I Choose Life

Funny how the same word can hold completely different meanings.

Take for example, RETREAT!! or Retreat

RETREAT!!

Retreat

(For the record, this is just a random pic from the internet not where I was actually staying)

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When I told my troops to “RETREAT!!”  I meant from the battlefield. But because God always seems to have gentler metaphors for me to live out than my own painful, fear-prone ones, I actually went on a retreat.(Insert spa-like music here.) I literally went to a retreat centre. It’s pretty much the gentlest, most hospitable, place on earth. I dare say the exact opposite of a battlefield. I did not get the irony until day five of my stay. Instead of crawling back to my trench to find ways to re-gather our life, I left the battle altogether and sat on the side of a bluff with the mountains and big Alberta skies, hummingbirds, blue jays and lots of mosquitoes too. I was cared for with homemade (gluten free) food, early bedtimes, afternoon naps, a lot of solitude and even more silence – basically all of it was tangible Grace for six days straight.

I feel hesitant to say I’ve been pulled out of the battle or pulled out of our sinkhole (cross my fingers) but it kind of feels like it. Since we tend to live into our metaphors, I am feeling grateful for the Grace that reached down and rescued me. (Many of you were givers of this grace but that is another post.) I’m sure it will take some time to make meaning of what I have sensed and realized from my time away. The last couple of days of my trip, I kept trying to write some of it down and it was/has been hard. It is hard because it comes out of a very deep place. A place where Spirits meet and it’s hard to find words for that kind of Mystery. But here is what I know… 

I choose Life.

I choose life.

I choose life.

And I choose this life.
Yes, this life with Lyme.

I choose life so that my kids have a mom who participates with them in life, leading and showing them how to live with courage and joy in the face of hard stuff. I choose life so that I can keep on loving my God, so I can listen for his voice, and hold fast to his love. I choose life so I do no waste the tremendous gift I have been given. I choose life.

Choosing life also means I acknowledge that life is organic. During my week away, I was intently reminded that life is like ‘the eternal cycle of the seasons’. We live in a society that manufactures stuff. This view of manufacturing even our lives is common in our culture. The problem is, manufactured stuff breaks (easily). The way we make and construct our lives leaves them vulnerable to breaking or shattering. But when we see life through the metaphor of the seasons, even in the barest, bleakest seasons we can wait with hope knowing growth and life is always happening even when we cannot see it.

Now to figure out what season we are actually in. It is quite possible this is (only) autumn (even though it has felt like a harsh winter). Things are dying off and turning brown and we are making new seeds for our next growing season even while everything in view is dying off. If so, I want to make sure our seeds can survive a harsh winter.

Me, North Korea & Time to Retreat

I think I have been using a page from North Korea's play book. I have poured all of my resources into showing the world my strength while everything and everyone inside my borders suffers and knows we are not what everyone else sees. We are much weaker than we show.

As I try to figure out how to balance what I want to do, what I can do and what I must do, I am reminded that I still have such a striking ability to be a faker. Especially with myself.

I fake it because I can't believe a teeny tiny tick could wreak this much havoc.

I fake it because when people look at me, they don’t believe I can possibly be so sick.

It is one of the weirdest things about chronic Lyme disease - it destroys everything inside but leaves you mostly looking the same on the outside. I look mostly normal. Except when I don’t and I’m obviously not posting my picture to Instagram that day. There have been days when I see my reflection in my bathroom mirror or in the worried face of my mother-in-law and realize my outsides match my insides that day.

Exhibit A

I am ashamed to say I used to look at pictures of other folks with Lyme and see their posed smiles and think there's no way they could actually be feeling as sick as they claimed and still take a picture like that. Karma! 

I was in a lot of pain and trying to keep myself held together to attend Cara's little graduation. I went down hill for the rest of the day and ended up in bed. But none of that would be obvious from this picture.  

I fake it because I’m hoping the “fake it till you make it” philosophy will actually pan out for once.

I fake it because I’ve felt I don’t have a choice.  

We have bills to pay and kids who need to eat and get dropped off at school and have a normal life.

I fake it because I don’t want to be a whiner or a burden or have people’s pity.

I fake it because I don’t like depending on others.

I fake it because I want to pretend I haven’t lost things I really liked about myself.

I fake it because I don’t want to accept that many dreams for our family and life are shriveling up.

I fake it because my job requires that I put aside my own stuff to hold space for the stuff of others.

I fake it because I am really scared of having this mess up our kids or make them grow up too early.

I fake it because I actually do have good days and they trick me into thinking that maybe I can just make bad days good days if I try hard enough.

I fake it because it soothes my ego to pretend I am still strong.

I fake it because when I stop moving and doing, I start shaking and tremor-ing and twitching and it freaks me out.

I fake it because I am afraid if I slow down I might never be able to get up and go again. Ever. I am hugely afraid of this.

Ryan, Grief, & Love Batting Last

There is something about the capacity to love 
that is as connected to sorrow as it is to joy. 

Jane Herring

On Saturday, in the middle of her grief and mine, a friend and I talked about the strangeness of grief, and how gifts and losses live co-mingled in it. It is hard to wrap your heart around this when you are in it. She spoke of the strange, beautiful, comfort in a funeral where steel drums and weeping shared the space. It struck me that it was the perfect way of expressing the juxtaposition of grief and hope that somehow wrap around one another in mourning. The sounds of sorrow and hope, the weeping and the drumming, were more than enough to hold space for both the enormous heartache of the mourners as well as their seeds of hope. 

Time passed after his death. Her heart had softened, and she has grown strong. She will always be lonely here without him, but she loves her life again. That’s proof enough for me that love is sovereign, that most of the time, love bats last. And this is what we have to offer from our grief: a promise that we do endure, and that out of the wreckage something surprising will rise.  

Taken from Stitches by Anne Lamott

My brother died 12 years ago today. I miss him. Always. I miss his space in our world.
But I have also grown strong and gentle at the same time because of it. I have no doubt now that Love always bats last.

As the Dust Settles

Her life came apart at the seams in ways she had never agreed to. 

Anne Lamott

As the dust is settling on my Lyme diagnosis, I am scared. I wish I felt braver.

As we get information a little at a time about this long, crooked road in front of us I am just trying to keep track of the pieces that seem to be coming apart left and right so that we have them when it’s time for mending. Who really ever agrees to the ways our lives come apart at the seams? None of us. It’s not usually our choice. I suppose what is our choice is what we do with the pieces and how we mend them.

Fear has lost so much ground in my life. As a young girl, I bought into the lie that control can manage fear. I ordered my heart for control. But now I know there is only one thing bigger than fear: Love.

Still, fear has a cozy little familiar spot in me where it can get in and grow. Fear left untended grows much like the bacteria that is crippling me. It invades every tissue, every nerve, every joint, every vital organ. It can drill through my healthy places and burrow deep.

My Wasteland: Lyme Disease

In this wasteland

Where I’m living

There is a crack in the door filled with light

And it’s all that I need to get by

In this wastleland where I’m living

There is a crack in the door filled with light

And it’s all that I need to shine

(Need to Breathe, Wasteland)

Last week, we were plunged into a wasteland. It was like a sinkhole that opened up and swallowed me whole.

I’ve been hiding ever since. I’m not hiding because I don’t want people to know. I think I’ve been hiding because when the sinkhole collapsed around me, I realized I could barely breathe. I needed to breathe slow and steady. I could not afford to lose any oxygen screaming or panicking. Or fending off constant advice, misinformation, or well-intended minimizing of how serious this is for us. There is only so much air down here and we need all of it.

Tremors, Bike Rides & Learning to Leave

I live in the most beautiful country in the world, I thought. I seriously gulp in the air and my whole body does a sigh of longing and contentment. 

I was riding in response to the way my illness is changing my body.

The tremor set in again today. Sometimes it stays all day and sometimes a few hours. It disarms me. My head wobbles and bobbles unnoticed to others. But because its my head, I notice every movement.

I rode to remind my body, soul and mind of strength.

I rode to retrain my motor memory. Body, you are strong. Remember this. Don’t forget it.

I rode so not to lose the strength and mobility my body has now. I rode in response to fear of losing more.

I rode to delight in the day.

I rode to notice beauty rather than dwell on weakness and fear.

I rode to pretend I am who I always was.

I rode to distract myself from the shaking and the unwelcome firework show my nerves were putting on.

But I finally stopped riding and pretending and distracting. I sat on the rocks and watched the water and canoes float by on the river.

My body trembled and I didn’t try to stop it.

I thought about how I have always been a stay-er. In relationships, churches, jobs, with cell phone companies and difficult tasks. I have stayed way past when I wanted to leave. Maybe this is good for character. Maybe I should’ve learned leaving before now. Who can say? It doesn’t much matter to me now.

My illness is teaching me many things. Gentling me. It is also teaching me that this might be a season of realizing I have learned to stay. This is not a gap in my formation. I’ve been a stay-er. I am now learning about leaving and letting go. Maybe this is precisely because I have learned to stay. Richard Rohr talks about something similar here.
Its teaching me to live more open-handed perhaps. Sometimes I’m too weak for grasping.

But in this beautiful home, neighborhood, city, bike path, country – I’d like to keep on being a stay-er. You, beautiful places, give me somewhere to stay as I’m learning to leave.

PS. It was also fun to be a rebel :) and ride without a helmet. So much more relaxing and peaceful.

10 Years

August 2013 - Ten Years


 

10 years ago we promised things we couldn't possibly understand. This says less about our tender ages and more about the joys and challenges of marriage. It was 102 degrees and 100% humidity. Luckily, the refining fires of marriage produce more than just unbearable heat. 

10 years is starting to feel like a respectable number. Still young, still changing, still in the beginning stages of family life but marked by a love that grows firmer, deeper, and wider day by day, fight by fight, delight by delight, grace by grace. We've been through "stuff" now. Our love has logged some miles and been tested in hard places- physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and financially. Each time we come through a hard place, a 'fire', we can see the beauty and character that was being formed in our marriage, in us.

Like gold, our relationship feels fragile and vulnerable  in the middle of the hard place. Perhaps it is. Perhaps the pliability, malleability in the fire is what allows it to take beautiful shape or to break. By God's grace and our perseverance and commitment, our marriage has continued to be shaped rather than break.  There are many ways for a marriage to break without divorce. I've seen a few of them and its sad. We have continued to find each other in (or at least at the tail end) of the hard places and help birth something new in our relationship. I am proud of this. I am proud of us.   

Thirteen years ago when we started our long distance love story, we had no way of knowing that this relationship would be a central place of formation, of transformation, in knowing ourselves, God and others. 

Our first official date in March 2000 hiking up Sulphur Mountain in snow. This american city girl did not have a clue what I was getting into when I wore a hoodie, vest and runners for a 5.5 km hike in Canadian winter. I couldn't drink enough hot chocolate when we finally reached the top. My discomfort is more than obvious on my face. Pretty sure I was cursing Jason, the hike, the snow, Canada and anything else I could think of at this point. We took the gondola down. :)

Jason and I were recently back on Sulphur with the kids (we did not hike it this time) so we took a commemorative picture. This picture helps you see just how cold, snowy and cloudy it was when we hiked it in 2000. No mountain views, no lingering out on the observation deck to enjoy the beauty of what surrounded us. Our life together is a little like these two pictures. Now it is easy to see the beauty of our marriage. We can look out and see the places we've been. When we take in the whole view, it is breathtaking and beautiful. The peaks are glorious. Some have been jagged too.  

So many things about me have changed since that day ten years ago. There are some things we wish we'd done differently at our wedding, mostly more character and more relational. But as I took a look at our vows, they are still the words I would choose if I were marrying Jason today. Since words are important to me, this brought me joy. A gift. 

We took our marriage vows from a book Jason gave me for my 19th birthday, a few years before we were married, SoulCraft: How God Shapes Us Through Relationships.Ten years in, with what I know about marriage now, these words are still what I would want to promise and be promised. 

Shanna, do you take Jason to be your husband, and to live together after God's command in holy marriage? Do you promise to be his considerate, faithful, and loving wife and submit your life to the authority of God's Word? Do you covenant to love him, support and serve him, guide and cherish him in prosperity and in adversity; in sorrow and in happiness; in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, be united to him so long as you both shall live? 

Me: I take you and give myself to you. With deepest joy I join my life with yours. I promise to cherish and uphold you from this day forward as long as our lives shall last. And as a symbol of my promise I give you this ring, a celebration of our union in Christ, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

These promises still resonate with my heart and I am committed to live them out in our marriage. But maybe now, after ten years of marriage, I know how much grace is needed to live these out in a way that honors Jason, our marriage and our God. 

A cord of three strands is not easily broken. 

Ecclesiastes 4:12

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This was not a moment I was meant to see but it just might be my favorite picture of all time.

I was on the floor playing Lego with Evan when I noticed Jason's grandpa doing an ordinary act of kindness (love). And it struck me as extraordinary after 66 years of marriage. Sheepishly, I secretly (not anymore) captured the moment. It made me think of this friend's post after 40 years of marriage. Bottom line: To have a marriage marked by true kindness is the best promise we can make and keep for our marriages. 

This is real marriage. Grandpa has probably done this act of kindness hundreds of times for his bride. It is not glamorous or romantic but something about it strikes me as profoundly beautiful, intimate, kind. A beautiful marriage is not running through airports or romantic getaways (though I would not complain about one:), it is about staying and committing and cherishing and laundry and laughing and cleaning bathrooms and bills and listening and nurturing and tying shoes when your beloved can no longer do this for themselves.

Loved this.

We enjoyed a night out to celebrate.
In September we will enjoy our anniversary gift from Jason's parents: a weekend at a B & B and a play at the Rosebud Theatre. Can't wait.

Thought it was fitting that our anniversary dinner had some Kansas City fare on the menu. :)

Chop's yummy version of a bellini. Check out that ice cube.

The cutest dessert I've ever seen: A mini white chocolate raspberry creme brulee. It was as good as it sounds.