"When we look back and say, 'those were halcyon days,
we're talking 'bout Jubilee..."
--mary-chapin carpenter
As my birthday approaches tomorrow, June 22, people who know have asked me what age I will be turning. When I say "49," they say, "Oh, so next year is the big 5-0, eh?" and chuckle. Which confirmed my idea that 49 is kind of a boring number. It's an almost-number. I'm almost-50. I "will be" 50. It's the end of my 40s and the anticipation of a new decade. No big deal. You don't tend to get surprise parties or an open house for 49, though I'm not big on parties.
And yet my 49th birthday seems like a beginning of good things. For the last 6 months, strangely enough, I've felt a sense of anticipation, a mysterious stirring. It's one of those sensations that is hard to put into words, but I've been in the midst of a lot of learning. My 49th year was a very mixed bag. The first half of it was very dark and difficult. I learned things, however, that one can only learn by getting through and looking back. At the time, I was sure I was learning nothing, that God had somehow lost my address, and the lights went out and I didn't know which direction I faced. And then things changed. Quietly, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first. Like a little spark in the midst of a deep darkness that goes unnoticed until it catches flame and slowly grows. Or a hint of sunrise at the very edge of the horizon, making the landscape glow in a deep orange, slowly rising, spreading, warming the earth in slow birth. Little things happened. A change here. An email. A new friend on Facebook. A conversation started, seemingly inocuous, but then deepening rapidly; a wave snatching me by the ankles, pulling me down and into the depths of the waters to swim in the cold, crisp, salty sea. Everything begins to look differently.
I learned a lot this past year. I learned that everything is not completely as it seems. That you can't always trust your first perception, and that you need to pay attention to what you're thinking. I need to pay attention to my attitude; do I think all is lost, or that I've got that person all figured out? Do I feel like God truly doesn't care or that I don't deserve goodness in my life? Then all that I see and experience will be colored by those thoughts and my premonitions will come true. I've learned that sometimes you have to hunker down and lean into the wind. Keep walking. "Don't ever, ever, ever, ever ever... ever give up," as Winston Churchill is believed to have said. Keep moving forward, trusting in the next step, trusting that there is relief and warmth and peace, even love ahead.
I've learned how important it truly is to take one day at a time. Today, just for today, I can get through most anything. I don't have to look ahead at the whole week, the whole month, the whole year and despair. Take this day, this moment, and breathe. Open your eyes and look for the beauty. There is always beauty.
The other day I was visiting a patient in the nursing home who is nearly incommunicable. She's around 100 years old, so who can blame her for being worn out? Her pastor came at the same time that I was there, and he talked with her, held her hand, as if she was in the conversation. He prepared communion for her, and invited me to partake. In the awkwardness of a tiny nursing home room, he knelt on the hard floor and lined up the plastic "shot glasses" of grape juice on the floor. He soaked a wafer in the grape juice and held it to her lips. Without opening her eyes, she instinctfully-- like a newborn baby at her mother's breast-- started sucking on the wafer. He dipped it again and held it to her lips. It was a tender, intimate moment, and I might have been holding my breath, as he so patiently kept dipping the wafer in the tiny cup and letting her suck. Finally, the wafer was soft enough that he gently pushed it between her lips and she moved her mouth and tongue around to further dissolve it and receive it into her body.
"'This is my body,' Jesus said," the pastor whispered. It was a moment that you wonder if you ought to look away from because of the vulnerability and raw tenderness of it all. Then he gently turned to each of us, still on his 60-some-year-old knees on the hard floor, and offered us the wafer, 'the body of Christ,' and the juice in a tiny cup, 'the blood of Christ...' Amen. I was in awe of his ability to reach her, love her, and touch her with the sacrament as if she were fully functional, and in that moment she was-- able to receive the gift, able to partake of Christian community. That is something they don't teach in seminary; rather, it comes from the soul. It was the first time I had had communion in a very long time, and how fitting that it ought to be in such a humble, intimate setting.
You've come a long way, baby, I imagined God saying with a wink. I think God talks like that sometimes. I think he gets tired of people accusing him of being so stuffy and formal. After all, we are his children-- needing of sustenance, food, comfort, peace, inspiration, encouragement, and that most basic need-- basic, freely-given, gracious Love.
I've learned this year that life is not "all or nothing." That's a biggie for me. My husband Larry lovingly believes that Billy Joel wrote "Darlin', I don't know why I go to extremes!" for me personally. I have been the All or Nothing Queen. But no one is all good or all bad. Some friends are closer than others, and no one person can fulfill all your needs. Gathering Hurts is not a helpful hobby. There is a lot of pain in this life, and I have finally given up on trying to explain why. I do not believe that God gives us pain-- why would a loving parent DO that? Pain happens. It's the world we live in. I'm ok, now, with not having all the answers, because no answers I come up with can fix everything anyway. When a two-legged tornado wipes out half a town in my favorite state, there are no words that can explain that can bring back those who died or make it all less horrifyingly sad. But in the midst of that destruction, God comes. It doesn't matter why these things happen, the fact is, they do. And in the rubble, loving people gather; send food, help the victims sort through the damage, collect clothes and food and water, give shelter, and help carry those people back to Life again. And God is in the midst of all of that. There is life after death, and new beginnings after devastation, and believing that will help us breathe. There's no use, I've learned, in thinking 'what would I do?' and then worrying my pretty little head about it. It may never happen to me. Other things do happen, and when they do, you just keep getting up in the morning, ask for help from the heavens and from your neighbors, and trust that one day you'll breathe normally again. I've had things happen in my life that I was sure I could never live through, and yet here I am. Still walking, talking, breathing and loving. The last one is the biggest miracle.
I've also learned that there is no one way to live this life. That one was a biggie! You have a sense of how things ought to go. You give birth, you raise your child, they do child-y things, they grow up, graduate, go to college, are successful in life, get married and give you adorable grandchildren. But it doesn't always go so neatly, and doesn't always cover all those bases. They zig and zag through life, like I did. There's no one straight path. Sometimes to find our way, we have to take a lot of turns, U-turns, "re-calculating!" as Mrs. Garmin tells me all the time, re-group, look at a different map. I see that children aren't always born healthy or they bring something that wasn't anticipated in the neat plan. Then I see the unique gifts those detours, or alternate routes bring to lives, including my own.
This moment is important. Right now. I'm learning to see the simple goodness of each moment. A look across the room during a boring meeting. A smile. A particularly fat squirrel outside that my cats are eyeing with drool coming out of their tiny little mouths. A bird with colors and patterns on it that I'd never seen before flying across my vision. Even a person I thought I had all figured out, doing something or saying something that I never dreamed they could or would and I suddenly feel grace toward someone I didn't particularly like. Life is never what it seems in any given moment, but it's like a toddler always resisting your grasp, your summation, and therefore your staleness-- inviting you to come and play.
And so, I begin my Jubilee year with eyes wide open, and most importantly, my heart wide open. I want to learn all that I can learn, feel everything I'm supposed to feel even if it hurts, and write, write, write, because that's one thing I've always known about myself for sure. The only thing, it turns out. I am a writer. I will write. And I will let life happen in me, through me, and to me. And in the midst of it all, I will savor the sweetness of it, like grape juice on a styrofoam wafer, sucking on it till I get all the sweetness out of it that I can, and then let that goodness grow in me.
Peace, my friends. Have wings!
