Gratitude

Of Grief and Gratitude: On Leaving Hong Kong

Yesterday, I blinked back tears as I handed in my notice. The principal in her smart black blazer and Adidas sneakers stopped me and said,“No sad! You make the children here very happy. I wish you and your family to be happy. Big hugs.” Her words were spare and earnest, her kindness both a comfort and another crack in my breaking heart.

On Facetime, friends and family say, “I-can’t-wait-to-see-you,” and, “You-must-be-so-excited.” And I wonder, Must I be?

Of course I want to see them. This family, these friends—they are the entire reason we are returning to the U.S. Because we’ve found ourselves on the other side of the world with this vibrant, gorgeous, hilarious, child who has never even met most of her family. Many of our dear friends back in the US are neck-deep in the daily liturgy of keeping tiny humans alive. We always dreamed we’d do this part together with them. Because we believe that we cannot do it alone. We believe in the value of raising children in a community who will love our children like their own. And we want our daughter to know and be known by the people who have shaped us.

I believe all of these things to the core of my being. And yet…I don’t know how to explain that this does not feel like coming home so much as it feels like leaving it.

I have faith that a year from now, life will be sweet in ways I can’t even foresee right now. But believing that does not make this transition any easier.

We have done the picking up and moving thing so many times now, but each time it’s been harder. This is without a doubt the hardest one yet. I love this city. I love the mountains and the harbor and the islands and the beaches, the neon signs and the brilliant skyline. I love the dim sum and the trolley and the markets and the egg tarts. I love the women in their carefully curated, perfectly tailored outfits, each piece costing about as much as my entire wardrobe. I love the elderly people who play old Chinese pop music aloud while they hike. I love that my friends here are from all over the world, and that they constantly challenge me to think differently about politics, priorities, faith, and what deep friendship looks like.

I love all 450 sq ft of the home that we’ve built together. First as a family of two and then swelling and stretching to fit first Juniper and then our beloved auntie, Beverly. It frightens me to think of taking Juniper away from the only home she has ever known. It makes me physically sick to think of taking her away from Beverly, both for Junie’s sake and for Beverly’s. They adore each other.

Most days, sad does not feel like a big enough word for what I feel. It’s something closer to grief. It is a visceral pain in the place where my ribs join my sternum, by turns sharp and dull, like a cough drop lodged in my trachea, difficult to breath around. For more than a year now we’ve talked and prayed and talked and prayed about this decision. Even after we’d made a decision, part of me thought if I just ignored it, it wouldn’t really happen. And now it’s six weeks away.

So I move through the motions. Take pictures of items to sell online. Force myself to respond politely to a dozen messages trying to negotiate a discount on the pieces of my life. Force myself not to scream, “Don’t you understand? This is what I wore while I carried my daughter (safely inside my body) through a year of tear gas and riot gear and fire. And this? This is the mat where my baby learned to roll over, where she learned to bat at toys, her fingers splayed wide like a starfish, where she smiled at me for the first time. These moments were holy. No, you cannot have a discount on my existence.”

Today there was a moment when the grief hit me so hard it took my breath away. And then I thought, I don’t want to spend my last precious days here being miserable. And I thought of an essay by Andre Dubus that I first read eleven or twelve years ago. At the age of 49, Dubus was in an accident that resulted in the loss of one of his legs and paralysis in the other. He had stopped to assist another motorist who had been in an accident and, while pulling the survivor out of the wreckage, he was hit by a passing car. In “A Country Road Song,” Dubus writes about his memories of running, not with bitterness, but with profound gratitude.

“When I ran, when I walked, there was no time: there was only my body, my breath, the trees and hills and sky…I always felt grateful, but I did not know it was gratitude and so I never thanked God. Eight years ago, on a starlight night in July, a car hit me…and in September a surgeon cut off my left leg… It is now time to sing of my gratitude: for legs and hills and trees and seasons…I mourn this, and I sing in gratitude for loving this, and in gratitude for all the roads I ran on and walked on, for the hills I climbed and descended, for trees and grass and sky, and for being spared losing running and walking sooner than I did: ten years sooner, or eight seasons, or three; or one day.”
“A Country Road Song” Meditations from a Movable Chair

I remembered this passage and I thought, If I cannot stop the grief, let me sink into the gratitude as well.

And so. It’s time to mourn and to sing in gratitude for Hong Kong. For loving this place and these people. For the mountains and the beaches, for the monkeys and the pink dolphins, for the dazzling skyline, for the temples with their countless golden Buddhas, for my students, for my coworkers, for my friends, and for the family I grew here. I sing in gratitude for all of this and for being spared losing it any sooner than I am: two years sooner, or nine months, or three; or one day.

Mindful Mondays: Walks Without Destinations

One of the things I like best about living in the South is that winters are shorter and milder, but also less gray than they are in colder areas. Even more than the cold, the eternal grayness of winter is what tends to get me down. It’s been cold enough in South Carolina for us to get some snow flurries last week, but the sun has still been out most days and the sky has been clear and bright. Today it practically feels like spring.

I’m an on-again off-again runner. At different points in my life I’ve trained for and run half marathons and marathons, while in other seasons I’ve done no running whatsoever. I’ve been trying to get back into running for the past month or so with only limited success. It’s always hard to start again once you’ve stopped completely, which I suppose should be incentive not to quit in the first place, but it never seems to work.

In all the self-pressure to get my rear in gear and start running again, I forgot how nice it can be just to walk. On these clear and bright winter days I am content to walk for miles, wandering through neighborhoods I’ve never seen before and down streets I’m still learning the names of. Sometimes I walk while I talk on the phone to my sister or to my mom. Sometimes I walk with my husband and we dream about the houses we pass and an imaginary future where we might live in one of them. But sometimes I walk with only my own breathing for company, and these are the walks I like best of all.

These are the moments when I’m not so focused on where I’m going or how fast I’m getting there, but simply appreciate where I am. On these walks I can go as slowly as I want to. I can pay attention to the way the roots of the oak trees ripple under the sidewalks, breaking through in some places, and to the chalk drawings left behind by little artists who forgot to sign their names. I walk until I find myself wandering back home, at peace with myself and with the world around me, knowing that even if it only lasts an hour or two, it will be enough.

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far beyond the road I have begun,
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has an inner light, even from a distance-

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

~”A Walk” by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)

Fifty Two Weeks of Adventure #52: And So We Come to the End

This is it. This is the final post in my 52 Weeks of Adventure challenge.

I started this year out with adventures in Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. I spent the middle of the year exploring Korea, Japan, and Taiwan and getting my first tattoo(s). I ended the year exactly where I needed to be – in Louisiana having Christmas with my family for the first time in four years.

Not only did I get to spend Christmas with my parents, my grandparents, my two sisters, my brother, and my husband, but I also got to build this super cool gingerbread house with my super cool nephew.

We got back to Columbia yesterday after spending a full week in Louisiana with my family. It was a luxury to have so much time to spend with them after being there for only two days this summer. The longer stay also made the 12 hour drive each way feel more worthwhile.

This year has been so full of change. Our adventures have taken us through seven different countries where we’ve made new friends, said good-bye to some, and been reunited with others. Some weeks, my adventure was easy to spot, but other weeks I had to change my perspective and either intentionally seek a new experience, or choose to see the extraordinary in my ordinary days.

I want to give a special mention to my friend Pradnya, who completed 52 adventures of her own and blogged about them here. Knowing that Pradnya was keeping up with her own adventures encouraged me to stick with it.

This challenge pushed me to look at all of life as an adventure and to keep exploring the world around me, whether I’m on an international excursion or in my own hometown. The perspective I gained from living intentional adventures is one I hope to carry with me into 2016 and beyond.

So here’s to my year of adventures, and to all of you who came along with me, both living your own adventures and sharing in mine. This is only the beginning. 52 adventures and counting!

Where Grief and Gratitude Meet

Last week felt like one giant win for Chaos, Fear, and Grief. It was a week marked by terrible loss. Innocent men and women in Paris and Nigeria and Lebanon and Syria lost their lives to violence. Men and women in my country lost their sense of human decency to fear and self-preservation. A friend of mine in South Africa lost two of his friends last week to cancer. And Jonathan and I and the rest of the Wheaton College community lost two of our beloved English professors in the space of three days. I don’t have words for the collective grief of the world right now. I barely have words for my smaller, personal grief, but I feel that I need to say them anyway.

Grieving people talk about how to make sense of loss or come to terms with pain. I don’t know how to do either of those things. I only know how to say thank you.

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Brett Foster was 42 years old, a brilliant man and gifted poet with an extraordinarily kind and generous spirit. Jonathan and I actually met in Dr. Foster’s Ancient Literature class at 9:00 AM Monday morning our very first day of college. Dr. Foster, listening to you read The Odyssey and The Aeneid brought these epics to life for me in a way I’d never experienced before. I can still hear your voice in my head when I read them today. Thank you for sharing your passion, your insights, and your love for words with me.

The summer after our freshman year at Wheaton, Jonathan did a summer study abroad program in England led by Dr. Foster along with a few other professors. One afternoon he announced his intention to see a special exhibit and invited anyone who wanted to to join him. Jonathan was the only student who showed up, so he and Jonathan went tot he museum by themselves and spent the afternoon together. Jonathan remembers how incredibly kind, genuine, and down-to-earth he was, even as a professor spending time with a student.

Thank you for seeing beauty in the world, but more than that, thank you for bringing beauty to the world through your words, through your authenticity, and through your generous spirit.

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Roger Lundin was dear to me in ways I don’t know that I can explain. Of all of my professors at Wheaton, he was perhaps the one who left the biggest impact. His death was sudden, unexpected and also much too soon. Dr. Lundin was big in every sense of the word – a tall man with long lanky limbs ending in large hands and feet, a huge, booming voice, a staggering intellect, and an enormous, tender heart.

He had a memory like no one else I’ve ever known. I once went to his office to discuss a paper I was having trouble with. “This is what I want to talk about, but I’m just not sure how to tie it in with the larger historical context.” He leaned back in his chair and thought for no more than 15 seconds before saying, “There’s a book I think you can find in the school library,” he named an obscure title, “and around page 140 there is a paragraph near the bottom of the page that speaks to exactly what you’re saying.” I left his office and went to the library where I found the book and the passage exactly where he said I would.

Last fall when Jonathan was applying for graduate school, he asked Dr. Lundin to write him a recommendation. Being nearly five years out of college, he was apologetic and tried to remind him of who he was. Dr. Lundin wrote back, “Of course I remember you. I think of you and Lily often and wonder how you’re doing in South Korea.” He said he would be delighted to write the recommendations.

Most significantly for me, though, he had a dear and tender spirit. Through years of classes with him, I was repeatedly moved by the way he spoke of his wife – someone he regarded as the best and most vital part of himself and whose wisdom and input he not only deeply respected, but found essential. During my senior year at Wheaton when Jonathan and I were engaged I started seeing a therapist. I was trying to come to terms with how someone as deeply afraid and distrustful of men as I was could possibly enter a marriage. I remember telling my therapist, “There are only four men in the world I’ve never felt threatened by or afraid of in some way: my dad (though I was deeply afraid of his disapproval), Jonathan, my friend Leigh’s dad who I grew up with, and Dr. Roger Lundin.” (I’m sure there were people I wasn’t thinking of, but that’s how I felt at the time. You get the idea, I had issues).

Dr. Lundin, I think I remember ever story you ever told. Thank you for making me love Emily Dickinson and Dostoyevsky, for introducing me to Milosz, and teaching me that literature and faith were inseparable. But mostly, thank you for teaching me not to apologize for who I am, and for making me believe that there were men in the world who could be trusted and that marriages really could be beautiful, equal partnerships.

****

I confess that I don’t want to die and I think it’s brutally unfair that these men died last week. I am one of hundreds, of thousands, of students whose lives were shaped by these men and in a small way, it comforts me to know that I am just one of many who care deeply that these men lived and mourn deeply that they’re gone.

There is nothing I can say to make this sting less. All I’m left with is, “Thank you.” Thank you for sharing yourselves with me, and with so many others. Thank you for showing me how to live a life that matters. Thank you for being exquisite examples of lives well-lived.

The following is a poem that Dr. Foster wrote as he neared the end of his life. I want to finish with just this, Dr. Foster, you did give the sickness and the shivering meaning. And you and Dr. Lundin both showed us all how to go out singing. I’m deeply saddened that you’re gone, but I am profoundly grateful for the lives you lived.

Isaiah 43

I am making all things new! Or am trying to,
being so surprised to be one of those guys
who may be dying early. This is yet one more
earthen declaration, uttered through a better
prophet’s more durable mouth, with heart
astir. It’s not oath-taking that I’m concerned
with here, for what that’s worth— instead just a cry
from the very blood, a good, sound imprecation
to give the sickness and the shivering meaning.
Former things have not been forgotten,
but they have forgotten me. The dear, the sweet,
the blessed past, writes Bassani. Tongue is the pen.
Donning some blanket of decorousness
is not the prophet’s profession, not ever.
Not that I’ve tasted the prophet’s honey or fire:
I’m just a shocked, confounded fellow
who’s standing here, pumping the bellows
of his mellifluous sorrow. Yet sorrow’s the thing
for all prophets. Make a way in the wilderness,
streaming your home-studio-made recordings
from a personal wasteland. These are my thoughts.
I can’t manage the serious beard. My sackcloth
is the flannel shirt I’m wearing. But the short-circuited
months have whitened my hair, and it’s not
for nothing that Jeffrey calls me, with affectionate
mockery, the silver fox. It’s a prerequisite, finally—
being a marginal prophet, but a severe attention
to envisioned tomorrows must be present, too,
must be perceived as possible, audible, or followable.
There’s a hypothetically bright future for everything,
each wounded creature that is bitten, or bites.
And speaking of things overheard, you heard right:
if I have to go out, I am going to go out singing.

What’s Saving My Life Right Now: Update

Back in February I wrote a post called “What’s Saving My Life Right Now.” This question comes from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Leaving Church. Taylor tells the story of a time when she was asked to speak on this topic. At first it seemed like an unusual thing for a priest-turned-professor to speak about, but as she composed her speech, she realized it was powerful to reflect on the graces of a particular season. She made a note to ask herself this question from time to time.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the things in my life that are hard: missing Korea, experiencing constant rejection on the job front, continuing to struggle with a chronic ear infection I’ve had since July, having to pack up and move (again!) in a few weeks, the return of my panic attacks, and now this huge natural disaster in my new city.

I would be quick to extend compassion and grace to anyone else in this situation, but I find that It’s difficult for me to give myself that same measure of grace. I feel that it is not OK that I haven’t figured out a stable job situation, that I can’t get over this ear infection (which is costing a small fortune in doctor’s bills), that some days I am utterly overwhelmed by daily life when I am so very fortunate compared to many. Life is short and precious and I don’t want to spend mine feeling overwhelmed and hopeless when there is so much beauty I could be enjoying. There is a disconnect between the life I want to lead and the life I find myself living.

I wrote recently about my experience with the Lord’s Prayer — about asking for daily bread and receiving manna just for one day. Two days ago, manna came in the form of a letter from a reader named Steph who just moved to the middle-of-nowhere Texas after several years in South Africa. In so many ways, we are leading parallel lives. Like me, she moved to the US for her husband to go to graduate school. Like me, she is having trouble acclimating. Like me, she is unsuccessfully looking for a job that won’t kill her soul. Basically, we’re the same person. But in her letter she reminded me of the value of focusing on the things she loves about where she is and what she’s doing. She reminded me of some of the things that I love about being back in America. Her letter inspired me to do an update on what’s saving my life right now.

Here’s my list. Leave me a comment about what’s saving your life right now. I’m a collector of ordinary grace.

The library. The public library system in Columbia rocks my socks. It’s similar to Raleigh’s library system in which there are many smaller branches scattered around the county, but the full collection is extensive. You can easily request any book you are interested in and have it delivered to your closest branch so you don’t have to drive all over town to get a particular book. There is also an extensive collection of audiobooks (which I love listening to when I’m spending time in the car running errands) and dvds (including full seasons of TV shows). And it is all free!!!!
Via Hodderscape.co.uk
My bathtub. After two years of showering in a wet room where my shower head was connected to my sink, I am grateful for both a separate shower with a curtain and especially for a tub where I can sit with a book and relax.
Fall candles. In the last year or so I’ve really gotten into scents, both in terms of perfumes and house scents. In my opinion, fall candles are the best of all the candles. My favorites right now are Leaves, Pumpkin Pie, and Marshmallow Fireside from Bath and Body Works and my Tobacco Vanilla one from Paddywax.
My cats. I’d forgotten how much joy those little jerks bring to my life. Even when their demands for attention disrupt my day, I can’t help loving those warm little bodies curled up against me and t their ability to make a game out of anything, like systematically pushing things off the counter or stealing twist ties from the kitchen and later drowning them in their water bowl so they are good and dead.
If you try to take this twist tie, I will murder you in your sleep.
Friends. Being in Columbia has allowed us to see many of our friends more often than we did in Korea, but even more often than we did before in America. We’ve seen our good friends in Charlotte three times in the two months we’ve been here. I’ve seen all of my college roommates twice, my best friend from childhood once, and I’ll see another of my best friends from home this coming weekend. I’ve also started to make new friends in Columbia through my friend Lorien’s Bible study, through the church we’ve been attending, and through Jonathan’s program. These friendships are gifts and they make life brighter.

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Everyone should have friends to go to IKEA with.

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: For Antidepressants, and for Quitting Them

Are you as excited as I am for another Thankful Thursday? These posts always touch and inspire me and I love being able to share them with you. Today’s post is especially close to my heart because today’s writer is close to my heart. Laura and her husband Josh have been our closest friends during our two years in Korea. We had the great privilege of walking with them through Laura’s entire pregnancy, the birth of their first child, and the next year of transition into parenthood. This story touched me because I was around to witness a lot of it, but also because I too have struggled with anxiety and depression and while I’ve never experienced the hormonal havoc of childbirth, I know what it is to have your mind and body betray you in frightening ways. I’m so thankful for Laura and her family and also for God’s work in her life through a very difficult and scary time.

For Antidepressants, and for Quitting Them

It was just shy of a year ago, as the clock struck one on a humid August night in Korea, that I birthed our beautiful daughter. My mom stood at one shoulder and my husband at the other and the doctor and nurses at my feet, all urging me to push as hard as I could after 24 hours of back labor had left me exhausted and whimpering.

Laura with one month old Genevieve

Then she was here, and she was perfect. I spent the next two weeks in a tired-but-wired state of attentiveness, Mom still on one side and Josh on the other, tirelessly supporting me in those early days of nursing and changing and cuddling and kissing this miracle, as I struggled to sleep when she slept and only managed about three hours out of every 24. Other than this, I felt like everything was going really well.

Until one morning a cloud descended. The adrenaline had run out, it seemed, and the rest of my hormones were going haywire in its absence. A few extra hours of blessed sleep did finally come, but it wasn’t enough. Something was wrong and it wasn’t just exhaustion. I had postpartum depression.

Except for how suddenly I crashed, it really wasn’t much of a shock. Throughout my teens and early 20s, I lived with low-grade anxiety, a constant tension in my tummy that I didn’t realize wasn’t normal till my chill-as-one-can-be husband came along and showed me how to relax. Then we moved to Korea to teach English, and the stress of doing a new job in a new country—and trying to do it perfectly—brought that anxiety back with a vengeance. This time depression came with it.

I limped through that year with copious amounts of pizza and beer and ice cream and TV (I know, I know), as well as a lot of prayer and care from Josh and friends and family. I did learn how to be a more effective EFL teacher and how to stop trying to be a perfect one, so things got better. But the lingering fatigue left me aching to go back home to Kansas, and we did, and it was good.

Fast forward three years to the August of our daughter’s birth, and we’d been back in Korea for almost a year. This time only Josh was teaching, and I was finishing up a low-stress pregnancy as a stay-at-home-mom-to-be, in a culture and with friends I was able to fully enjoy this time around. Some nausea and heartburn notwithstanding, I felt really good and right on track for an all-natural, “ideal” delivery and postpartum experience.

Maybe it was the intense back labor that kicked my body into high gear and kept it that way for those first two weeks postpartum until I crashed. Maybe I just didn’t prioritize sleep enough in those early days. Maybe I didn’t procure exactly the right nutrients to replenish my body and help my hormones rebalance themselves. Maybe I wasn’t getting enough sunshine and fresh air in our cave-like studio apartment at the end of a hot and rainy Korean summer. Maybe I was under spiritual attack in which evil voices whispered to me to toss my baby out our third-floor window so it would all just be over. Maybe it was some of all of these, or maybe I’m just wired for anxiety and depression, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent my curling into a ball day and night, my only real activities to nurse lying on my side and to choke down as much food as I could stand while my mom, husband and dad (who had since joined us) did all the diaper-changing, shopping, cooking, cleaning and loving on me and our sweet Genevieve.

Whatever the reason, it became obvious after two more weeks that fighting the PPD with food and sunshine and prayer just wasn’t cutting it (and the Lord knows we really tried). So on a rainy Wednesday morning my support group packed up me and our 4-week-old, and we all got on the bus to a mental hospital to ask for some antidepressants.

From here on out it is clear that I’m one of the lucky ones. Within days of starting a low dose of an SSRI that (please God, let it be true) seems to have done no harm to my nursling or me, my depression had eased and I was beginning to see the light. When Josh had to go back to work and my mom had extended her stay as long as she possibly could, my mother-in-law flew the thousands of miles to help us through the next few weeks, by the end of which even the anxiety had lifted and I was feeling downright happy. Our family of three started finding a “new normal” that involved leaving the house regularly, nursing in public on occasion and handling with relative serenity the caring, if nosy, advice of all the Korean grandmothers who treated us as their own.

The little white pills had pretty single-handedly brought me back to our world. So it was with intense gratitude (though certainly not always a perfect attitude) that I soaked up the next six months of motherhood while faithfully taking my meds each morning. And then spring came, and it was with cautious hope that I wondered if I might be able to wean myself off of them.

See, in addition to being a secretly anxious person most of my life, I have also been a not-so-secretly sensitive gal emotionally. I cry pretty dang easily, and while this is not always fun for those closest to me, my sensitivity and its related empathy feel like an important part of who I am.

But once on the antidepressant, I got to where I wasn’t crying ever, at all. And while no one else was complaining for sure, I missed being able to tear up during a touching movie scene or even break down a bit when something felt wrong in my world. So with the continued support of Josh and our loved ones both near and far, I decided to start cutting my dosage and see what happened.

Three months and just a few headaches and anxiety spells later, I am “drug free” and again one of the fortunate ones. It seems that my body just needed more time for the nutrition, sleep, sunshine, exercise, laughter, love and who-knows-what-else to help my hormones get back as they were meant to be, at least for now.

As an idealist, I wanted so badly to use only these “all-natural” gifts from God to bring about my healing (or even prevent illness in the first place), and it is possible I just didn’t figure out or follow through early enough with what could have allowed me to avoid the side effects and risks of manmade meds full of synthetic chemicals. But depression wasn’t waiting for me to fix things naturally, and I see the drugs as a stopgap measure, a less-than-sterile piece of cloth used as a tourniquet because you’d bleed to death waiting for a clean one to get on the scene.

I also see the hand of God behind this less-than-ideal means of grace. Even as I celebrate the fact that I don’t seem to need antidepressants anymore, I firmly believe that our Lord, who works in all the things of this broken world for good, can use even imperfect little white pills to fight the darkness and bring light.

And for that I am so very thankful.

Laura Rhoades is wife to Josh, mom to Genevieve and photographer to women. Before moving back home in August to her hometown of Wichita, Kansas, she’ll be spending her final weeks in Korea singing karaoke, soaking and scrubbing at the sauna and scarfing down as much mul naengmyeon and bingsu as possible. You can find her online at www.laurarhoades.com.

Thankful Thursdays, Special Edition: My 200th Blog Post

Today is a special day. Not only is Thankful Thursday, but this is the 200th post I’ve published on this blog. That’s a lot of words, friends.

I’ve had this little space for more than four years, but I’ve only become serious and about blogging and more focused in my topics for the past 18 months. I’ve thought several times about going back and taking down some of my oldest posts, which feel so different from what I write now, but I can never bring myself to do it. Because I’m thankful for where I’ve been and I’m thankful for where I am now.

Blogging has opened doors for me – not in the big, exciting money-making kind of way, but in terms of relationships. I’ve made friends in the past few years, genuine friends-of-the-heart, whom I never would have met if it weren’t for our blogs. Working out my feelings and my faith in this space has given me the courage to grow and to change, to have hard and necessary conversations and to become more of the person I’m meant to be.

I am so deeply thankful to all of you who read what I write here and take the time to interact, to be a part of my life. Your encouragement, advice, compassion, and kindness are inspiring to me. Whether you are someone who has been here for a while or someone who is visiting for the first time, please know how genuinely grateful I am for you.

In the spirit of thankfulness, I wanted to share two of my favorite pieces on gratitude from some far better writers than I. The first is a poem by the great e.e. cummings and the second is a passage from a book of essays by Andre Dubus that I share here every year on Thanksgiving.

I Thank You God for Most This Amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e. e. cummings

This passage comes from Andre Dubus’ essay “A Country Road Song.” At the age of 49, Dubus suffered a devastating injury when he stopped on the side of the road to assist with a fatal automobile accident. While pulling the survivor out of the wreckage, he was hit by another car. He was injured so badly that he eventually lost one of his legs and was paralyzed in the other. This essay is about his memories of running. If you have a chance, you should read the entire essay because it is so much better than just this excerpt.

“When I ran, when I walked, there was no time: there was only my body, my breath, the trees and hills and sky…I always felt grateful, but I did not know it was gratitude and so I never thanked God. Eight years ago, on a starlight night in July, a car hit me…and in September a surgeon cut off my left leg… It is now time to sing of my gratitude: for legs and hills and trees and seasons…I mourn this, and I sing in gratitude for loving this, and in gratitude for all the roads I ran on and walked on, for the hills I climbed and descended, for trees and grass and sky, and for being spared losing running and walking sooner than I did: ten years sooner, or eight seasons, or three; or one day.”

I hope today you are reminded of some simple graces in your life as I have been reminded of how undeservedly blessed I am to have this space to share with all of you.

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: When Losing Is Gaining

Today’s guest post comes from my friend, Sara. Sara and I went to high school together, but we didn’t really become friends until this past year when we reconnected through Facebook and blogging. I am constantly inspired by Sara’s outlook on her life, by the way she clings to faith in difficult times, and by her willingness and desire to do whatever God asks of her. She has such a beautiful, tender heart. I got chills reading this piece which brought me into her experience of living with a “disability” and reminded me of the God who is in the business of redeeming our brokenness.

When Losing Is Gaining

I remember.

I remember the day I woke up and felt like my only hearing ear was stuffed with paper, or cotton, or wax. I remember the dizziness I felt as I tried to get out of bed that morning, unaware that my life would change forever as I lurched forward to vomit. Confused. Dizzy. Vertigo.

I remember.

I remember how it felt as people’s voices grew fainter and fainter and I grew angrier and angrier, placing blame at the people around me for my not being able to hear them. It was their responsibility to enunciate their words. It was their responsibility to stop mumbling. It was them and it was not me.

I remember. I remember the look my doctor gave my mother and the tears in my mom’s eyes. The emergency overnight flight to Memphis and the 3 day hospital stay. I remember doctors talking all around me, tests being run every moment, people frantically trying to figure out what was going on and I was unaware. Unaware. They were unheard.

She’s deaf. In her only hearing ear. Meniere’s Disease. Steroids. Diuretics. Exercise. Dizziness. Weakness. Sun that hurt. Feeling faint. So tired. More steroids.

I remember. I remember looking at my mom as tears rolled down my face and I handed her the dry-erase white board I now used for communication scribbled with “Will this ever go away?” We cried.

I remember the man who came to visit me who sat down in front of me and anointed me with oil. He prayed over me and though I couldn’t understand a word that came from his mouth, I remember. And smile.

I remember my friends forming a fortress around me, getting out their cell phones and texting me so we could have conversations in the car… Conversations in the dark that anyone else could have heard, but me. We formed a clan that summer, a tight-knit group there to support one another, and those bonds – they have never gone away.

I also remember seeing sign language for the first time and smiling as I thought “Wow, my life could really change if I knew that!” I remember learning and practicing so that one day I could communicate without reading lips or using my white dry-erase board.

I remember the tender moments with Mom as she spurred me on to keep exercising. “Sara, I know you feel weak and dizzy, but you’ve got to keep on.” I remember with thankfulness.

I remember my first hearing aid. I put it on and heard them for the first time in two years. Birds chirping. As birds chirped, my heart flooded with thankfulness. I’ll never forget it.

Going deaf was the best thing that has ever happened to me. Even now, I open my eyes every morning and put my hearing aid on and listen. With my level of constant fluctuating hearing loss, some days I listen to the birds outside my window and can actually hear them. Other times, I can hear them only if I close my eyes tight enough and imagine. With a smile I feel my puppy’s steady breaths beside me and imagine what they sound like.

I go to “Silent Dinners” that are literally just that, where instead of hearing with my ears, I hear with my eyes. It’s miraculous. I meet, talk, and bond with people I never would have known before. I feel thankful.

I feel thankful when I chat with someone I know and they smile- through silent conversation. I feel thankful when I go to church and have the privilege to lead worship to deaf brothers and sisters in Christ who have become so close to my heart. Because they are my people. They are my people and their God is my God.

I remember with thankfulness those 12 years ago when I was so sick and lost most of my hearing, then regained some. I remember with thankfulness, because that’s made me who I am today. Would I be where I am and communicate with those I do if that hadn’t happened? Would I see the deaf community as my own and be in their family?

Even today, when I sit with hearing people at the dinner table and I get lost in their conversations, not knowing who’s talking about what or when. When my hearing loss threatens to isolate me from those I love most and I feel most alone. When I feel that I cannot connect with anyone. When fear grips me during a job interview when I realize a major part of the job is talking on the phone… I’m still thankful. I’m thankful because I get a just little glimpse in my adult life what people in the Deaf community have experienced their entire lives. I get that little glimpse and because of that, God has enabled me to minister, to develop the dearest friendships, and to love to the fullest.

I wouldn’t trade it. Not for the world.

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Author Bio: Since moving from her home in Louisiana, Sara has found herself living life in the mountains of east Tennessee with her puppy, Watson. When she’s not saving kittens from trees and puppies from rooftops, she’s reading about spirituality, love, and life and writing about life in her blog at scarmichaelblog.worpress.com.

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: The Problem of Good Things

Today’s Thankful Thursdays guest post comes from my friend, Meredith. Meredith is one of the people who most motivates me to keep on writing, who makes me believe that we’re doing something worthwhile here. I’ve had Meredith share here before about her experiences with purity culture, sex, and marriage and I’ve been able to guest post for her as well. It’s always an honor for me to share her words. As someone who also struggles with depression and anxiety myself, I loved this beautiful piece that looks with both honesty and hope about the power of gratitude and joy, even when it does not come easily.

Flickr Creative Commons: John Lodder

The Problem of Good Things

The spring caught me off guard again with its explosions of pink and boughs hung low with purple blossoms. I never remember the way sidewalks can smell like walking through a bath and body works (with the exception of those flowering trees that smell like dead fish, those are the worst).

In a new house, you never quite know what potential flora hibernates in your lawn until the spring comes. The scrappy lawn of our rental house surprised me with lilac bushes in front, a few burnt out tulips struggling through weeds at the side of the house, and even some grape hyacinths like the ones next to the raspberry bushes at my childhood home.

Best of all, a patch of violets grew in our backyard, a wild and wonderful spray of purple flowers large enough to lie in. I imagined a quintessentially hipster moment where I would retire to the violet patch wearing a linen dress with my hair wrapped in a braid around my head. Drew could bring me lemonade with a sprig of lavender and a striped paper straw bobbing in the ice.

The violets reminded me of carefree days when yard boundaries weren’t prohibitive, and I came home with grass stains on the knees of jeans and the circle marks of dandelion stems speckling my shirt. Violets made wonderful flower crowns and handfuls could easily form bouquets to hand to mothers or neighbor ladies.

But busyness set in, and every day I’d walk past the violets with a growing sense of anxiety. I feared the lawn mowers of the landscapers, the heat of the sun, and anything else that would take away the violet patch. I stopped enjoying the flowers and started fretting for them. The lilacs in the front bloomed for only a day or two, then stood with bare branches with only a few leftover buds hinting at their former glory.

I developed a sense of cynicism toward the Magnolia and the dogwood trees; I wondered at the worth of planting such things of beauty in your lawn to flower for a week out of the year or less.

Flickr Creative Commons: Kikasz

Each day when I came home, I checked the patch of violets, daring them to last another day. No sooner would a bloom appear than I’d be predicting its death, cursing the way good things slipped through my fingers and dropped their blossoms before I had a chance to enjoy them.

I frame many good things in my life this way; I immediately wonder when and how they will disappear. I do this with the love in my marriage, my parents health, and even the small blessings of the day to day.

Living with depression, sometimes there are days of amazing clarity where I feel awake and able. But soon enough, the sun sets, and the spell is broken. With enough of these days of jubilee under my belt, I rarely enjoy them anymore. Their goodness taunts me, and reminds me to fret for a tomorrow when the weight of the world will come back.

Opening myself to joy is risky like placing a big target sign on my back, hit me with your best shot; I’m happy, I’m relaxed, I’m confident, the flowers are blooming. I imagine a set of universal scales that must balance out eventually. If the universe heaps a job promotion and remission for mom’s cancer on the good side, I’m sure the article I submitted will not be published and there will be little chance of my improv show going well.

In her book Daring Greatly, Brene Brown calls this superstitious way of thinking “foreboding joy.” Its the sense that joy is rigged, that something’s gotta give. But shutting out the good based on its predicted transience means not enjoying the wild patch of violets, means leaving the walls of our rental bare, and missing connections with people who pass through my life for an instant.

I don’t want to live this way.

So how do I respond, when joy comes for a minute, for a week, not even long enough to take a picture?

Brene Brown says this, “…the shudder of vulnerability that accompanies joy is an invitation to practice gratitude, to acknowledge how truly grateful we are for the person, the beauty, the connection, or simply the moment before us.”

I am on a mission to bless the temporary, to baptize the instant with significance. I want to seek the Lord where he may be found and dance in the yard while the violets still bloom. I want to plant gardens of risk though I am an exile in this place and to seek out the Joshua Trees, waiting expectantly for their time to blossom.

Flickr Creative Commons: Christopher Michel

And even when the blossoms fall into carpets of petals, I long to wait with open hands for the beauty of the other seasons, stark cardinals on snowy backgrounds and trees catching fire in the autumn.

Perhaps the transience of the violets makes them even more beautiful. I thought I had learned long ago that I cannot subsist only on a diet of sweet things, but today I am learning again to take on a posture of gratefulness instead of trying to hold the flowers too tightly, crushing them in my clenched fists.

Meredith Bazzoli is a comedian and writer living just outside Chicago. She spends her days as an instructional assistant on the west side of Chicago and her nights practicing and performing improv. She loves hosting and DIY projects and her tall, dark, and handsome husband Drew. Meredith loves hearing and recording other’s stories, finding glimmers in the mundane, and seeking what it means to love and follow Christ in the everyday. You can find her online at Veryrevealing.com or follow her on Twitter @MeredithBazzoli

Thankful Thursdays Guest Post: Old Friends are the Best Friends

I’m excited to share today’s guest post from fellow writer Cara Meredith. Cara and I “met” (online) because we run in some of the same circles, blog-wise. I’ve been enjoying her blog, Be, Mama. Be. for quite a while now and was honored to do a guest post for her last month. Whenever I read Cara’s writing I just want to sit down with her, some big cups of coffee and a cozy couch and talk about all the things. I think you’ll see what I mean.

Old Friends are the Best Friends

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Old Friends are the Best Friends.

Now I’m not knocking those who’ve only been in my life for a year or two, but to me, there’s something powerful about being around people who stake double-digit claim to how long they’ve known you. Suddenly, that which unites current, everyday friends – children who are similar in age or religious beliefs and practices or the city we dwell in – doesn’t seem to hold so much weight.

The irony is that when Old Friends step into the picture again, we can seem to hold little in common: staunch Republican, left-wing Democrat; traditional evangelical Christian, meditative Buddhist yogi; married with four children, single and still ready to mingle. If you’d asked me ten years ago if I thought I could stay in relationship with those who hadn’t moved and grown along with me (and like me, I might add), I’d have likely mumbled a pithy reply. I’d have shaken my head in solemn understanding of the sadness of my own plight. I’d have said my good-byes, at least in my mind, no sooner than burning old letters and dreaming of Friendship’s Funeral.

We share great memories, I would have said to you, but memories can’t sustain a friendship in the present.

Or can it?

I’m beginning to realize I was wrong.

Maybe wisdom is starting to grab hold of me. Maybe I’m learning that life isn’t as narrow and compartmentalized as I make it out to be, at least when I’m hurting and sad and missing the people who make me whole. And maybe I’m also realizing that life is merely and solely and wholly made up of relationships. Life is made up of people, of lovely, messy humans who are mine – and who, the grand scheme of This One Beautiful and Precious Life matter to me.

To say that I’m thankful for Old Friends is an understatement. Because gratitude burgeons deep in my insides when their faces come to mind, while affection for the stories we share mercilessly stirs the waters of my soul.

Because the books I own, they don’t matter. The writing I do, it too doesn’t matter. The house we love, the television we watch, the baseball games we attend – don’t matter, don’t matter, don’t matter.

But the people – oh, the people, they do matter.

For me, I’m beginning to sprinkle a bit more grace into my relationships. My standard for friendship used to be high, even though I wouldn’t have classified it as such – but for me, you were a good friend, we were good friends if you pursued me and sought after me, if you showed me you wanted to be my friend. And maybe that’s why if and when someone – an Old Friend of sorts – didn’t live up to my standards, like the cardboard I stockpile in our recycle bin, I discarded them easily, carelessly, breezily.

But now I want my cardboard back.

I want and I yearn and I salivate for those Old Friends, for the ones I don’t have to explain myself to, for she who loves me despite my flaky nature. I want to be around those people – who are, by all accounts My People – even if we don’t dress the same way or eat the same way or worship the same way anymore. Because there is tenderheartedness toward each other in the stories we’ve shared, as we remember and retell and revisit our histories.

After all, we share us. We share the memories that made us and shaped us and defined us, the adventures we took together when we didn’t have more than $74 to our name, when we thought backpacking was the greatest invention since sliced bread. We share stories of Europe and Costa Rica, of Santa Cruz and Portland and Seattle, of campfires and barbeques, sleepovers and road trips. We share the growing up we did together, as teenagers and as young adults, and we share the common experience of learning how to be our most raw and real selves, the Real Me hidden inside all along.

Because here’s the truth: joy and gratitude can mingle anywhere. Maybe it’s the optimist in me, but I believe they’re there, waiting for our cue to start the dance party, ready for our eyes to open to what’s already there. For me, this mingling happened with old friends on Friday night, over wild boar and cheddar sausages and chunky summer salad and coffee mugs filled with chilled Chardonnay. We gathered to visit with our old roommate and friend who’d flown across the Pacific to say hello, but it ended up being so much more than a backyard barbeque.

It ended up being a reunion of Old Friends.

And Old Friends, as you well know by now, are the best friends.

About Cara:

Cara Meredith is a writer, speaker and musician from the greater San Francisco bay area. She is passionate about theology and books, her family, meals around the table, and finding Beauty in the most unlikely of places. A seven on the Enneagram, she also can’t help but try to laugh and smile at the ordinary everyday. You can find her on her blog, Facebook and Twitter.

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Lily Ellyn

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.