Awakening, unpacked (a little)

"What are the next steps we should be taking for your musical life here in Seattle?" he asked. We were in the kitchen; I was cutting his hair, some regular Lenten evening in February.

Silence. An unexpected quaking began in my bones.

"Do you have any ideas for what would be feasible right now?" Gentle, harmless probing. The uninvited quaking began to rumble. I blinked hard.

"Do you want to start to inquire at the Faculty of Mus..."

"WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW?"

Orion blinked back at me.

"I. KILLED. MUSIC. TO. MOVE. TO. SEATTLE."

I wept (more than I am used to) for a day and a half.

I was torn open, wide open, and my wound was gushing. I didn't expect it. I did not conjure up the drama. It was very real, and sickening. I was blown over by the storm.

I guess that months, turned into years, of stuffing (parts of) your heart and passion can do that. Turns out I didn't make them go away at all; the stuffing did not erase them. The act of stuffing the dreams did not snuff them. I ignored them for a long time because it was all just too hard. I love my babies and we're renovating a house and I'm still figuring out this new city and I just tried to play Strauss but got interrupted and it's just too hard.

We've had conversations like this before, Orion and I, and have made half-hearted, lip-service attempts towards musical resurrection. They were fruitless conversations.

So I wept and thought. I don't know if I prayed or not; I don't know if I consciously prayed much, anyway. I *did* start talking, talking to people who loved me, to people whom I thought might understand. Usually it was just a snippet at a time, never a complete conversation, but subtly, powerfully, the tide began to change.

Encouragement can look like a lot of things. Sometimes it looks like your mom reminding you that she loves you. Sometimes it looks like a new friend sitting on your couch and listening to your crisis with tender eyes. "The Chinese character for crisis actually combines two characters: danger and opportunity," she says. And sometimes, encouragement looks like the sudden appearance of an old friend, a Jamaican-born, Toronto-based, prophetic tenor kind of friend (you don't have one of those?) who has been wowing the masses at Carnegie Hall and speaks Truth over you like a hurricane.

I've spent a lot of time fearing that I'll never again make music at the level at which I am capable. I've spent a lot of time being invisible to that world, not climbing ladders. I've spent a lot of time fearing that I won't be seen as good enough for anything more than playing a monthly offertory, or the odd wedding, or teaching someone's three-year-old daughter. And the truth is that I would rather not make music at all than be reduced, exclusively, to that.

But the storm came, and it broke down that walls I've been building around my heart. I am daring to hope, and daring to believe that something (bigger than me) is on the move. My gift had to fall to the ground and die, and die it did. And yet, I am now done with all my it's too hard and no one cares. I am taking steps to walk in my gifting, more fully as the person I was made to be. I don't have any fruit to show yet, but I have hope and I'm not letting it go this time.

For a season, it was too hard. I had to sacrifice something I loved for others whom I love. I did not make a wrong choice, but I am re-thinking my identity and calling out subtle lies that have wound their way into my image. I will not flog myself for the season I have been in, for these years of invisibility. I will be kind to myself, and I will walk in hope towards what lies ahead.

Lent

Sometimes, the tune of Lent is grey and minor. This year, Lent is singing a strong anthem of awakening.

I have hope, and it's solid.

Maybe it's my distance from post-partum haze. My thoughts are clearer, my emotions more articulate.

Maybe it's the increase of sunlight, a life-giving sunlight that warms down to the bones.

Maybe it's grace, all grace.

In the bleak midwinter 

Christina Rosetti 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Dad

Twelve years.

Sometimes, remembering looks like celebrating.

Today, it looked like sharing apple fritters with my children. I hope they always associate apple fritters with their Grandpa Alvin.

The master called the woman to himself.
'Child, please take this basket to the river, and return it to me.'
The woman ran to the river and dipped the woven basket into it, but when she returned to the master, it was empty, for the water had seeped through the small holes in the weave.
'I am so sorry! Please, I will go again to fill my basket with water.'
So the woman ran again to the river, dipped the basket in, and returned with an empty basket.

Over and over, this woman ran to the river and became broken-hearted as the basket was always empty on her return.

'Child, what did the basket look like when I gave it to you?'
'It was dirty.'
'And now?'

The woman gasped.
'It is clean.'

I heard a story a bit like this from a pulpit years ago, and I'm living the truth of it now. Again and again and again, I try to retain

coherent thought
self-discipline
a thriving prayer life

and again and again and again, I fail. I come back empty. My intentions are so good, but the holes in my mind, in my heart, in my soul just seem like a gaping drain.

And yet.

And yet, I am cleansed in the cycles. In my weekly returns to the Table, taking the broken Bread and the poured Wine, I am cleansed. In the daily cycles of sleep, I am afforded a bit more refreshment and strength. The seasons turn, the rhythms repeat. I am dust, lavished with mercy.

* * *

I used to think that life was pretty linear. A leads to B leads to C. Study well, get good grades: check. Meet nice man, get married, have babies: check. Learn the repertoire, make connections, make great music: check. Learn basics of the faith, grow in faith, stop making stupid mistakes .... darn.

My Sunshine

why I haven't been blogging much

Guys, I feel like I'm starting to come out of the brain fog. Really! At least in this moment, I am feeling as though there might be more to me than momhood (though momhood is pretty amazing and totally consuming most of the time). I've been inspired by a number of shockingly wonderful things recently, and I just want to live fully, spending it all. Maybe it's just because I'm on my second cup of coffee and the sun is shining today, but I'm remembering that I need to be more than a dishcloth.

Gifts for Dust

My mom gives gifts as smoke rises upwards. Some days I would come home from school to find a new shirt lying out on my bed or a stack of 'new' 50-cent thrift store pants for me to sort through. I remember when she handed me the first clue in a treasure hunt that lead to me to my very first set of eye shadow. Mom prepares for Christmas and birthdays months (and months and months) in advance. When I went away to university, I received far more care packages than anyone else I knew, and those bits of home meant the world to me, a prairie girl transplanted to the mountains and studying my bleary eyes out as I was testing my wings. And now that I am living in Seattle with her grandkids, her momentum has not waned. I mean, we even received a package to commemorate Canada Day, complete with Coffee Crisp bars (yes!) and pencils brandished with Canadian flags.

One card I received while in university contained a note pointing me towards Psalm 103, and it has been a favourite passage of mine ever since. I find immense comfort in the psalmist's painting of God's expansive power and grace, and in the shocking magnitude of my forgiveness.

I was reading this Psalm a few years ago, pregnant, weary and stretched beyond all reason, and my eyes fell on verse 14: "For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

HAL.LE.LU.JAH. This has been such a consolation to me ever since, particularly in the smallness of these mothering-of-little-people years.

I am trying to be very intentional about being with my kids. I like them, and I just want to really walk with them, not simply point them towards a destination and tell them to go. But when I'm overtired, my physical body lacking some of the stabilizing abilities that my heart and mind depend on, being with the kids is emotionally exhausting. I ride all of their feelings right along side of them, vibrating in perfectly discordant harmony with their highs and lows. When all is peaceful and quiet, I am calm and grounded. When two or more are screaming, I easily become ... ahem ... slightly agitated.

'Tis bittersweet. I wouldn't trade it, and I won't regret it, but it's depleting. Hence the comfort of knowing that He knows I'm dust. When I can't connect two coherent thoughts, He knows. When I can't muster the energy to form even the simplest of prayers, I can just be. As a friend reminded me, we are more than minds; we are spirits too, and intimate friends can be together without words. What a friend we have in Jesus.

A stranger, a woman who is a generation ahead of me in the journey, wrote this to a woman who is very much in the same stage as me in the journey:

He can cope with your less than adequate communion with Him because He's the One who sees the heart, not the performance. Trust me, I battled the same thing years (and years and years) ago when I was at your stage of mummage... and now at grandma stage, I've found that He and I are still together and I love Him even more now... and I get more time to read my Bible... hang in there... this too will pass.

What a gift.