Like a Rainbow

Whoa, I found another page in my notes section dated August 22, 2010. I can't publicize everything but what I can share is this quote from Nelle Morton:

"There is an awful abyss that occurs after the shattering and before a new reality appears."

I love how I wrote this quote underneath my lament about the state of my life. I'm not exactly sure what my abyss looked like but I have a hunch that while I was floating around in the darkness, I had dreads, I smelled like patchouli and had bits of kale and sunflower seeds stuck between my teeth.

I'm thankful that my abyss didn't last very long and I appreciate the fact that my friends didn't ditch me for someone who smelled less like dead grass and more like humanity, but I do acknowledge that my darkness provided me with the gift of transformation; I came out the other side just like, way better of a person.

I remember phoning Jane up and I'd be messy-crying, sobbing and gasping, "JANE! I just want to feel NORMAL AGAIN!" and she would tell me, "Suzy... you won't ever feel the way you did before. You're inventing a new normal, now."

A new normal. A new reality. First a shattering, then an abyss, and then a new reality will appear, I promise. The darkness will feel all-consuming, but it's where the transformation happens. And I'm not leaving, either, even if you smell.

Extraction

I often wonder why we are born with things like an appendix, wisdom teeth, foreskin, moles and gallbladders if all that ends up happening is that we get 'em yanked, snipped, and cut out.

Or maybe these lovely little items are indeed planted in our vessels for a purpose of some sort, to serve a greater good?

I have my wisdom teeth, but holy sweet mother of Farley, they're huuuuuge. If God wanted me to masticate spinach and alfalfa all bloody day long, he certainly gave me the tools. It takes me forty-five minutes to brush those beasts. My parents, because they care about whether or not I would fit into society, footed my orthodontic bill when I was a tween because a) I looked like Nancy Kerrigan that got the baseball bat in the face, not the shins and b) I realllllly wanted braces, or so I thought. I had braces for a solid 800 years. At one point I had my 12 year-old molars removed to make room for my wisdom teeth. Lucky me. I swear my wisdom teeth each have 7 corners.

We are all born with (or develop very early on) stuff that seemingly has no purpose. Maybe we have a gargantuan amount of pride, or obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Or maybe we are overly sensitive, crumpling under the smallest pressures. What are we supposed to do with these characteristics? Do we always have to yank them?

I'd like to think not, but maybe that's just the hippie in me. I think pride creates hard workers. I think obsessive-compulsive tendencies give birth to people who are goal-orientated and driven. And I think we need overly sensitive people to balance out the asshole factors of the prideful and obsessive-compulsive people.

What do we end up with? Balance. Our lives become surrounded with people of all types, from all walks of life, each giving a piece of themselves for the sake of life and love. Some of us are gay, some of us have our gallbladders. Some of us are vegans who cradle the wounded (vagans always cradle the wounded!) and some of us are meat-eating conquerors, but we all deserve to wear our crowns. There is no need to take them away, if we can use our teeth for wisdom.

Rediscovery

Here is another list in my iPhones notes section written on March 21, 2011 (two years ago!)

Cat food

Paint and brush

Detergent

Dish soap

Waffles

Re-fried beans

Bonecracker

Kickstart my heart

You don't always get what you want, but grace grows in the cracks. 

Retics 307

I always make lists of things I need to get from the store, but the 6 items on this particular list are incredibly random, and this pleases me. Re-fried beans please me. And then I guess "Bonecracker" and "Kickstart My Heart" are songs that I wanted to add to my running playlist (and never did, which needs to be rectified immediately).

"Retics" is short for reticulocytes, which are baby red blood cells. Freddy has a blood disorder and we keep track of his numbers. His body needs to make way more red blood cells than the rest of us because his spleen destroys them at a rapid rate, which in turn affects his hemoglobin levels.

But my favourite part of this section of notes is the quote from who-knows-where (I think it came from my dad, actually): "You don't always get what you want, but grace grows in the cracks." What a timeless truth. Maybe it's under the re-fried beans, but grace is there, waiting to be rediscovered.

Vomitrocity

Jake is a barfer. Freddy's only thrown up once, and it was the most low-maintenance puke ever: a pile of unchewed Kraft Dinner beside his bed on the little area rug. All I had to do was roll it up and toss it over the balcony into the neighbor's yard. Katie's thrown up a couple of times and all she ever does is a teensie tiny little girly puke over the edge of her loft bed. Then she sweetly calls out, "Mommmyyy! I threw uuuuuup!"

But Jake? Ugh. What a mess. One time he ate too much coconut cream pie at his Oma's house and threw up whipped cream all night long and ever since that incident he can't eat anything with a creamy texture or up it comes.

Jake had strep throat about five years ago and I was heading to the doctor for some antibiotics with all three kids in the middle bench seat of our mini van. Jake was on the passenger side by the door, Katie was in her front-facing toddler-size car seat behind me, and Freddy was smashed in the middle between the two of them. We were thirty seconds away from the doctor's office when I heard Jake moan, "mommy, I'm going to throw up..." I yanked the steering wheel, slammed on the brakes and did my best to rush over to his side to open the door but I was too late--Jake purged his breakfast all over himself, his seat, and the van floor.

Well, Katie took one look at the situation and proceeded to empathy-hurl her breakfast all over poor sweet little Freddy. I looked on at the situation, gobsmacked at the overwhelming amount of barf in such a small area of space, and my shoulders sunk in defeat.

I guess I missed that chapter in my pregnancy books.

Unchained

I believe in hell. Look around us! Hell is the environment that contains the consequences of our bad decisions. Sometimes the burn comes from the fire someone else sets in our path and sometimes we scorch ourselves, but either or, hell hurts. It doesn't just hurt us but everyone close to us.

Divorce didn't just hurt Jason and I, it hurt our kids. We hurt our kids. We did that. Pretending that we didn't totally shit the bed won't get us out of our painful mess and in fact the first step toward healing is acknowledging the pain we created and taking responsibility for it. We could sit in the middle of our beds pointing our fingers of blame at everyone else but at the end of the day we'd still have our own shit stuck to our thighs.

I love this part, though, that we have a choice. Once we acknowledge the hellish mess we are sitting in, we have two choices: to stay or to leave.

Some people stay there, feeling depressed and worthless, punishing themselves in dramatic self-deprecation. If I did that, then my kids would be robbed of a healthy, loving mother. I could stay stuck in my grief and dread my hair and eat sand and chew on my foot callouses. Another way to stay stuck would be to point my fingers and blame everyone else for my current condition. I could take on the whole world with my righteous anger, declaring war on anyone who even thinks about holding me accountable for my mess. I've tried both avenues and I can say that even despite moments of triumph and satisfaction, the peace didn't last and each time, I faced a dead end.

Grace isn't just a term used to rationalize bad behaviour; grace is a gift that is lived through the consequences of bad behaviour. What I mean is, grace isn't our ticket out of hell but our fountain of cool water in the midst of it.

Divorce hurts kids, there is no doubt about that, but that doesn't have to be the final chapter. I refuse to chain my children to my side while I sit in my shit, while I stand in my hellfire. I'll accept the fountain of cool water to drink because I want to share it with my babies. I want them to know that there is respite, that redemption and new beginnings exist, and that life doesn't end at our mistakes.

Grief

Before you go into this, I ask that you read this post with a soft and respectful heart.

There's this quote that Jason and I used to ponder when we were working on what was left of our marriage and it goes like this:  

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

We'd come back from a counseling session with instructions to find something in common. We bought kayaks, floated around local ponds and ducked through tunnels of pond shrubs, picking spider webs off our faces and necks. We also tried local pub-hopping to find the perfect nachos as if finding the immaculate conception of peppers and cheese would be the expected miracle that would save our marriage. You know what we discovered? We both liked kayaking, we both liked nachos, and we both knew our marriage was over.

There are some decisions that are easy to make like wearing thongs under yoga pants and bare feet with sandals, but most of the time, the bigger the decision the more murky the water.

I believe that God hates divorce. Bloody hell, I hate it too and I guarantee if you ask Jason how he feels about the subject, he'd agree. But sometimes, when all we have to see through is pond water, we can only make our best guess with what we have in front of us, and in our limited human vision, we are only able to move forward but for the outstretched guiding arm of grace. What am I trying to say? We are fucked, but we're not fucked forever and ever because life and love doesn't end at divorce just like it doesn't end at cancer and in fact, sometimes the first time a person ever fully lives and loves is at the beginning of their dismal diagnosis.

Divorce is a very real and a very painful terminal illness and it causes a grief that often has no closure. But the gaping hole left over can always be filled with beauty and grace if we so choose, the way tulips spring out of the dirt above a buried coffin.

Please pass the nachos. 

Notes

I had this super cool idea of sharing my notes from my iPhone with you! I'm always using my notes app, and it's always so raw and transparent, and I really think you guys could, I don't know... find it amusing? Or learn something from it? Or just relate to me somehow. Relatability is priceless, I know from personal experience. Okay, so here goes...

This note is from August 3, 2012 and it's a quote I LOVE from Jenn Shelton (who I love even more than the quote):

"I never really discussed this with anyone because it sounds pretentious but I started ultra-running to become a better person. I thought if you could run 100 miles you'd be in this zen state...you'd be the fucking Buddha...bringing peace and a smile to the world. It didn't work in my case. I'm the same old punkass as before. But there's always that hope that it will turn you into the person you want to be: a better, more peaceful person.

When I'm out on a long run the only thing that matters is finishing the run. For once my brain isn't going "blah blah" all the time. Everything quiets down and the only thing going on is pure flow. It's just me and the movement and the motion. That's what I love. Just being a barbarian, running through the woods." -Jenn Shelton

I could so relate to every word she says in that quote. I get it. I know ultra-running doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but it makes sense to me. When my brain isn't as "blah-blah" then I don't run as much. And when it is, then I do. *shrug*

If you think these notes were lame, just wait until I post my Costco list.

The Gospel of Farley

Jake has been pestering me to fill out his high school registration form and because I am a) in denial that my baby Jake is going to high school and b) because I'm in denial that my baby Jake is going to high school, I'm putting it off for as long as possible. Instead, we sat down together tonight and watched the best of Chris Farley, Saturday Night Live.

One of my favourite scenes is during the "Chris Farley Show" (a spoof, naturally) where he interviews Paul McCartney and comments on one of his quotes: "The love you take is equal to the love you make." Jake and I talked about it for a bit and interpreted it as that we need to love as we want to be loved. We need to treat others the way we want to be treated. We can't expect the world to lick our wounds while we keep walking into the fire.

The kids know that I am easy-going and all-loving, and sickeningly so, but they also understand that if there's one thing on this earth that makes me homicidal, it's when someone parks in our designated reserved parking spot outside of our home. When we pulled in yesterday, I found a white domestic car parked in our spot, and I proceeded to furiously scribble a nasty note onto a piece of slurpee-stained napkin to leave on their windshield, but when the suspected assholes started walking toward their car I tucked the sticky napkin into my pocket and then went all like, passive-aggressive on them, killing them with majorly loud body language.

Did I feel better after that?

No.

I don't need to accept the bullshit that this world has to offer but I certainly do not need to seek it out, either.

It was a gorgeous sunny day out today and everyone was in a great mood. We piled into the van with skateboards and scooters and bikes and headed to the park but just as we were loading up the van, the same people from yesterday pulled in and parked beside us, in the regular parking spots. I gave them a sheepish smile and they nodded a graceful look in return and I knew that all was okay. Not just with us, but with the world. Because love doesn't merely exist with us, but in spite of us.

The love we make is equal to the love we take, true. But it's not a transaction or it wouldn't be love. Love is a gift. Love is grace. We accept it undeservedly and we give it unreservedly. But if we keep walking into the fire with the expectation that the world will keep licking our wounds then we will get burned. And we will lose our parking spot.