I‘ve been whining a lot lately. Sometimes it just feels like my life is harder than others'. My kids aren’t easy. My son has some mild developmental issues that make school and sports harder for him than for most kids. It also makes my life harder. My daughter is really strong, assertive, and at times volatile…not really easy for me, who hates conflict and just wants everyone happy, to parent. And so the conversation with God goes something like this: “Geez, wasn’t it enough that these kids were really hard get”, recalling in my mind the months and years of infertility, the difficult and lengthy process of adoption, the lost babies, the negative pregnancy tests… “But now these kids have to be so much work!?” So quick is the slope into self-pity and ingratitude…these thoughts lead to longing for what others seem to have…easier kids, lovelier homes, more money for vacations and clothes, an easier marriage…and the list can go on forever. Amazingly, the Lord quietly listens. There’s no strike of lightening, no condemning burning bush appearing in my bedroom, just the sense of a loving Father listening…patiently and gently.
Then I went to the dentist. As he was checking my teeth in a routine exam, he stopped and said, “Did you bite your lower lip or something?” For years, I have had this vein in my lower lip that seems just a little more pronounced and visible. “That….I’ve had that for years.", I answered. “Hmm…” He says. “I’ve never seen it this obvious…looks like it’s gotten bigger. I think we should have an oral surgeon look at it…just to be safe.” Safe from what…I am thinking. “He’ll check it out and decide if it should be biopsied.” Okay…I don’t know about you, but if a doctor uses the word ‘biopsy’ in any context referring to me, panic is quick to follow. “BIOPSY…are you serious?” I wanted to yell. “I don’t want you to lose sleep over this, but we should just get it checked out to be safe.”, he said, probably reading the horror in my face. “Uh huh…” I’m thinking, “Isn’t that how every sad story of someone dying of cancer starts out?”
Suddenly, the voices of all my little complaints became completely silent. My body began to float in the dark space of this thought: “It’s possible I may die before my kids stop needing me.” I love how one thought leads to another… “Let’s get it checked to be safe” leads to a cancer diagnosis which leads to: “What will Craig do without me? What if I’m not around to see my kids get married…or have babies…or fulfill their God-given purposes on this earth?”…all flooding my mind within seconds. Almost instantly, I went from just checking something to “be safe”, to my untimely death and its consequences. I found myself longing to just have the school/sports difficulty and the strong-willed child challenge again. “I love my life…really, Lord, I do. I pray you don’t have to kick me in the teeth to remind me of just how good I have it.” For two days, I had this worry hanging over me…it’s not fun. As I sat in the oral surgeon’s office, having him examine, measure, and take pictures of the crazy-lip-vein that might end up killing me, I thought…please just say, “I think it’s probably nothing” When he finally said the word, “benign”, possibly the best word in the English language, and tried to explain all the other harmless things he thought it was…I swear, the sky outside became more blue…I think I could even smell the beautiful flowers growing across the street. I danced to my car filled with life, with gratitude, with joy, and with an appreciation for this short, fragile, lovely and wonderful life I have.
In high school, my pastor taught us what he called, “Thank Therapy”: Every time you feel down, depressed, alone, or hopeless, stop and find 7 things you are thankful for. The first one is always the hardest to think of. There were times back then that the only thing I could think of was that the sun had come up that morning. But the thing is, as soon as you find that first thing, amazingly, all the other wonderful things…big and small… seem to flood your mind. Inevitably, you find yourself thanking God for far more than just 7 things. Afterward, you feel blessed and joyful…even in the darkest times of your life. I know “Thank Therapy” sounds a little too easy, juvenile, and maybe even corny, but actually it is a profound practice that does help remove the fixation we have on the hard stuff in our lives and our suffering. I have used this therapy many times in my life and it really works. It takes you from a place of depression to a place of peace and joy. But sometimes, when I forget or refuse to do this process, the Lord will drive me to the “thank therapist’s” office Himself. This time the therapist was the possibility of cancer. From my therapy session came a gentle reminder from my God: “You are blessed. You are healthy (at least for today). You have a man who adores you and comes home to you every night. Your kids are miracles and gifts to you…struggles, challenges and all. Stop comparing yourself to others for always there will be someone who has more and someone who has less. I love you, am with you, and you are blessed.”
Nothing like the word “biopsy” to thrust me into necessary thank therapy.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Divorce Line
“Is there anyone here who needs a new restraining order?” asked the portly lady from behind the counter. The sign dangling just above her head read “Family Law”.
A tall, black woman with exotic eyes painted up like a super model, timidly raised her hand. “I am,” she said softly. Her baby fussed in his stroller as she shuffled towards the counter.
Mayli looked over at me with her big blue eyes and shook her head in amazement. I knew what she was thinking, the way women who have been friends for twenty years just know.
My chest ached.
“Next!”
The man in front of us was tattooed from his elbows down to his wrists, and smelled of fresh cigarettes. His pants hung so low that they revealed his brown plaid boxers in their entirety. He stepped up to the counter, “Yeah I’m here about a divorce.”
I raised my eyebrows at Mayli.
A tired woman with bleach-fried hair opened up the partition at the end of the counter, pressed her palms up on the desk and leaned her body towards the line-up, her sagging breasts spilling out of her blouse. “What are you here for?” She asked the last woman in line.
The woman cleared her throat, “Um, a divorce…”
“K, you can stay in that line…what about you?” She asked as she pointed her bitten-down fingernail towards the Hispanic lady who was next in line.
The lady replied, “How you say…?” Her eyes darted towards the rest of us in the line.
I smiled back at her wanting to say, “It’s okay, you’re alright…this is cruel and unusual punishment.”
“How you say…” She bit her lip and shook her hand in front of her mouth, “Como se dice…uh…cusdideo… bambino?”
“Child custody dispute?” Bleach-fried asked.
“Si, si,” the woman nodded.
“Yeah all right, you need to get in that other line.”
“Okay, what about you?”
“Yeah, a divorce also,” the next man up answered. He was short and balding with thick glasses and yellowing teeth. He carried stacks of folders and loose papers under each arm.
“Alright, stay there…and you?”
“Yeah, uh…paternity.” A man in his mid-forties with a tattered baseball hat chomped on his gum and said, “She could never prove the kid was mine.”
Mayli’s eyes widened even more. “She’s gonna ask everybody in the line, she’s gonna ask me!” She turned her back towards the woman and faced the wall.
And like a shotgun, one by one, Bleach –fried fired her way up the line…divorce, restraining order, custody battle…the kid’s not mine. She sorted each of the torn-up lives into the correct lines.
“You…excuse me, Mam? I’m talking to you…”
Mayli slowly turned around. She didn’t lift her head, “Yeah, a divorce.”
I wanted to throw something. I wanted to throw something at Bleach-fried.
“Hey Lady,” I said under my breath, “how much time do ya got?”
Mayli smiled and shushed me.
“No seriously,” I continued. “You really want to know why she’s here? It all started about twenty years ago, she met this guy, she fell in love, she had dreams…”
The man behind us laughed. “Yeah, seriously!” He said.
And Mayli laughed too.
We stood there shaking our heads at the absurdity of it all.
“They better give you a sticker with a smiley face on it when you leave here,” I told Mayli, “like when you give blood… and a chocolate chip cookie too.”
Bleach –fried hollered out to Como Se Dice Lady, “Yeah, uh, now you’re gonna have to get back in that other line again!”
Como Se Dice fumbled around like someone had just smacked her in the head with a baseball bat. Then she settled back in the line, cutting, just in front of me and Mayli. She pressed the palm of her hand into her forehead and smoothed her wiry black hair from her face.
She spoke to Mayli, “How you say, muy difficult-a?” She stuttered for a minute, muttering words in Spanish.
I have heard Mayli talk to her gardener in hurried Spanish for years.
“She speaks Spanish,” I told Como Se Dice. “She comprehendo…”
Como se Dice smiled brightly. “Oh, bueno, bueno…” and off she launched into a series of blended words. I picked out dios and amiga and ninos. Como se Dice waved her arms and pointed to the sky and to her heart. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke.
Mayli nodded her head and said, “Si, si, oh, si…”
Both women wiped water from their eyes.
“What did she say? What did she say?” I asked.
“She said she got divorced a year ago and it was very difficult, now she’s back to fight for full custody because her X went loco.”
Como se Dice smiled at me and nodded for Mayli to continue.
“But she said if you have God you can get through it, if you have God you can get through anything and God will give you a friend too, to be your angel.”
And then Como se Dice pointed to me. “An-hell,” she said.
I smiled at Como se Dice wishing I knew her real name.
“Next!”
The line shuffled forward, Como Se Dice waved her papers in the air and scurried up to the counter squalling in broken English.
Mayli was next. I watched my dear friend, her hands tightly gripping a red folder. She has beautiful hands, long and slender. I always thought she could be a hand model.
When it was her turn, she took a deep breath and said, “Here we go.”
The portly lady behind the counter had gray eyes and gray skin. She didn’t smile. She sat beneath a blinking fluorescent light and a sign that read, “Please Don’t Leave Your Children Unattended.” There was a basket of candy on her desk just beyond our reach.
When Mayli and I were young moms we went for a girl’s night out. We walked around the mall and drank peppermint tea. We went into this one store that sold rubber stamps and rainbows of ink pads. It was wall to wall unicorn stamps, teddy bear stamps, flower stamps and stamps with little phrases on them like “I Love You” and “Thank-you”. We thought it terribly funny. I love you, but not enough to write it all the way out myself. Our favorite was one that read, “Praying For You.” We’ve laughed about it for years. I don’t actually have the time or energy to write it, but let me just use this handy-dandy stamp and I’ll be sure to remember to pray for you.
Mayli motioned me towards the pile of stamps on the counter. Divorce, Fee Waved, In Process, Sign Here.
“Praying For You,” she whispered to me with a weary smile.
Then she turned to the woman behind the counter and asked, “Now, I was told I could have the $350 waived if I don’t have a job, is that true?”
The woman huffed and rolled her eyes. “Well, did you fill out the Fee Waiver forms?”
“Uh… no.”
“Well, Mam, that’s a different line, see down at the end of the room where that counter is? You’ve got to get in that line to get the forms and then you’ll have to get back in this line to process them.”
“Do I have to get back at the end of this line?”
“Yeah, and you better hurry cause there’s about six pages to fill out and if you’re not back in line by 3:00, you’ll have to come back another day… Next!”
Damn Alex.
Yeah, yeah I know there’s always two sides to the story, but I’m on Mayli’s side. Truth be told, everyone who knows their story is on Mayli’s side.
Alex went loco. He said being married was too hard.
My ass Alex! Standing in this line all day is what’s hard. Dividing up pennies and debt and weekends with the kids, (if they’ll even go with you) that’s what’s hard. Emma so distraught by her daddy leaving that she cries until she throws up, that’s hard. The suffering you’re causing your wife and your daughters because you can’t man up and get through the “hard” times, well that’s just nasty, mean, selfish hard!
Jon and I met Alex and Mayli on a weekend marriage retreat twenty years ago. They had a minivan and a job with health benefits, which to us, back then, were the moon and the stars. Mayli and I were both pregnant. We giggled as we ran to the bathroom to throw up our pancakes.
The Monday after the retreat my baby died inside my belly. Mayli came to my side and that’s where she’s stayed ever since. She knew all too well the ugly pain of losing a child.
I got back in the line we had just spent the better part of the afternoon in, while Mayli ran to get in the line for the Fee Waiver forms.
“I need that three hundred and fifty bucks,” she said apologetically.
As I watched her move through the crowded room, I remembered her. I remembered her in her cut off Levi’s and peasant blouse, pregnant and in love.
A tall, black woman with exotic eyes painted up like a super model, timidly raised her hand. “I am,” she said softly. Her baby fussed in his stroller as she shuffled towards the counter.
Mayli looked over at me with her big blue eyes and shook her head in amazement. I knew what she was thinking, the way women who have been friends for twenty years just know.
My chest ached.
“Next!”
The man in front of us was tattooed from his elbows down to his wrists, and smelled of fresh cigarettes. His pants hung so low that they revealed his brown plaid boxers in their entirety. He stepped up to the counter, “Yeah I’m here about a divorce.”
I raised my eyebrows at Mayli.
A tired woman with bleach-fried hair opened up the partition at the end of the counter, pressed her palms up on the desk and leaned her body towards the line-up, her sagging breasts spilling out of her blouse. “What are you here for?” She asked the last woman in line.
The woman cleared her throat, “Um, a divorce…”
“K, you can stay in that line…what about you?” She asked as she pointed her bitten-down fingernail towards the Hispanic lady who was next in line.
The lady replied, “How you say…?” Her eyes darted towards the rest of us in the line.
I smiled back at her wanting to say, “It’s okay, you’re alright…this is cruel and unusual punishment.”
“How you say…” She bit her lip and shook her hand in front of her mouth, “Como se dice…uh…cusdideo… bambino?”
“Child custody dispute?” Bleach-fried asked.
“Si, si,” the woman nodded.
“Yeah all right, you need to get in that other line.”
“Okay, what about you?”
“Yeah, a divorce also,” the next man up answered. He was short and balding with thick glasses and yellowing teeth. He carried stacks of folders and loose papers under each arm.
“Alright, stay there…and you?”
“Yeah, uh…paternity.” A man in his mid-forties with a tattered baseball hat chomped on his gum and said, “She could never prove the kid was mine.”
Mayli’s eyes widened even more. “She’s gonna ask everybody in the line, she’s gonna ask me!” She turned her back towards the woman and faced the wall.
And like a shotgun, one by one, Bleach –fried fired her way up the line…divorce, restraining order, custody battle…the kid’s not mine. She sorted each of the torn-up lives into the correct lines.
“You…excuse me, Mam? I’m talking to you…”
Mayli slowly turned around. She didn’t lift her head, “Yeah, a divorce.”
I wanted to throw something. I wanted to throw something at Bleach-fried.
“Hey Lady,” I said under my breath, “how much time do ya got?”
Mayli smiled and shushed me.
“No seriously,” I continued. “You really want to know why she’s here? It all started about twenty years ago, she met this guy, she fell in love, she had dreams…”
The man behind us laughed. “Yeah, seriously!” He said.
And Mayli laughed too.
We stood there shaking our heads at the absurdity of it all.
“They better give you a sticker with a smiley face on it when you leave here,” I told Mayli, “like when you give blood… and a chocolate chip cookie too.”
Bleach –fried hollered out to Como Se Dice Lady, “Yeah, uh, now you’re gonna have to get back in that other line again!”
Como Se Dice fumbled around like someone had just smacked her in the head with a baseball bat. Then she settled back in the line, cutting, just in front of me and Mayli. She pressed the palm of her hand into her forehead and smoothed her wiry black hair from her face.
She spoke to Mayli, “How you say, muy difficult-a?” She stuttered for a minute, muttering words in Spanish.
I have heard Mayli talk to her gardener in hurried Spanish for years.
“She speaks Spanish,” I told Como Se Dice. “She comprehendo…”
Como se Dice smiled brightly. “Oh, bueno, bueno…” and off she launched into a series of blended words. I picked out dios and amiga and ninos. Como se Dice waved her arms and pointed to the sky and to her heart. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke.
Mayli nodded her head and said, “Si, si, oh, si…”
Both women wiped water from their eyes.
“What did she say? What did she say?” I asked.
“She said she got divorced a year ago and it was very difficult, now she’s back to fight for full custody because her X went loco.”
Como se Dice smiled at me and nodded for Mayli to continue.
“But she said if you have God you can get through it, if you have God you can get through anything and God will give you a friend too, to be your angel.”
And then Como se Dice pointed to me. “An-hell,” she said.
I smiled at Como se Dice wishing I knew her real name.
“Next!”
The line shuffled forward, Como Se Dice waved her papers in the air and scurried up to the counter squalling in broken English.
Mayli was next. I watched my dear friend, her hands tightly gripping a red folder. She has beautiful hands, long and slender. I always thought she could be a hand model.
When it was her turn, she took a deep breath and said, “Here we go.”
The portly lady behind the counter had gray eyes and gray skin. She didn’t smile. She sat beneath a blinking fluorescent light and a sign that read, “Please Don’t Leave Your Children Unattended.” There was a basket of candy on her desk just beyond our reach.
When Mayli and I were young moms we went for a girl’s night out. We walked around the mall and drank peppermint tea. We went into this one store that sold rubber stamps and rainbows of ink pads. It was wall to wall unicorn stamps, teddy bear stamps, flower stamps and stamps with little phrases on them like “I Love You” and “Thank-you”. We thought it terribly funny. I love you, but not enough to write it all the way out myself. Our favorite was one that read, “Praying For You.” We’ve laughed about it for years. I don’t actually have the time or energy to write it, but let me just use this handy-dandy stamp and I’ll be sure to remember to pray for you.
Mayli motioned me towards the pile of stamps on the counter. Divorce, Fee Waved, In Process, Sign Here.
“Praying For You,” she whispered to me with a weary smile.
Then she turned to the woman behind the counter and asked, “Now, I was told I could have the $350 waived if I don’t have a job, is that true?”
The woman huffed and rolled her eyes. “Well, did you fill out the Fee Waiver forms?”
“Uh… no.”
“Well, Mam, that’s a different line, see down at the end of the room where that counter is? You’ve got to get in that line to get the forms and then you’ll have to get back in this line to process them.”
“Do I have to get back at the end of this line?”
“Yeah, and you better hurry cause there’s about six pages to fill out and if you’re not back in line by 3:00, you’ll have to come back another day… Next!”
Damn Alex.
Yeah, yeah I know there’s always two sides to the story, but I’m on Mayli’s side. Truth be told, everyone who knows their story is on Mayli’s side.
Alex went loco. He said being married was too hard.
My ass Alex! Standing in this line all day is what’s hard. Dividing up pennies and debt and weekends with the kids, (if they’ll even go with you) that’s what’s hard. Emma so distraught by her daddy leaving that she cries until she throws up, that’s hard. The suffering you’re causing your wife and your daughters because you can’t man up and get through the “hard” times, well that’s just nasty, mean, selfish hard!
Jon and I met Alex and Mayli on a weekend marriage retreat twenty years ago. They had a minivan and a job with health benefits, which to us, back then, were the moon and the stars. Mayli and I were both pregnant. We giggled as we ran to the bathroom to throw up our pancakes.
The Monday after the retreat my baby died inside my belly. Mayli came to my side and that’s where she’s stayed ever since. She knew all too well the ugly pain of losing a child.
I got back in the line we had just spent the better part of the afternoon in, while Mayli ran to get in the line for the Fee Waiver forms.
“I need that three hundred and fifty bucks,” she said apologetically.
As I watched her move through the crowded room, I remembered her. I remembered her in her cut off Levi’s and peasant blouse, pregnant and in love.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
