Together

I was running earlier today and thinking about this post and how I was going to write it but now that I'm sitting here on my bed with my laptop, I'm sobbing hard and I can feel my dinner traveling back up my esophagus in emotional rebellion. I wanted to write about yesterday's tragedy and so I looked up some articles on it and... and... I saw a little girl in the line up with her hands on the shoulders of the child in front of her, and she looks like my Katie. Her mouth is wide open in a primal wail of desperation and fear and I can't take this. I can't. But we can't keep turning away because it makes us uncomfortable. We need to face this head-on, together.

"Together" is the word that I want to focus on in this post. I keep hearing so many different opinions about what happened yesterday and why they think it happened. I find it fascinating that when something tragic happens that we need to find a reason for it and someone/thing blame.

The God-lovers are blaming the absence of God in the school system. The God-haters are blaming God him(it)self for "allowing" this to happen. USA-haters are making blanket-claims over the American people as if 100% of them are ignorant and pro-guns. If there is a God, his view of us would look like this: we are all standing in a crowded elevator shooting at each other with whatever hate-filled ammunition we are allowed to carry.

Of course we need to find a solution because when we feel pain, our first reaction is to make it fucking stop. I'm not saying that it's wrong to place blame. I may have had dreads but I sure as hell am not a "love all people no matter what" spineless hippie. Sick people need to be held accountable for their sickness. But why in the wake of such a horror do we all have to start hating on each other?

Each time we stand back and point fingers at someone, we segregate each other and isolate ourselves. Gregory David Roberts writes in the book Shantaram: “Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate." Each time we take a step back and point our fingers outward, we fence ourselves in. 

When I go to Katie's Christmas concert next week, I'll be sitting among the rest of the parents of the children in her class. Do you think that all of us share the same religious views? Or the same opinion on mental illness? Do you think we all believe, every single one of us, that the lack of gun laws are the reason that this tragedy happened? No the fuck not. But the commonality between us is that we are all sitting together watching our babies sing "Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright." We are mommies and daddies who would rather be burned at the stake than have anyone hurt our children and yet instead of linking arms and kicking hate in the testicles, we turn on each other.

I don't have an answer and if I did, I'd be rich and I wouldn't be sitting on an old Ikea duvet cover in fake LuluLemon yoga pants eating no-name popcorn. Pointing fingers at each other won't make this go away and neither will sitting around a circle singing "Kumbayah" while Jimmy hands out joints stop these tragedies. But please, please, can we stop blaming each other. We will get to the bottom of this, but we can't do it alone. We need to work together.

Opportunity

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."

-M. Scott Peck 

Remember my post about pain? This is a bit of an extension of that piece. I think about pain quite often because as we all know, it's inevitable and quite common. For many people it's about as common as a traffic light, that it seems no matter how fast we can coast, we still get interrupted at every bloody intersection. But maybe it doesn't have to be that bad! If we can somehow turn it into an opportunity of some sort (like catching up on our texts... just kidding!!!) then maybe we won't let it keep us from totally missing the boat. 

Andrew and I watched a movie on the weekend called Shutter Island. At one point, Leonardo DiCaprio has a hallucination in a cave with a woman and she describes the process of pain to him. Pain is not processed through the flesh like we are all led to believe but rather it is processed through the nervous system. Of course, the sensory receptors in the flesh take the initial signal of pain (touching a hot stove, the finger waves a "holy fuck this is hot" flag and beats the shit out of the neuron messenger that is supposed to carry the message to the spine/brain) but it's the nervous system that is responsible for that feeling of pain. Get it? It tells us how much that hurt, and what we are supposed to do about it. 

I wonder if emotional pain builds up in the nervous system. Scientifically, I guess you could call it an excess of stress hormones like cortisone, etc. So now we have this toxic sludge elbowing its way around our brains. Our brains are telling us, "GET IT OUT OF HERE." When we touch a hot stove, our brain tells our hand to retreat, but when we are feeling emotional pain, more often than not, there's nothing we can do to fix it in the heat of the moment. So our brains are yelling at the rest of our body to get rid of the pain and the rest of our body is like, "oh no... I can't move." 

But as a natural progression, pain produces movement. We touch a hot stove, our hand pulls back. If we allow pain to teach us and move us, then we will save ourselves from standing in that one place with our hand on the fire. It's the same with emotional pain; the longer we stand there, the deeper the scars. If we let pain produce movement, then time will heal. 

Begotten

I was on my way to Rempel's Meats in Abbotsford for the most kickass farmer sausage in the whole wide world when I passed by a church with a sign out front that read: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son." So, like, I totally know what that means because I grew up in the church and I went to church school and church university and studied theology and poured over biblical studies courses long enough to know that it's a Bible verse. But I assume that a lot of people would read that sign and be like, what the fuck is begotten? And why would someone give away their own son, especially if that someone is God, who is probably a lot nicer than the average dude here on earth? Nothing wrong with average dudes wanting to give away their son, even just for a couple hours of peace. I get that. I have two of them. They can be nasty to their sister and "forget" to flush. But God wanting to give away his son? I don't even want to know what begotten means now. I'm scared of begotten. Petrified. You mix begotten and spiders and I'm pretty sure the world would blow up.

Obviously it's not like that. But my point is, is this whole "God/Jesus" thing is confusing.

We had a young patient come into our clinic on Friday night and his dad sat in the waiting room and chatted with me for a bit. He teaches at an elementary school in Abbotsford and I told him that my kids used to go to a Christian private school out there, and then he started asking me questions about Christianity. He grew up in the Catholic church and was curious as to how Christianity and Catholicism relate to each other. But his main question, one that has obviously left him flabbergasted for years (as it has for most of us!), was the question of how Jesus and God are related. Is God Jesus' father? Jesus is God's son? Was Jesus human? And all the questions that arise (I used the word "arise" for all you theologists out there... and you're welcome) from this belief.

I answered his questions using my own learning experiences, for really, Christianity itself is based on a personal relationship, or an experience, with God. If it was as scientifically proven as gravity and pie (not blueberry, unfortunately... I'm referring to the math equation) then it wouldn't be faith. And if there's no faith, then there's no choice, or risk, or love. Love isn't forced or scientific. A relationship doesn't stay together for the same reasons as the earth is round. It's relational. Personal. It's an experience.

And so when I answered him I told him that based on Christian theology, the best way that I could describe the relationship between God and Jesus would be embodiment. And if that's too big of a word, then I would use the term "possession" although unfortunately, the word possession has negative implications, but because it's easier to wrap the mind around, I will use that term for simplicity's sake. It's as if God possessed humanity in order to reach us. What?

Okay. So God is up there all like, wanting to have a relationship with us but because humans are assholes, we ignore him. So what's the best way that he can relate to us? To become one of us. To possess us. What's the most effective way to get a child's attention? We get down to their level.

Freddy stuttered a bit when he was little, and the speech therapist told me that it would make a world of difference if I were to crouch down to Freddy's level, look into his eyes, and listen to him speak. I did this, and it worked. I soaked up every word and I waited patiently and lovingly for him to relate his words to me. We related to each other. Relationship. Same level, eye to eye. I listened, he spoke, I gave my time and devotion, he gave me his heart.

Maybe it's all a metaphor written by a brilliant writer thousands of years ago, representing the relationship between God and humanity. Or, maybe it really happened. All I know for sure right now is that I begotten some farmer sausage in the oven and I'm starving.

Balance

Have you ever noticed that most people have an internal pendulum that when it gets too far over onto one side and stays there for too long, it ends up swinging back over too far to the other side and staying there for too long?! And then over time the pendulum will settle back into the middle, a bit like when a dog turns around in three circles before settling down into its bed. Except not really.

When I was growing up, my mom was a florist and therefore my world was inundated with pink and lace and flowery things and because I couldn't see past the giant flower arrangements to watch the Canucks or Blue Jays play, my internal pendulum swung way over to the "I hate girly things" side. I never wore pink, I let flowers die on purpose, and I was severely allergic to skirts. I would belch the word "barf" whenever my mom walked by. If my pendulum was on a scale of one-ten with one being vile and ten being glamorous, I'd say I was about a minus five. But then over the years as I matured, became a mom and figured out who Suzy really is, my pendulum settled down nicely in the middle. I'm happy to wear earrings and skirts and pink scarves as much as I'm happy to laugh with my kids about bodily functions and be okay with getting muddy at the park.

In addition to my feminine pendulum, it seems I have a few more. I have a religious pendulum, which I've touched on a bit already. I have a chocolate pendulum which I am still waiting for to settle down into the middle; it's been sitting in the "eat chocolate until it burbles back up" side for almost 35 years now. I also have a love pendulum.

Before I met Andrew I didn't even look up at people in public places let alone engage in a conversation with them let alone want to have anything to do with them outside of the library/coffee shop/grocery store. I was so scared of the idea of romantic love, so traumatized by it all, that all of my walls were up and my pendulum was so far over that it was practically lapping the other side. We talk about our first date and how I pretty much told him every vile thing about myself in hopes that I would repel him. But Andrew is Andrew, and he has this way of seeing through people and all it took was one look into my eyes and down came my walls with a rush. He saw me for me, not for my mistakes. He still sees Suzy no matter how much I sometimes try to hide. I jumped onto that pendulum and rode it right back into the middle where all the good healthy stuff is: balance, peace, and hope.

I guess our internal pendulums exist for that reason: to bring balance. Fear, hurt and anger hold onto that pendulum so we are all off-kilter, but time and healing bring us back to the centre. However, I do know that there are not enough days in my lifetime to ever take back those moments when I would totally gross my poor mother out and for that, the only healing power left to bring me back to the centre is to hug my mom and tell her I love her, and to bring her a big bouquet of pink flowers.

Tangled

I remember the day that I started dreading my hair. I had just gone through one of the roughest times of my life and I was doing everything I possibly could to gain back the control I had lost. I went on an all raw food diet (I think my raw food blog is still kicking around the interwebs somewhere). I stopped running. I read my Bible every day. I burned incense and sat in the middle of my bed and meditated on my pain. I read books about nature and spirituality and grace. I journaled. I painted the walls of my family room orange and teal and brown and yellow. I wanted so much to believe that I was turning a corner and making something good and pure out of my life but as I look back on that time, I see now that all I was doing was white-knuckling it, squeezing the life out of myself in hopes that I would be able to shape Suzy into somebody else. But that one day, I knew my efforts weren't working, that when I sat down on the floor of my colourful room and stared into the full-length mirror, I still saw myself, and nothing else.

I sectioned out my hair and started knotting my hair into fluffy knots. I felt raw when I was finished like I was returning to the earth, as if I had nothing left of me. The deadness on my outside was finally starting to match the deadness on the inside.

This all sounds so awful, but it was the part of a grieving and healing process that I needed to walk through.

I became attached to my grief, carrying around my deadness as if it was some sort of wilted security blanket and just when I would start to feel alive I would reach up and roll my fuzzy dreads between my fingers and I'd remember "who I was" all over again. All the while this was happening, I was learning about grace and so my soul would fight this urge to return to the deadness despite my best efforts to stay stuck in the knot.

I began running again and eating real food. I started plugging myself into life rather than hiding in my smoke-filled room by myself. A healing was happening, and I could feel it. Instead of feeling the comforting fuzziness of my dreads, I began resenting the way the knots were sticking out in an unruly manner and so one day I started to comb out the really messy ones. My inside, my soul, was starting to breathe again and I needed my outside to breathe too.

One by one I combed out my dreads and bit by bit I became lighter, no longer holding onto the baggage that I had thought I deserved to carry. I was rising up from the earth and becoming Suzy again, but a stronger more loving version of me. I still have huge hair but it's a lot lighter than it was, that's for sure.

My dreads played a part in my healing process and for that I am thankful. From time to time I miss them, the soft pillowy way they'd circle my head like a hug, wrapping around me in primal self-preservation. I don't need my dreads to hold me down anymore. I embrace who I am now, and I am at peace.

Perch

I was about a mile away from home on my run this morning when I passed under a barren tree that had a big puffy bird's nest perched right smack in the middle of its fragile branches. The uncertainty of the nest's stability was like a plump granny in a thong--it really could go either way.

I stopped under the tree and, craning my neck, stared up into the bottom of the nest and nodded in respectful approval to whatever bird had the balls to have her babies in such a risky situation. I feel like that bird sometimes, I do. Starting over at the age of 34, flying around the universe with my babies in tow, a bunch of shit in my mouth (shit in my mouth?) looking for a place to start over. I can just imagine how that bird felt, you know? Exhausted and pregnant with an uncertain future like Mary and Joseph and the damn donkey looking around for anything, anywhere, that could house this chaos until we can get our shit together and our nest built. 

That's all I have to say, really. Sometimes there isn't really any sort of peaceful conclusion. Sometimes life is scary, and often it won't be "okay." As long as my loved ones are nestled around me in our warm pile of loving feathers, then we will survive.

Hate on Headset

I'm not sure how to put this story on paper without butchering the entire scene but like with the rest of my blog entries, I will take a running leap and just dive in and hope that I don't hit cement.

I was working at Starbucks one afternoon and was unfortunately stuck at the drive-through window. When I first started working there I loathed drive-through because it was overwhelming like getting thrown into a blender with a cat. People are giving me their orders through my headset at the same time that other people are paying for their orders at the window at the same time that I am finishing their drinks and handing their orders out to them at the same time that my partners are talking to me through my headset. Cat. Blender. But I actually quite liked it once I got the hang of it because a) time went by fast and b) I like talking to people and c) time went by fast.

This one particular afternoon I was working with James. James is gay (I swear that this is applicable to my story). I was at the window and he was beside me making the drinks. This older couple pulled up to the speaker and ordered their coffees and we instantly recognized them as regulars. I also recognized them from church, so it's just one big recognize-fest when they get to the window. Hurray. Except they are known for being a little rude to us from time to time (not overly, but just enough) so we would try to get them through as quickly as possible.

James made their drinks in record-time and I noticed he hid behind the pastry case while he handed them to me. I looked quizzically at him, handed out the drinks and then after the couple was gone I asked him over my headset, "James... why were you hiding behind the pastry case?" and he replied, "because those people HATE me!" I rolled my eyes and told him that they're only nice to me because they recognize me from church. And you know what he said? As he walked away from me he pressed the talk button on his headset and said, "oh that's why! Most church people hate me..."

But he said this all so lightly while kind of laughing as if he's used to it but at the same time, he's not hardened by it as he's just not the angry type. He reacted to it all in the same way that I react to a stomach ache when I eat an entire box of chocolates for dinner. Like, oh! That's why! All nonchalant and whatever. Ha ha ha. But not funny at all. Not one bit.

James said that to me and I stood there, feet stuck, heart sunk. I was embarrassed for "the church." I was embarrassed for myself. I felt sad and disappointed and I felt frustrated because I knew, I know, something needs to change and I don't know how to make a difference by myself. I hate hate.

Hate needs to be thrown into a blender with a cat.