Mavis Staples

Mavis Staples won the Best Americana album Grammy award last weekend for her newest release, You're Not Alone. She's been recording gospel music for decades and apparently this is her first Grammy. This album is stunning.

I like it because I hear pain and hope in her voice on every track. The title song, which you can hear in the video below, makes my heart cry every time. It's about compassion and knowing that someone else has hurt deeply, too. Staples has the rumbling, earthy voice that makes me feel what she's singing. And she is 71 years old. Awesome.

En Garde!

I am drowning in offers of help.

Is it ok to consider that challenging?

My life is entirely too much for me these days. My life has been too much for me for a long time now. I mentioned briefly in one post that I have cancer. I recently began a six-month course of chemotherapy. For some reason, being diagnosed with cancer and hearing I needed chemo did not knock me off balance. It seemed of a piece with depression - another long, ugly illness that will be resolved eventually.

Now that we have moved and I've started treatment, I am losing my balance. The move is, big picture, great for our family. In the short term it is incredibly stressful. Everything is new, we have no routine, the kids are excited and confused and uncertain. The chemotherapy is an enormous wrench in the gears of trying to get settled. The primary side effect for me so far is severe fatigue. It looks like I'll be alternating good week/crummy week for a few months.

When someone loving and capable offers to help, I am confident that God loves me and is going to provide what we need to get through this. I also wonder if I am going to pay for it later.

What I need most is help with my children. A stunning number of people in our new congregation have offered to spend time with the kids while I cope with treatments. I am sifting through the offers. A few people appear very needy themselves, so I smile, thank them for the generous offer, and never call for help. Almost everyone else seems fine, but there are so many ways that inviting virtual strangers into the intimate connection of caring for my children can become awkward. Do they expect a "special" connection with the pastor's family? If I ask for help once, will it be offensive if I do not ask again?

I am in no position to return any favors. Not only do I need substantial tangible help, but I lack the emotional energy to tend to other people's needs with any depth or consistency. I am in a tunnel of my own family's needs.

We all depend on God's grace at all times, but that dependence is not always evident in our everyday lives. Right now, my dependence on grace is acute. It makes me feel fragile, exposed. I trust God. I'm not so sure about His people.

Why Me?

I'm having an upside-down "why me?" spiritual/existential dilemma.

Plenty of things are going differently than I'd like. I feel, in fact, like I've been living for quite a while in the field where the sewage line dumps. It smells nasty and walking anywhere is slow going. But this is also where the most gorgeous, rare flowers grow. They are phenomenal. Brilliant colors, delicate petals, some tall & stunning, others more demure. Why am I blessed to be among these lovely things?

Lots of people close to me seem overwhelmed by the number of things that have gone badly for us in the last couple of years. Some expect me to be bitter and angry. I understand what they mean and why they'd expect that. It's hard to explain all the amazing loveliness that has come with it -- the love, gifts, generosity, prayers -- from every corner of my life. Everyone goes through miserable stuff sometimes, but I'm not confident that everyone gets the kind or quantity of support I am now receiving. I sometimes feel guilty about it.

Presence

I recently read a book that dealt primarily with a grown man's memory of the year he was 11 and his uncle died suddenly, violently. The movement of the story is the assembly of his memory, his childhood understanding, and his deeper adult understanding of what happened.

The most affecting scene is of the 11-year-old boy, Andy, sitting in the living room with his father and grandparents one night when all three adults separately and simultaneously weep. It is a stunning image of raw, private grief. It's a difficult and confusing thing for the boy to witness.

As an adult, after his father has passed away, Andy wonders why he never asked his father more about the uncle's death:

Why, as I got older, did I not ask my father for his version of these events? Now that he is dead, it is easy to wish that I had asked. And yet I know why I did not. I did not want to live again in the great pain I had felt in the old house that night when he had wept so helplessly with Grandma and Grandpa. I did not want to be with him in the presence of that pain where only it and we existed.

I did not want to be with him in the presence of that pain where only it and we existed. I know exactly what he means. How I have feared being in the presence of pain and the way the world shrinks to a horrible, tiny place where there is nothing but grief.

But isn't this the tremendous gift of Jesus? There is no place on earth where we are alone with pain. God is always with us, present in the deepest, most isolating pain. His presence is what I need most.

Comfort

Recently I heard a sermon on this passage from 2 Corinthians:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

I like that command/promise value pack. God comforts us. He has, he does, he will. He expects us to care about other people who are hurting because we know how they feel and have experienced God's care for us. My understanding of the words "compassion" and "sympathy" is that they involve shared experience. I have compassion for someone who feels lonely, hopeless, or rejected because I have felt those things, too.

I assumed mature Christians would behave this way toward others.

When the conflict with sr pastor outgrew his relationship with Husband and began to involve our parenting decisions, I decided I should talk directly with sr pastor. I was hurt deeply. I felt like he had judged us and felt insecure about being at church.

I carefully, thoughtfully worked out what I wanted to say to him and how to say it in an relationship-building way. I decided to approach him as my pastor, asking for his help finding my place at the church. My imagined worst-case-scenario was that I'd cry and lose control of myself. I tried to remember that authentic tears generate sympathy and connection and that would certainly be good.

Things started out well. I described my frustrations and asked for his help. He offered brief, practiced answers that I suspect he has given often to similar requests. Then I thought aloud, "The last year has not gone the way I'd expected..." and started to cry. It was a profound understatement of how difficult things had been for my family.

This is the moment when I'd have expected 1 Corinthians to kick in. As a pastor -- in theory, my pastor -- I thought he would comfort me with the comfort he had received through Christ.

He didn't.

Instead he picked up the thought and turned it to himself. "Things haven't gone the way I'd expected either! When your husband came I thought..." and he began listing his frustrations with my husband.

I was speechless. What a crazy mess. This pattern repeated over and over in interactions we had with sr pastor. It is so painful, feels so unkind. It also makes me hurt for him because he seems unable to see beyond himself.

This post was inspired by a recent item from the Church Whisperer. "We are surrounded by pain and sorrow and dysfunction and incapacitation. Without something to offer in opposition to that pain, without a heart that breaks for hurting people, our mission fails."

Recovery Week

I've been quiet this week because I suddenly realized how completely exhausted I am. Husband is done. He is no longer pastor at our former church. It is such a relief.

It is not, however, the finished-your-final-exam kind of relief I'd hoped for. It's more of a bad-guys-finally-stopped-chasing-you relief. Several times I longed for a week's beach vacation where my only responsibilities would be moving from bed to beachtowel and back again. I feel spent.

I went on a women's retreat this weekend. I was with a group of several dozen Christian women who did not know me. It was a lovely group -- diverse ages, warm, caring, and open to new friendships. I felt safe among them and realized it's been years since I felt safe in a church group.

God encouraged me through the Bible study and through several different women I met. I was proud of myself for finding a way to be kind & respectful toward our former congregation while also being honest about my sadness. Today someone even described me as "vulnerable," which is not a word I've ever known anyone to use about me.

I feel hopeful and realistic. We have passed an important landmark but the road is still long.

Unexpected Kindness

At church this weekend I was surprised by unsolicited kind comments from a couple of church members. A man I know only a little, and who I would not have assumed to be fond of my husband's ministry style, was chatting with my kids and told them, "Your dad is a good pastor. One of the best!"

So sweet and so poignant. I realized, as I sometimes have before, that the conflict here is localized to just a few people who happen to be very powerful in this congregation. I've heard that major church conflict is usually confined to 7-10 vocal critics. Our experience seems to support that theory.

Mercy

Things are moving along for us now. It looks like God is opening the door to a new thing, and we may be leaving our current congregation in the near future. This is beyond fantastic. It is the root of my recent improvement.

The door, of course, is not opening into what I expected. I’d been imagining that God would open an enormous double door into a gorgeous new home, more comfortable and more perfectly suited to us than where we are right now. Turns out, it’s a smallish doorway leading to a modest fixer-upper surrounded by a moat.

I’m cool with this. I trust that God will equip us for whatever He intends us to do. We have a hammer and saw and some wood, and we can build a bridge across the moat. It happens that senior pastor in our current congregation has a power saw and a barn full of wood. With his help this would go much more easily.

Husband is going to talk to senior pastor and invite him to lend his support. Among the general population of church members I would feel confident of encouragement. But based on our experience with senior pastor, it is an even 50-50 chance. He is entirely unpredictable in this circumstance.

We are asking him to have mercy on us, and I am distressed even by the asking. I have turned the other cheek so many times they are tender and bloody. Now I’m peeling off the bandage and offering it again?

I ask God to soften my heart, to give me His grace toward this man. I also struggle against any inclination to think kindly of him. I am exhausted. I am done in. Today it feels like I will be angry no matter what he does.

Anger

You might not guess it from reading this blog, but I am hesitant to be angry. I’m not sure that “slow to anger” expresses it accurately. I get angry in a hurry, but I am diplomatic and talk myself out of feeling or expressing anger. There are two sides to every story; cut them some slack -- they are trying to do the right thing; everyone has a bad day.

Talking to myself that way is an effective method of getting through everyday frustrations. I don’t ascribe malice to store clerks who are rude, or to friends who occasionally forget something important to me.

Sometimes, though, anger is the only thing. These days I lie awake at night having completely interior rages. I am furious, outside myself, that a narcissistic control-freak is calling the shots at our church; that he seems to lack the capacity to express pastoral concern toward many people, that a large portion of the staff and congregation seem emotionally and spiritually parched. That his wife is an ambulatory abcess of festering anger, blame, and manipulation who calls my husband in the room when she wants to lance a boil. For us to remain here means that Husband will continue to be abused and manipulated, though he guards against it much better than he used to. For us to leave means that God cannot use Husband to strengthen the very significant weaknesses in this congregation.

AND, above-mentioned unacknowledged weaknesses of sr. pastor mean that MY FAMILY will move to yet another church, settle in yet another community. That my son may well attend five different schools before he is 6 years old, this child whose particular anxieties reach their peak when stability and predictability are removed. It also means that my three-year-old's ruptured appendix will not be the most memorable thing about late 2009. I thought I'd have the sort of life in which that would rank as THE MAJOR TRAUMA of the year.

Deep down I trust that God is with us and we will be ok, but when I picture moving anywhere, I imagine plowing through the big transition and then arriving, settling, and sitting alone in my new house wishing I were not me. God would be with me there. I know it would end after a while, that I would make friends and adjust to wherever we are, but it seems like that would be a long way from here, with a deep valley in between.

For all that, I also feel compassion for Mr. and Mrs. senior pastor. I know they are miserable and stressed and probably feel trapped much as I do. I'm sure that they love God and want to serve Him.

Someone has described my situation as “a tight spot.” An accurate and generous phrase, I’d say.

Pep Talk to Myself

I will not be disappointed that I am moody and tearful. I will not be surprised that I feel good for a while, and then feel fragile and sad. That's depression. That's life right now; it will not be this way forever.

God has been faithful to care for me. I felt more comfortable at church this morning than usual. Mrs. Senior Pastor and I exchanged pleasantries for thie first time in a year. Though the morning exhausted me, I did not have any attacks of anxiety.

This weekend I took my kids to the playground and I played with them! It was very encouraging to have a few episodes this week of feeling like the me I recognize.

Both Ways

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is the title of a short story collection by Maile Meloy. They are gorgeously simple stories, and I don't think one turned out the way I'd hoped. It is not about simple indecisiveness; it is about irreconcilable longings. The book’s epigraph is from a poem by A. R. Ammons: “One can’t have it both ways, and both ways is the only way I want it.”

These stories came to me at just the right time. I am beginning to understand that I can't have it both ways. I want to be kind, compassionate, understanding of human frailty AND I want to have a life free of tragedy or major disappointment in myself. I had the latter for quite some time. Now that the happy bubble has popped, I realize God has given me quite a greater share of the former. In the last week or so I’ve heard of an infant with a dire medical crisis, a friend who is getting divorced, and a stranger injured in an auto accident near my home. News of each one almost put me on the floor in tears because I could sympathize with the feeling of intense pain and hopelessness.

I feel myself both less and more than I was.

Burden of Thoughtfulness

I tend toward thoughtfulness under normal circumstances. I like to think about the world in the abstract. Why do people behave the way they do? What influences us? What shapes our attitudes and expectations? This week I took it as a sign of well-being that I was able to read an essay on the plasticity of the human body in postmodern culture. Sometimes, however, this pattern of abstracted thoughtfulness is annoying. It can be hard for me to feel when I am preoccupied with analysis.

The thoughtfulness that attends my current mental and emotional state is something different. It is profoundly self-centered and much more difficult to escape. This thoughtfulness is not detached from feeling, but actually produces very intense feelings. I can think about myself and swirl around in my moroseness for a long time.

I have, by long habit, become accustomed to attending closely to what other people need. Parenting three children affirms that habit, since they require me to put their needs above mine several hours a day. Being a woman, a pastor’s wife, a person who likes to think herself independent and compassionate: these all reinforce possibly excessive other-centeredness. It is shameful to me that I have swung the other direction entirely. Right now, sustaining attention to someone else’s needs is exhausting.

Maybe the burden is not thoughtfulness so much as self-centeredness. It’s like I’m on a teeter-totter and want to get to the balanced spot where I have the humility to recognize both my needs and other’s needs, but so far I’ve been all teeter or all totter.

Things That Make Me Cry, Part 2

This week I am bordering on incapable of doing the minimum necessary for myself and my family. In a quiet moment, when I try to describe this to my husband, he speaks to me with love, sympathy, and kindness. How am I so lucky to get this guy?

Delayed Gratification

I suppose this should not make me feel cranky and put-upon, but today it does. Feeling self-righteous is so satisfying in the short run. Loving my enemies sounds like it will involve loooooong delayed gratification.

"We show love to our enemies by praying for them (Matthew 5:43-48). It seems that God gives us our enemies for just this purpose; He allows them to attack us so that He can use us to pray for them and so secure His blessing for them. When we do that, we most clearly resemble our heavenly Father and copy His dear Son." (Kleinig, 207-208)

"You have heard that is was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48)

Depletion

One of the first changes I noticed in myself over the last year was withdrawal. As my sense of anxiety and urgency about my family’s well-being intensified, I devoted less energy to caring for my friends and extended family. I called infrequently; found it difficult to make plans with anyone; was timid about conversation with new acquaintances.

Now I see that was an early indication that my emotional resources were being depleted. After my husband took medical leave, and I spent two weeks hunkered down alone at home with the kids, crying, I have not yet gotten back to “normal”.

A couple of months into his leave, I realized I was an open faucet of caretaking energy. I’d been caring for the children and making crazy efforts to rescue my husband from his steady descent. In the process, I’d pretty well cut myself off from anyone who would pour energy into me.

In the last few months, I’ve learned that limited emotional energy is a standard-issue symptom of depression. I suspect this may be causing confusion among some of the leaders in our congregation. My husband is animated and energetic at work, and certainly on Sunday mornings. His sermons are as creative and thoughtful as ever. They can’t *see* his depression. I wonder if they feel like his medical leave was a kind of vacation.

We sure feel the energy depletion. Yesterday I woke up exhausted, ready to stay in bed. Watching my husband leave for work is a stressful time for me. We don’t commiserate about it, but I know it is hard for him to go and I wish I could protect him. And then it’s just me and the kids.

I decided we ought to go to the grocery store, so I packed away my fatigue and focused on the task. Make a list. Chat with the kids about meal ideas. Pack a bag, discuss the plan for making it through the store with all three kids. I forgot my shopping list, but remembered all the important items and had a pleasant trip with pretty well-behaved kids.

Then we got home, and I was done. I put on a cartoon for them and went to bed for twenty minutes. I could not handle another minute with them right then.

That is maddening for me. I can focus for a little while and go on with what I need to do, but the rope runs out quickly, and then I collapse. This is hard for other people to understand because no one else sees it. Even when I talk to a friend on the phone, I generally sound well because I’m focused on the conversation. But afterwards I will likely sit alone for a few minutes before I can start something else.

I don’t know what to do about this disconnect between what others see and how we feel. People are too polite to ask, and we are too polite to mope around in public. I carry this with me, and try to think of it when I see someone else behaving in a way that seems odd to me. I remind myself that I have no idea what their life is really like.