this. I have a purpose in everything.”

————————————————————————————————–

he said: “I have to think about it. I just don’t know.”

I said: “Tell me one way or the other. You don’t not know. If you don’t want to, then you don’t want to. If it isn’t yes, it’s no.”

I thought: “You’re afraid and you have every right to be. You’re afraid, but you won’t get any further until you aren’t.”

He said: “Forget everything else. My will will be done.”

—————————————————————————————————

So I don’t know if or when or that I’m  going to visit Simon. And it’s devastating. Ridiculous.

It’s stupid. It’s such a little thing. It’s so small. I try to compare it to the heart dropping valleys of these past months and it seems so inconsequential. But it aches so deeply. I don’t understand.

Simon thinks that I’ve only had these past few months of waiting. But it’s been four years. It’s been four years of wishing I had been different, more aware, more in tune, more . . . not what I was. Everybody knows. Even Mark said I was in love with Simon. But what’s it matter? What difference does it make? None, as I’m finding out. What’s done can’t be undone. And he will never trust me again.

I don’t mind answering all the probing questions he can come up with. I don’t mind proving myself. I asked him to test me. I asked to be set to a task with full confidence that the power of He who is within me would take me to it’s righteous conclusion. But he has no test to give. He has already made up his mind.

I fear I’ve been a fool. But, no, I think, no, I’ve been prayerful about this. I have consulted with my Lord and this is the answer I’ve come up with. I have tried to be as mindful as I could and I come over and over again to the same place. A place where I pin my hopes on the resolution of our past relationship and the beginning of one that is honest and edifying and an encouragement and help to us both. Have I got my heart set, to the exclusion of Divine Instruction?

I let it lie for the moment and return to my life. I grieve.