I'm going to make quilts for my kids, with fabric I bought in Burkina Faso.
I'm going to put the finishing touches on the hat I knit for Chinua, finish knitting the sweater for my mother, and the shawl for Renee. I'd like to knit without that niggling feeling that I should jump up and do something else.
I want to find ways to practice my faith that are sturdy and rhythmic and true. I've become more and more intrigued by the idea of practice, and the knowledge that people all throughout the years have put prayer, true song, service, and meditation into practice, until the truth of God simply flows through them. I want a safe space to return to. I want to throw myself into discovering my own ways of practice- maybe writing has something to do with it, maybe brushes and paint.
I'd like to be a better listener, this year, to practice silence while people are talking, rather than jumping in with stuttered interruptions. I'd like to know the right questions. I'd like to take myself out of the center of my universe (except, maybe, on this blog- it seems inevitable, here).
I'd love to learn to truly value every single moment with my children, rather than trying to speed things along a little. Oh- I'd love to have more patience. And find ways to be more creative with them, and learn to teach them more responsibility, and bring them a little farther into living.
I want to pay more attention to my husband, to treasure him and listen to him (see above). To give him my mind, when we talk, rather than allowing it to flit hither and thither every single second.
I want to see more stars. To swim in more large bodies of water.
I want to grow things.
I'm going to be more decisive. I will grow up and make up my mind and decide what I want and ask for it. I will not apologize, again and again, for having needs.
And, I want to learn how to carve a bear out of a piece of burl with a chainsaw.
Okay, maybe not that last one. But I find I miss the plethora of burl wood bears that reside in the Redwoods. Oh, kooky woods people, how I love you.
So, you know, not that much. It never hurts to dream, I don't think.
January 14, 2008
This just in.
That big storm that just happened? The one that raged the West Coast?
It absolutely obliterated our old house at the Land. Four big Douglas Firs fell, and at least a couple of them fell into the house, crushing the roof to the floor. IT'S GONE.
If we had been living there, we would have died. If we had happened to be away, all of our stuff would be destroyed. Our friends Mike and Julie were living there while the sale closed. They moved out two weeks before the storm.
It's working out okay for the people who bought the Land, because they have some nice insurance. No one was living in the house at the time of the storm. The man who bought the land was sleeping in one of the bedrooms while he prepared the house for rental and left THAT DAY to go back to his house in Blue Lake, because he was frustrated with the rain. THAT DAY. The room he was sleeping in was crushed. It was our old room.
Sometimes a few things are clear. Once again, I hear from God that no matter what happens, we will be okay. Just like in the case of our car crash.
And sometimes you find that things are just finished. I feel that it is now beyond the shadow of a doubt; this timing of our move. We discussed whether to stay another winter. We discussed whether to wait on the sale. It was absolutely perfect timing- the timing of the sale. It was absolutely the right person to sell to, someone who has the ability to bring contractors in immediately, rather than another non-profit who would be more devastated by the loss of that building.
We are affirmed and stunned. We are so thankful.
January 15, 2008
I find myself wanting to know which trees fell, and how they fell, and what it all looks like. I wonder if it was that group of three that the kids used to call the castle. Flowers grew out of the base, in the spring. Wild orchids and some kind of blue flower that I never really identified.
It really is true, that you can't look back. And my pining for my little house in the woods is useless. Especially now. But there is a crazy lesson in here somewhere, about the finality of change, and the strength in looking forward and going on.
The most crushing accusation that I can imagine being made against me is that I wasn't listening. Listening to that small voice of God's—the one that I have been trying to follow for most of my life. It has been one step after the other, leaning in his direction. To be accused of disobedience is a weight on my shoulders that I almost haven't been able to bear. And it has happened, recently, these accusations. Many more people have been supportive than accusatory, let me say. But still, I feel as though I have been under a dark cloud. It has been heavy on me. I wish I had a thicker skin.
It is maybe just coincidence that immediately after I made that decision, to turn away from the hurt and into the new day, I got the news that there isn't even any reason to be looking backward. Because here is God! And he is saying that he really did put things into place the way they needed to be! And if it had happened any other way, ANY OTHER WAY, this could have been horribly tragic.
And I feel different. Something, some dark shameful thing, has slipped off of me. My world, the one where you pray, and believe, and then joyfully make your choices without fear, that world is falling back into place around me. I wish I was more certain, all the time, of what I know to be true. I wish I didn't need a reassurance of this magnitude. And I didn't really ask for it, but then it was there. I don't think it gets much more clear than that. Maybe one day I will be like the oak tree, here outside our house in Sacramento. The one that didn't fall.
And yes, we say thank you again and again and again and again. I should say, too, that I don't mean to say that we are invincible, or that suffering will not enter our lives. Everyone dies. But the timing is God's. I hope that if suffering comes to my life I can accept it, also.
January 17, 2008
Here are my rules for how NOT to write.
1. Jiggle your leg really fast for five minutes while you lean your head on your hand. Jump up every two minutes to wash one dish. After you sit back down, think for two minutes, write one word, and then get up to wash another dish. Maybe you need to put a load of laundry on. Maybe you really need a pickle. Oh, yes. You need that pickle. Get the pickle. Now you need another one. Sit down and jiggle your leg again. Pull up your shirt and examine your belly. It's bigger. Gosh. Maybe you should Google "am I having twins" again. But first, there is something between your teeth. Go on, go to the bathroom mirror, and while you're there, tweeze your eyebrows because face it, they're getting out of control.
2. Think about all the great writers you know of. Compare yourself to them. Admire their PhD's maybe, or just their solitary madness. Tell yourself that you had better not write any crap. No crap at all. Every word must be a jewel, a twinkle, a star in the deep darkness that covers the earth. Then try to begin. When nothing comes, lie on the floor and sob. Notice that the carpet needs vacuuming. Go in search of the vacuum cleaner.
3. Sit at your computer, open up your word document, and write a few words. Then put your chin in your hand and daydream about what it will be like to be on Oprah. And think about sending a copy of your bestselling book to your Writing teacher from the twelfth grade. Maybe you should include one for your Literature teacher, too. She was always nice to you, wasn't she? Then think about money for awhile.
Rest assured, if you employ the above methods, you will have no problem NOT writing.
Here are my tips for writing: I'll give you a few and then share some of my favorite quotes from writers who rock and happen to all be women.
Mine:
1. Find your rhythm. Feel the words, taste the sentence. Run it over in your mind. Is there a cadence? A rhythm? If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go get your favorite book of all time and read it aloud. There will be a natural flow to the words. Find your flow. Make it musical.
2. Sit your butt down. Sit down li
ke you are glued to the chair. Turn your WiFi off, so that you can't access the internet. Then write as fast as you can. Or as slowly as you want. Just remember, you are building. You take a little piece of beautiful writing out of a bunch of crap, then another little piece out of tomorrow's crap. The sad news is, you will have to write crap. The happy news is, you will find the jewels inside. (Don't follow my imagery too far, lest it make you queasy.)
3. Carry a notebook everywhere. Because if you are like me, your mind is like a sieve. So write it down, when you see it, when you hear it, when you think of it. Think like a detective. Become a spy. Make use of your position as an observer.
That's about it. Then there are the more ephemeral pieces of advice from writers. When I first started writing, I really didn't like this kind of advice. "Just give me a time of day, type of pencil, and how many words, and I'll do it," I thought. But lately, slogging through my own insecurities, I find these people to be incredibly encouraging.
Here's Madeleine L'Engle. "If the work comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am, serve me,' then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, 'Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.'"
*
Annie Dillard says, "A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, 'Do you think I could be a writer?' 'Well,' the writer said, 'I don't know... Do you like sentences?' The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences , of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, 'I liked the smell of the paint.'"
*
And of course there's Anne Lamott. "The writer is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in 'The Farmer in the Dell,' standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes. You're outside, but you can see things up close through your binoculars. Your job is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense."
February
February 5, 2008
I feel the need for some therapeutic writing. Bear with me. I have issues, as we always liked to say in my community. My friend would always say, "Graaaaave issues." Or, if someone was being all nuts or whatever, we would say, "I-shhues," because banter makes everything better.
But anyways. Oh dear, where do I begin?
I am afraid.
I am not afraid of just anything. I am afraid of people. I may have told you this before.
Let me tell you what I am not afraid of. I am not afraid to travel. I am not afraid to meet a hundred new people in Burkina Faso and spend five days with them and attempt to make myself understood in a language I don't speak.
I am not afraid of flying, I am not afraid of new and foreign food. I am not afraid of germs and sickness.
But I am deeply afraid of my responsibility toward people. I am afraid that people will ask more of me than I can give, and I will inevitably disappoint. This is a debilitating fear, when you live with the values and convictions and life work that I do.
Lately I've been living without this fear. It has felt very freeing, and I've been able to relax a little, pursue some interests, settle into myself, figure out what I really want out of life, and begin to make plans for projects and receive a slight hint of our future direction.
The difference has been that I am not doing what I normally do, which is accepting the stranger, offering hospitality, offering help to weary travelers.
Don't get me wrong. It is all I want to do with my life. But it fills me with fear.
I realized that it still lives with me, slightly buried under an outer peace, last night. Someone who needed some help and friends to meet with called us up and asked if we could get together. We said "Of course!" and set up a time to have her over. And she was wonderful. It was a beautiful night, and we talked for hours, and we prayed together, and it was good.
And still? And still.
At the end of the night I was left questioning whether I had been enough, had done enough, whether I had disappointed. My fear was so great that my shoulders were hanging up by my ears, where they had been edging all evening, and my Superstar Husband was forced to sing me a little song about how I did a good job, to make me smile again.
It is a scenario that is all too common in my life.
Maybe it was exaggerated by the fact that I have been so alone, lately. (Not that I necessarily even want to be alone, I mostly want to be with people that I have deemed "safe". They are the ones that I know won't ask more of me than I am able to give.) People have tried to help and have asked me what I thought would happen, if I disappointed people. I have no answers for a question like that. It has nothing to do with what will happen. This anxiety is so deep rooted that I have no idea where the root lies. It really makes no sense. But it is still there.
But it made me fear the future, a little, which is never a good thing. Sometimes, someone with my temperament, my particular social anxiety, may retreat and just be an artist and a writer for a living. I've always known that this is not for me.
But, I realized, last night, that I am moving to India. Land of need. And there needs to be some kind of adjustment, man, some kind of healing, some kind of miracle.
Or maybe just day by day I will be moving through this incredible crippling fear, the fear that makes me dread the phone, the fear that makes me ask my husband to talk to people for me, and I will bit by bit overcome it, with the help of songs, with the help of a few inner prompts (sometimes I have to ask myself what I would tell someone in my situation) and with the help of Jesus, who is fairer, who is purer than every beautiful thing I have ever seen.
He is much more tender with me than I am with myself.
February 6, 2008
How did I find myself sitting on a table wearing "clothing" made of paper yesterday?
I had my first prenatal visit. I really don't have any intention of giving birth in this hospital, but prenatal care is prenatal care, and prenatal care is good. Especially when you can't remember when your last period was.
So, when the nurse practitioner did the ultrasound, and we saw the wittle baby, (just one) and she pronounced him/her to be 12 weeks 1 day old, well gosh. I was flabbergasted. Fastest pregnancy ever.
I'm heading into my second trimester. WAIT! Didn't I just find out that I'm pregnant? I'm heading into my second trimester? Time for a new chapter in my Pilates for Pregnancy book?
This means, I realize, that I was fully seven and a half weeks pregnant by the time I thought to run out to the neighborhood Safeway and pick up a pregnancy test. I honestly don't know what happened. Why didn't I know that I had skipped a period? Why did it take me so long to figure it out?
All I can think is that I kept attributing all of my symptoms to something else. Nausea? Well, I got pretty sick in Burkina Faso. Exhaustion? Must be jet lag. Stormy weepiness? Jet lag? Trauma? Culture shock? My general emotional instability? I think I just sort of hurled all my symptoms into a plethora of categories and was content to leave it at that.
Anyways. Now we know. And wow, I'm already a third of the way through. And the wittle baby sure is cute.
February 9, 2008
Last night I started piecing a quilt for Kenya. (Do you like how I wrote piecing, like a real quilter? Pretty snazzy, I know.)
I couldn't help thinking of my grandma while my machine hummed away. I think she gave me my sewing machine when I was about thirteen or fourteen. My grandparents owned a fabric and notions shop for most of my life, and to this day, the smell, when I walk into a yarn shop or a fabric store, the smell conjures my s
trong and creative grandma.
It was quiet last night, since everyone was gone. I got a lot done, for me, for the first time I've tried this in, let's see—fourteen years. I could see my Grandma, sitting at her machine, talking through a mouth full of pins. She always holds her pins between her lips while she sews, and if you think it's hard to understand someone who is brushing their teeth and talking, you should try interpreting for someone who's trying not to be stabbed in the lip with a pin.
I pinned and sewed and cut and ironed. I could smell their house, feel the coolness of the basement, that summer when Grandma decided to help my sister and I put together log cabin quilts. It gets hot in Edmonton in the summer, and her basement with the cool air and our lemony iced tea was a good place to be.
It seemed magic to me, then, following the instructions to pin this piece to that piece, and sew this to that, and then you iron it and there before your eyes is a quilt piece, built like a log cabin, turning around itself. It still seems like magic.
One of the worst things about my Grandma being sick is that she can no longer sew, like she has all her life. Last night I thought, maybe I can show her my quilt as it progresses, across all these miles. So, I'm going to show Grandma my quilt as I make it. I emailed her two photos today, and I almost can't wait to send her more.
Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1) Page 27