Keeping it Real

Dear God,

Please help me become real. Even if the process makes me a little shabby and worn out, God. Please keep on holding me tight until I learn to love, until I become real, like the Velveteen Rabbit.

Love, G

A Psalm of Singlemindedness

by Joe Bayly

Lord of reality
make me real
not plastic
synthetic
pretend phony
an actor playing out his part
hypocrite.
I don't want
to keep a prayer list
but to pray
nor agonize to find Your will
but to obey
what I already know
to argue
theories of inspiration
but submit to Your Word.
I don't want
to explain the difference
between eros and philos
and agape
but to love.
I don't want
to sing as if I mean it
I want to mean it.
I don't want
to tell it like it is
but to be it
like you want it.
I don't want
to think another needs me
but I need him
else I'm not complete.
I don't want
to tell others how to do it
but to do it
to have to be always right
but to admit it when I'm wrong.
I don't want to be a census taker
but an obstetrician
nor an involved person, a professional
but a friend
I don't want to be insensitive
but to hurt where other people hurt
nor to say I know how you feel
but to say God knows
and I'll try
if you'll be patient with me
and meanwhile I'll be quiet.
I don't want to scorn the cliches of others
but to mean everything I say

including this.

Thanks, Wendi, for posting this poem, which made my heart sing.

LUUUUUUUUCCCCCYYYYYY!!!!

Craig came home with this the other day.

It’s a new vacuum. An unsolicited new vacuum.

Back story:

Like cooking, I consider vacuuming to be something that show-offy people do. And also people who are not quite as deep and sentimental as I am.

The floors in my home read like a history of our family. In that corner you might find Cheerios from this memorable day, under that rug you’ll find sprinkles from that special day. It's lovely, really. And since I am incapable of ordering pictures or assembling family photo albums, Craig and I just sit on the couch in the evenings, gazing from pile of floor crap to pile of floor crap, reminiscing. We find this quite special and creative. But if you are the vacuuming type, I don’t want you to feel badly. I’m just suggesting that kids grow up fast, so you might want to consider setting aside some floor memories. That’s all.

Several years ago, I started suspecting that my friends had different beliefs about vacuuming and memory-keeping. It seemed they were opposed to using floors as scrapbooks, because their carpets always had those fancy lines in them. You know the lines to which I’m referring? Those fresh, show-offy, “I just vacuumed” lines? So I started getting a little uncomfortable about my un-liney carpets. Now, one might predict that this discomfort led me to re-evaluate my vacuuming boycott, but one might predict wrong. I find my vacuum to be very heavy and ugly and inconducive to relaxing. There is nothing that leads me into a cursing tirade faster than trying to lug my vacuum up two flights of stairs. And Jesus said: if your vacuum causes you to curse, gouge it out . . . or something like that. So actually becoming a real- life vacuumer wasn’t an option, since I love Jesus. (If you do vacuum, I’m not trying to suggest that you don’t love Jesus. I assume it’s possible to do both. I’m just saying it’s not likely. Not likely at all. )

In any case, it was becoming clear that I needed to start thinking creatively about this vacuuming issue.

One day I was watching Tish stroll her baby-doll around the family room in a little pink baby stroller. And when my gaze fell to the floor behind her I noticed that the stroller wheels were making perfect lines across the carpet. Perfect, fancy “I just vacuumed” looking lines. And I thought…CHA-CHING!

For the last three years, before company arrives, before Craig comes home from a trip, every time I feel like playing dutiful housewife, I call Tish and ask her if she’d like to take her baby for a walk. And Tish says, “A reg-a-lar walk or a careful walk, mommy?” And I say, “A careful walk, honey.” When she was two, I taught Tish that a careful walk is when you stroll your baby back and forth across the carpet in such a way that the stroller lines run perfectly parallel to each other. . . back and forth, back and forth, back and forth . . . you see where I'm going with this. And so for three wonderful years, mommy sat on the couch and cheered for Tish while she and her baby-doll vacuumed.

And Craig would always come home and say, “WOW! You vacuumed!” with the same proud tone he uses when I cut a tomato all by myself. And I would just smile and bat my eyelashes coyly but never answer directly because honesty is very important to me.

It was a miracle, really. Except that one night I saw Craig looking quizzically at my carpet lines . . . and I realized with terror that he was finally noticing that my fancy lines were completely surrounded by our usual piles of floor crap.

I had anticipated that this might be the fly in the ointment. So I real quick mumbled something like “Stupid vacuum's broken. But nice lines, huh? Look! Shark Week is on!” I have been mumbling variations of those sentences for three years now. With great success.

So when Craig walked in the house recently with this surprise vacuum, I was suspicious that he was suspicious.And so I watched his face verrrry closely. And right after he said, “Look! This will make life so much easier! I hate for you go to all that trouble with that broken vacuum and never get the results you want . . .” I noticed a faint smirk and an itty bitty centimeter of an eyebrow-raise. It was almost imperceptible. But I saw it. And so my first thought was . . . He knows. He knows about the stroller vacuuming. The jig is up.

But I recovered quickly. And my second thought was: Oh. The poor guy really doesn’t know who he’s messing with here. He has grossly underestimated the depths to which I am prepared to sink to preserve my way of life. He just doesn’t know.

The other day, after Craig left for work, I told Tish that I had a surprise for her. I announced that since she was such a big girl now, it had become time to pass down her itty bitty baby stroller to Amma, because I had bought her a brand new, big girl stroller. I explained that big girl strollers look very, very different than little girl strollers and even make big noises like cars! Because big girl strollers have engines.

Time for a careful walk, baby. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Your move, Hub-Dog.

For Christina

Lovies,

That’s me, above. The Brett Favre of blogging. You knew I’d never really retire, right?

Last night I uncovered the truth about why I wanted to close up shop.

I had been telling myself this:

It’s time to stop. The experiment is done. We’ve proven that women of different faiths and demographics can love each other well. We’ve truly learned from each other. We’ve proven that if you want peace, it’s much simpler to put down your guns than to fight for it. We’ve proven that the truth really does set people free. G, Time to quit while we're all ahead.

But what I was really saying, down deep about a thousand layers, was this:

It’s time to stop. Because I’m really, really scared that I’m going to start sucking and they’re not going to like me anymore.

So I spent yesterday thinking about what that was all about. Here’s the thing about when I spend the day thinking. That’s really all I do. I am absolutely incapable of multi-tasking. And my kids know this. For example, yesterday the kids were in the pool and I guess I was looking at them, but not really. And at one point I realized that Tish was staring at me and seemed to be repeating some sort of request because her lips were moving and her voice was getting louder and louder, but by the time I actually tuned in, I heard Chase saying, “Tish, I’ll watch you jump in. Mommy can’t. She’s thinking.” True story.

I was thinking really hard about what I’m so scared of.

And I decided my real fear is that you are going to realize that I am a big, huge fraud.

Because I get up every morning and write about patience and kindness and then by noon I’ve yelled at six people, slammed three doors, and thought forty vicious thoughts.

I write about treasuring my children, about truly noticing them, about living in the moment with them, and then I spend the bulk of my day telling them to HOLD ON! while I finish whatever book I’m rereading.

I get up in the morning and write a lovely essay about following my heart and refusing to consider if others like me or not, and then I check the blog every twelve minutes, to see if you guys liked my essay or not.

I write an essay about humility. Then I hit "publish" and think...that has got to be the best essay on humility in the history of the world.

I write to you about my husband, about how in love with him I am, and then I don’t do the simple, teeny things that I know make him happy.

I write about loving poor people, about getting out there and really loving poor people. But I write about that from my cozy dining room at five in the morning. I continue to be the only poor person in my dining room.

I write passionately about a certain subject one week, and then the next week I wake up and realize that I feel completely differently about that subject now. I decide maybe I should think for a whole year before I write anything down. But that would make for a very slow blog.

And the other night I was straight-up panicking, listing to Craig all of the reasons I was freaking out about some recent decisions we’d made, and after asking me if I needed a paper bag to breathe into, Craig said, “Hon, didn’t you just write about how much peace we have about our decisions? Didn’t you just say we were free as birds? You don’t look like a bird right now.”

I plan to start speaking to him again tomorrow.

And so all of these things make me feel very nervous about this blog, because based on your emails and comments it seems like some of you guys are actually paying close attention to the things I write. And so I was thinking maybe someone who is a little less hypocritical and more consistent should be writing to you. Someone who has a few things figured out.

But then, last night, I got this breathtakingly beautiful email from a woman who was in my freshman English class. Her email was about how one particular day she begged God for guidance about a life decision, and then she told Him that she’d look to Momastery to hear back from Him. And when she logged on that day, she got a direct answer from the post. And she acted on that answer. And she’s happy now.

And so I laid in bed last night and thought . . . Hmmmm.

The Bible’s always saying how God likes to choose foolish people to show up for Him. So maybe that’s what’s going on here. Maybe he just needs a foolish body to keep showing up, and He’ll keep doing the rest.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I can be God’s fool. That’s actually ALL I can promise to be. So I’ll just keep showing up here, when I can, and ask Him to do His thing. And so if I start sucking, we know who to blame, right? Let us be clear on that.

I’ve got some ideas about how to make Momastery more sustainable, I’ll share them soon.

Love You,

GF (God’s Fool)

Happy Birthday, Precious Monkees!

A few years ago, strange things started happening to me at church. I’d find myself in the middle of a lighthearted conversation with a woman I’d just met, and the woman would make a joke that didn’t sound like a joke suggesting that our family was “perfect,” and that this “perfection” made her feel bad about her family. This happened three of four times over a two week period. Once a woman said “You are so PULLED TOGETHER. It just makes me feel so APART.”

Craig was standing behind me and I looked at him confused and he looked back at me equally confused. If you are friends with us in real life you know the interaction I’m describing well. It is our signature interaction. I stammered my way through the rest of the conversation and on the way home, Craig and I debriefed.

We were confused. Craig and I love each other dearly, but neither of us would describe the other as “pulled together.” These women may as well have been saying to me “I’m just so jealous of your HEIGHT and CULINARY SKILLS.” I was baffled. During our debriefing, Craig and I developed a theory that if you are thin and smile a lot, people tend to believe that you have the universe’s secrets in your pocket and also that a raindrop has never fallen upon your head. If you also happen to be wearing trendy jeans…just FUGGED ABOUT IT.

This theory distressed me greatly. Kept me up at night. I do not like to make other women feel sad. And I also like to match. I wanted my insides and outsides to match somehow. But I was scared I’d have to start looking like Pig Pen or Courtney Love to make that happen.

One day I was at the playground with a new friend from church named Tess. That’s not her real name, but it’s one of my favorites, and so is she, so Tess it is. I suspected that Tess was sad, and that she was having some trouble in her marriage. We hadn’t discussed this though, because we were too busy discussing more important things, like soccer practice and highlights.

All of a sudden I heard myself saying the following to Tess:

Listen, I want you to know that I’ve had some major issues with food and alcohol. I've been arrested several times because of the alcohol. Craig and I got accidentally pregnant and married a year after we started dating. We love each other madly but I’m secretly terrified that my issues with sex and anger will eventually screw things up. I get jealous easily...sometimes I actually feel sad and worried when good things happen to other people. Oh also, I snap at customer service people and my kids and husband regularly. I feel like I always have rage right beneath my surface. And right now I’m dealing with some post partum depression, I think. I spend most of my day just wishing my kids would leave me alone. Chase brought me a note the other morning that said “I hope mommy is nice today.” It’s depressing and scary, because I keep wondering what happens if that feeling never goes away? Maybe I just can’t handle this many kids. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know those things.

Tess stared at me, long enough that I wondered if she was going to call our minister or 911. Then I saw some tears and we sat down on a bench and she told me everything. Things with her husband were bad, apparently. Really bad. Tess felt scared and alone. But at the playground that day Tess decided she wanted help and love more than she wanted me to think she was perfect.

We hardly knew each other. But we both realized at that moment that we were in this together. We went through some tough times over the next few months. A lot of tears, therapy, separation, anger and fear. But a little army of love circled the wagons around Tess and her family and blockaded anybody from getting in too far or out too far. And eventually, things got better. A lot better. Tess and her husband and their beautiful children are together and healing and thriving now. And I got to watch all of that. I actually got to SEE the truth set a family free.

At that point in my life I was dying to do something meaningful and helpful, outside of my home, but no one would have me. We were turned away again and again when we tried to adopt. Then I tried to become a volunteer at the local nursing home. They seemed thrilled with me until the background check, at which point they never called me back. Perhaps they thought I had a secret motivation to get all the old people wasted. Then I tried to volunteer at a local shelter for abused women. It actually looked like they might take me until the final interview when the woman said “As a formality, I just have to ask if you’ve ever been arrested.” She never called me back. It’s hard to explain it away as only several times.

I was depressed.

But then the Tess thing happened. And I thought, maybe I could do THAT. Maybe my public service could just be to tell people the truth about my insides. Because it seemed to make people feel better, for whatever reason. It struck me that for this particular “ministry,” my criminal record was a PLUS. It gave me street cred. And I considered that maybe the gifts God gave me were storytelling and shamelessness. Because you guys, I’m shameless. I’m almost ashamed at how little shame I have. Almost, but not really, at all. So I decided that’s what God wanted me to do. He wanted me to walk around telling people the truth. No mask, no hiding, no pretending. That was going to be my thing. I was going to make people feel better about their insides by showing them mine. By being my real self. But I was keeping my trendy jeans. I decided they were part of my real self.

A few days after I told Craig that I was going to “volunteer” as a “reckless truth teller” my minister called me on the phone. My first thought was that Tess had ratted me out. But this is what the minister said: “I know you’re having a hard time with the baby and it might seem like a bad time for you, but I feel like the time is now for you to tell your story to the church. The whole church. On stage. Live.”

Craig sweated and looked into whether or not he could be fired for having an ex -con for a wife. I planned my outfit.

Then I wrote my story, without leaving anything out. And read it to my church. And it went really, really well. Lots and lots of people wanted to laugh and cry with me, and to tell me their stories. And I thought… WELL. OKAY, THEN. Take THAT, NURSING HOME. I DIDN’T WANT TO SERVE YOUR STUPID LEMONADE, ANYWAY. Do you get STANDING OVATIONS AND TEARS OF JOY FOR SERVING LEMONADE? I bet NOT.

I’d found my thing. Openness. I decided, based on firsthand experience, that it was more fun to say things that made other women feel hopeful about themselves and God than it was to say or omit things to make people feel jealous of me. And it was easier, too. Less to keep track of and monitor. So I decided to put down my guns, peel off my armor, and walk out of my bunker waving a little white flag.

A few months later, I started feeling a relentless pull to start writing each morning. I didn't want to. What I desperately wanted to do was start researching adoption options again. But I could sense God saying No, No, No and pointing to the computer. So I told Him that obviously I couldn't write on that particular computer He was pointing to because it was yucky and old and too big altogether. And when Sister asked me why I wasn't writing yet, I told her it was because I'd decided if God really wanted me to write, He'd send me a shiny new laptop.

So the following week Sister showed up at my house with a shiny new laptop and said, "Oh my gosh, G! Look what God sent!" And then she raised her eyebrows and said something like, “Get...To...Work.” She’s tricky, that one.

So I finally told them both - God and Sister - fine. I promised them I'd show up at my pretty green computer every single morning at five to tell my story, and I'd allow Him to lead the telling. Because when you tell your story, it is very, very important not to accidentally tell anyone else's. And it is crucial to tell your story gently and with love. There is no room for carelessness. So there was a lot of praying. A lot of Jesus. A lot of yoga.

This weeks marks Momastery's First Birthday. Look what He did, Monkees. Look what can happen when we just show up because we believe in God, and ourselves, and other people.

This year you and I have written about faith, religion, money, addiction, sex - every controversial, potentially divisive subject about which we are not supposed to speak. And thousands of women from all over the world have come to visit and read. In its first year, Momastery received 300,000 page views. And I have not received a single nasty email or comment. People have disagreed sometimes. Of course they have. But they’ve done it with love, respect, and the genuine motives to understand, be understood and find common ground.

This year I've learned that when love is the driving force behind our words . . . others actually hear the love louder than the words. And people respond to the love, regardless of how they feel about the particular words. I'm starting to understand that the words don't count for much at all. It's the motive, the intention, the heart behind them that people hear.

This year I’ve learned that I must always take the time to find a place of love from which to speak. And if I haven't found it yet, I must not speak yet. Because announcing your brilliant opinion is not revolutionary. Everybody's got those. Opinions, dogmas, thoughts, ideas, beliefs . . . they’re a dime a dozen. But speaking and listening with love, and with the motivation to be a peacemaker instead of to be right…that is the only hope we have for progress, for personal and global peace. If we want our world leaders and children to do it, then we should expect ourselves to do it, too. We don't need to be right. We need to be peacemakers. And so we all must get over ourselves. As Ghandi said, We Must Be the Change We Want to See in the World.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Thank you for taking this Momastery journey with me. The past year has changed me forever.

So what do we do now? Do we wrap it up, call it beautiful, and put it on a shelf to look at when we need to? That might be a good choice. Or do we keep walking together? That might be a good choice, too.

Tell me what you want, Sweet Monkees.

Thanks for rollin’ with a Sister.

G

Tangled Up In Blue, Part Three: Jubilee

“As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” . . . Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to your mortgage company…”

Mark 10: 17-21, sort of

Let’s talk real estate.

Five years ago, Craig and I bought our first single family home. The home was within a comfortable price range, but we chose an interest only, adjustable rate mortgage because back then we still believed in short cuts. Recently we woke up and started asking tough questions about our loan - questions like who are we really paying each month and how much, exactly? Isn’t it interesting how we carefully analyze the charities we give so little to, while blindly handing most of our money to companies about which we know nothing? What we discovered through our inquiries was that it’s really hard to learn anything about the money lenders. Who they are, what they believe in, how they use their money. Couldn’t find a thing. We also learned that we were one hundred thousand dollars underwater. And the details of our loan meant that we could pay our mortgage faithfully till the end of time without putting a dent in the principal. And that when our rate adjusted in two years, the three thousand dollars we paid each month would jump to four. We were troubled.

So one morning Craig and I decided to sell the house. We planned to do a short sale, using our Lyme induced move as our “hardship.” But after breakfast, Craig went to the bank and stood in line behind a single mom who was crying and pleading with the accountant to help save her home, which she was about to lose to foreclosure. Her two young children were hanging on her legs, looking more weary and afraid than kids need to look. Craig came home, walked into the kitchen and said:

Honey, no shortsale. We’ll save those for people with real hardships. We’ll just cash out everything and start over after the house sells.

I said, What? Let’s think this over.

Craig raised his hot little eyebrow at me, and said, G, it’s the right thing to do. If we needed to do a short sale, we would. But we don’t need to. We have the money. So we’ll use it.

I said, But neeeeeed is such a tricky word.

And Craig said, No it’s not.

And I sighed loudly and said okay and felt terrified and wildly proud to be Craig’s girl.

We went to see a financial planner and explained our predicament. He asked questions about our money and marriage and goals and we told him that our dream of home ownership had been replaced with dreams of peace and freedom. We said that there were things we wanted to do, places we wanted to go, money we wanted to spend and give, moves we wanted to consider…but we felt paralyzed because we’d allowed our mortgage company to become the primary decision maker in our family. We told him that we wanted to know what kind of decisions we’d make if we fired our mortgage company as the boss of us. I told him I wanted Craig to be free of the pressure of our sky high bills. We shared that we wanted to be more conscious and careful about choosing the companies we gave our money to. And we said we wanted to live a little simpler, travel a little lighter. He asked us why we didn’t just do a short sale and we explained that we thought short sales were perfect for some but not for us at this point, since we couldn’t honestly say that we didn’t have the money. We said we thought the right thing to do was suck it up and start over.

Mostly Craig explained this part while I pouted.

Then we stopped talking and waited for him to tell us we were nuts. But he didn’t. He looked at us and said, “I hear you. All of this makes sense to me. You need to be free. I get it. I think you should go for it. And I agree that you should do it without the short sale. You have plenty of time to rebuild, and I believe you will. Free your family, and do it your way.”

So my dear friend Nancy put our sweet little house on the market and it went under contract in two weeks. We closed last week. We brought one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to the table, just to walk away. We left most of our retirement, our entire savings, and Chase’s college fund on the closing company’s big fancy brown table.

No worries, we figure I can just home-college Chase. I mean he already knows how to do this:

How much more can there be to learn?

So now we’re starting over, with nothing again. So far starting over looks like living in a beautiful Victorian home on the water, and spending a third of our old mortgage on rent. It looks like narrowing our belongings down to what would fit in two small storage units. It looks like shrugging when something breaks, calling our landlord and waiting for it to get fixed. It sounds like Craig saying whatever, at least our bills are next to nothing after he lost a big deal at work. It looks like buying my new hair color at the dollar store. Based on those results, I might suggest finding other corners to cut. But you know, it’s actually sort of cute, in a vampirish kind of way. Whatever.

Whatever is our new spiritual motto and mantra. Whatever is divine.

Most importantly, starting over feels like knowing in the back of our hearts that if we are needed anywhere, anytime, we can go. We’re free. And what better use of money is there than to buy freedom?

I’m telling you all of this because we live in so much fear about money…what if it all goes away, what if we’re left with nothing…what if…we’re scared to take risks, to relax even because what if….but here’s the thing. Craig and I are in the middle of the what if right now.

It’s all gone. And it’s fine. It’s better than fine. We might have nothing, but we also don’t owe a damn thing to anybody other than God and each other. We’re still laughing and singing and dancing over here, just in somebody else’s kitchen. I think ownership of anything might be illusory anyway. It’s like we can hear God saying…Hey guys…did you really think it was the house and the money that kept you safe and warm and joyful? I feel like a kid who finally found the courage to jump off the edge into the pool and realized, Yes! Daddy caught me, just like He promised He would. How fun!

Craig and I feel wide awake and very young. You know that feeling you had when you first got married? Like it was just you two setting off like pioneers into the big world and anything was possible? That’s how we feel. Like newlyweds. Without a bank account to depend on, we’re left with God and each other. So we get to relearn every day that God and each other are enough. We get to live on faith for a little while. The strange truth is that since we’ve abandoned the responsibility of providing for ourselves and given that burden to God, we feel free as birds.

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not reap or sow or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable then they? Who by worrying can add a single day to your life? Matthew 7: 26

Love, G