Stepping on Cheerios

by Snyder, Betsy Singleton;

  Being Just You and Nothing Else

  One day I was shopping at a drug store, picking up a few items for my trip to Israel, when I discovered a product I’d never seen, probably because I hate to go to the store.

  If I have to go to a store, I’d much rather go to flea markets and thrift stores because you can redeem stuff, like the old end tables I got for our little cabin. You can find something magical at places that fool you by smelling musty and old. But older isn’t all bad. Older can mean a rich and luscious experience. If you’re young, please write that down and don’t forget it, because women in our culture think they are supposed to be physically beautiful all the time, forever, which misses more than the eye can see. What we need to do is practice valuing who we are becoming at each stage of life.

  What I found at the drugstore that day was something called a wrinkle releaser. I picked up a small bottle and threw it in my cart, never imagining that it would iron my clothes all by itself after just a few strategic squirts. To make me feel like I was really working, while on the trip, I took time to hang the article of clothing up near the shower and shoot it with some more positron rays, and voila! I didn’t look like I’d slept in my clothes. On the bus, I mentioned my discovery of this miracle product to a younger clergy friend, and she said the product saved her loads of time in college. I wondered how many hours I’d spent ironing in college back in the day and decided any ironing is probably too much. I love the smell of starch and the steam, but that’s about it. I’m glad you younger women have got this.

  I have one bestie in the world who can make me laugh until I cry and cross my legs. It’s my sister—my lovely sister—who went to Israel with me. Gayle is nineteen years older than I am. And even though we weren’t raised in the same era, we are blessed to think highly of each other and talk almost every day, sometimes more than once a day. We go through the checklist of how our children are doing—including her grown ones—recipes, people we don’t understand, politics, the church, and our spiritual connection to Jesus.

  I wondered how many hours I’d spent ironing in college and decided any ironing is probably too much.

  That’s why, when I finally decided I wanted to go to the Holy Land, I knew it had to be with my sister. At first, Sister was worried about the walking since she’s now in her seventies. Next, she was worried about security. Those are understandable concerns. It’s amazing to say that she worries because she’s my number one go-to person to tell me not to worry. She usually worries small-scale, like where are we going to lunch and how do we get there? After all, she’s got perspective, having seen it all.

  I’m still in the stage of worrying about the big stuff, like whether I am a decent mother, wife, and pastor. Or I’ll ask her if she thinks I have too much of the confrontational gene, like one of our aunts who used to threaten, “Do you want me to unscrew your naval, take off your legs, and beat your brains out?”

  Yes, this was a scary threat, but I loved our Aunt Toodles (yes, that is what we called my flamboyant aunt) because she was sharp and funny, with hair always perfectly done, thin and dressed to the nines all her life, who worked, smoked in a sexy way, drank cocktails, played cards, and introduced me to nachos and Blue Bell ice cream. Mom didn’t drink much at all, but let me tell y’all, she did buy some Coco Lopez when she got home from Toodles’s because, for the first time in her life, Mom had tasted a piña colada.

  Sometime after we got home from the Holy Land pilgrimage, Sullivan was spraying the wrinkle releaser around recklessly in our bathroom (because children are always in your bathroom). I asked him not to waste Precious. As he was spraying what could have been a toxic yard spray, Sullivan wanted to know what it was, and I told him. My child said, “Oh, you spray it on your face!” How had I not thought of that myself? I immediately called my sister and told her this revelation given by one of my kids. I had to sit down and cross my legs as we laughed together.

  This is some of my medicine.

  Sister knew me before I was Momma. She not only helped raise me and is my second mom, but she also knows all the crap, inside and out, and she knows the greatest stuff too. Almost all of us have people in our lives who knew us before we were Mom, and we need not live in the past, but we can cherish the roots we share with our besties.

  The Great Escape Is Up to You

  When our kids were really little, there were few days that I had any time to myself. Back then, I actually did enjoy shopping, but only because I was out of the house for an activity. I couldn’t really count those chores as Sabbath to discover who I was, separate from all these other roles of mom, wife, and pastor. It’s like saying that I enjoyed Diaper Fun, our local kids-only movement class, or Kindermusik, the early music appreciation course for toddlers with tambourines and bells and loud things. Of course, I celebrated the activities as times to be with my children and dip into their development, but that didn’t help me sort out me.

  I’ve already mentioned my love of pedicures, which is a nice mini escape, but sometimes we need to block out time on our calendars for being with self. We all have to decide what takes care of us.

  My friend, Gayle, who worked with me at one of my churches, taught me that I needed to decompress after church funerals. Before that, I had often gone immediately back to the church and tried to work. Sometimes we can’t avoid certain obligations, but after Gayle’s modeling, I saw that I needed to block time out for myself after a very emotionally draining experience, which included preparing the service, caring for the family, and actually doing the service with very personal words and actions of care.

  Nowadays, I always take the rest of the day off after a funeral to decompress. In fact, Gayle and I have used the time after the service for retail therapy, sometimes buying locally made granola, stopping in a shop off the beaten path, or even purchasing a pair of boots in another county. It wasn’t the purchases but the experience of retreat that came from the enjoyment of the senses and the realization of being alive.

  As our boys grew physically, we began to rent cabins around the state, hiking and fishing and playing more in nature. I was also renting places several times a year to write and plan and reflect. My husband and I decided to look for our own cabin and were fortunate enough to find an affordable place near some caves, trails, and fishing streams. While we love it as a family, I also use it by myself for quiet and to listen to God. It’s still hard for me to leave my family, but I know that cultivating time for me will help me and show my kids how to love themselves and listen to themselves better. I also hope that someday in the future they will give the women in their lives permission to do the same.

  Some of us feel most alive in nature, so we need to block off time for walking, hiking, fishing, or whatever it is that helps us grab hold of us as a singular child of God and reminds us there is no other one like us. The great Catholic thinker, paleontologist, and naturalist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who is one of my mom’s favorites, said, “There is a communion with God and a communion with earth, and a communion with God through the earth.” (These Jesuits are the real deal.) So ask yourself, “What is my particular escape, and when am I going to take it?”

  Have a Little Compassion

  There are some ways we women and moms need to work the compassion thing harder. You probably know that compassion means “suffering with.” Clearly, it’s in the DNA of Christianity, since Jesus often demonstrated compassion, most especially to those who felt helpless and harassed (see Matthew 9:36), who were like lost sheep (see Mark 6:34), who were hungry (see Mark 8:2), who needed healing (see Matthew 14:14; Matthew 20:34; and Mark 1:40-41), or who were bereaved (Luke 7:12-18). The many needs of others moved Jesus to provide, but he also refreshed himself and had compassion for himself, letting others anoint him with oil and feed him from their tables, which meant he knew how to receive.

  We women are so hard on one another and ourselves. We talk about one another, our clothes, our sizes, our homes, and our kids and their achievements or stumbles.
If we don’t have compassion for ourselves, we can’t have compassion for others, a hallmark of those who follow Jesus.

  All of the churches I’ve served have offered animal-blessing services near the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the Catholic Church’s patron saint of animals and the environment. A few years ago, the church I served sponsored a service and an adoption day by the local humane society. One of the dogs, a small rat-terrier-looking guy, was shivering. It wasn’t that cold, and he was obviously scared. When we learned his story—how he was skin and bones when they found him, had survived distemper, and had lost some vision—we understood his fear. Aubrey, who loves every creature, big and small, concerned the pup was cold, removed his shirt as the sun was setting on a first Sunday in October and put it around the dog. My child gave a homeless dog the shirt off his back. You know how this story ends, right? Of course the dog came home with us.

  We need compassion like that for ourselves, whether we’ve lost it with our kids—and we all do at some point—whether we’re uncertain about the next phase of life, when we’re confused about what our future goals ought to be, and most especially when we clearly believe we’ve failed.

  Right now, most of my goals are getting easier.

  1. Please, someone, let me inherit a tiny house. I love those compact living spaces. They are dollhouse cute and would inspire me to get rid of more stuff that will never help me love myself better.

  2. Never run out of hand soap. I don’t use the antibacterial harsh stuff anymore. I learned that the 99 percent germ-free stuff is creating superbugs, so I go for the nonabrasive, delicious basil, rhubarb, or lemon verbena varieties. The soap’s not merely for making me clean or for protecting others and the environment; it’s for taking care of me. Almost every time I smell that great soap seeping up from my clean hands, I’m reminded of how God wants me to let go of the dirt I’m hanging on to and just be the best selfie I’m supposed to be.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE SKINIFICATION OF DIVINE LOVE

  Treat people in the same way that you want them to treat you.

  —Luke 6:31

  Love your curves and all your edges;

  All your perfect imperfections.

  —“All of Me,” John Legend

  Jesus may not have been married, but he had family. As far as we can tell, he was raised by two loving, yet human parents and had siblings (see Matthew 12:46-50). The natural order of things is to attack your siblings. No wonder Jesus got the thankless job of peacemaker.

  Jesus’s family was not merely biological, though. He made it clear that we all belong to God first. We are children of God and therefore related and actual kinfolk whether we are widows, outcasts, children, poor fishermen, sick and suffering, or of various religious traditions, beliefs, and ethnicities. Jesus, who had been a refugee and was an itinerant rabbi, lived as one who didn’t own a home but, because of love, had a family.

  It’s our story, and God is in our story, and each day we choose each other all over again.

  That doesn’t mean Jesus’s family got along all the time. Jesus and his closest followers lived and worked side by side with one another daily. At times, he was clearly (heavy sigh) frustrated with their limited view of family, but Jesus never quit trying to create and strengthen God’s family, even as he was dying (see John 4:1-42; 13:1-18; and 19:25-29). After Jesus’s ascension, his followers scattered, paralyzed by grief and fear, but he called them to come together in unity (see Acts 1:1-14). Jesus wouldn’t give up on bringing together all the people who make up God’s family.

  Life in a community with other weirdo human beings will always be challenging and sometimes—maybe most times—extremely frustrating.

  Why?

  It’s all in the Jesus story, or the story of God in human skin.

  Jesus’s story looks a lot like the story of our families. Some of Jesus’s family was worried about waste and priorities (see Mark 14:4-5). Someone else complained about having to feed everyone who showed up, even when there was hardly enough for a few disciples (see Matthew 14:15-16). Another one thought they shouldn’t let the children come along (see Matthew 19:13-14). Another’s in-law butted in and demanded her kids should be treated better than the rest (see Matthew 20:20-22). And you can be sure there was always one who was worried about paying the taxes on time (see Matthew 9:9-10).

  Do any of us really believe that Jesus’s life in community with limited, finite, and sinful humans wasn’t a good test case in how to learn to love our families, spouses included?

  We’re not Jesus, but there are ways we can look to his style and habit of loving and forgiving. And I bet the best way to learn about Jesus’s love is by practicing that love most faithfully on the person next to us in the king-size bed.

  Two Sides of the Same Coin

  I often ask God, “Can Victor and I be any different?” And when I ask this question, it’s not rhetorical. It’s a prayer. I’m really asking God if God’s noticed. And I really want God to say something like, “Well, Honey, no, you two can’t be any different. I’ve noticed that too.”

  If God answered obligingly, I could go down my mental list of differences. We all have that list.

  ONE SIDE

  Victor doesn’t think the boys need to shampoo their hair or wash bodies after swimming—for five days in a row.

  He’s terrible at directions but always wants to drive and always asks the same questions about where to turn.

  He always buys the off-brand stuff. I hate his paper towels.

  He has an entire locker in which to put his stuff, but it’s full so he puts his wallet on top of the china cabinet. I am totally petrified of his closet and what’s hiding in there.

  He worries about the boys’ safety (we still don’t have the bunk beds we need), but he doesn’t get movie ratings at all and needs guidance.

  He never whines about illness and went septic. He should be weaker and complain more, like me.

  He doesn’t get the concept of separating laundry or that we have lots of bins of laundry in all our bedrooms.

  He doesn’t grasp change at all (he has flannel shirts older than I am), and I fear we will never move. I’m worried the kids will be stuck with cleaning out our junk after they’ve hauled us out.

  He’s cheap. I don’t like his really harsh, destroy-my-color-job shampoo. I think I mentioned the paper towels.

  You can tell his late-night snack was an orange by the peelings on the coffee table next to his chair. I love it when he goes all crazy and eats ice cream.

  “So that’s one side,” I say.

  “Are you through?” God asks.

  “Sort of.”

  “We could sit here complaining all day long, and that isn’t going to change a thing, Darlin’! You picked him, both of you with all your contrariness, as family. You picked him to teach you all about the real you. You picked him to teach you what love means. You also picked him to teach you about me.”

  I sigh and say, “Oh God, pleeeeease!”

  And God says, “That’s OK! Let it out, Sweet One, go on and let it all out! Big deep breaths.”

  I feel really vulnerable, then, because I know God is absolutely right.

  And then I’m sad because we won’t get fifty years.

  THEN THE OTHER SIDE

  Victor is a very good father, better than ours were by a long shot, and likely as stressed as I am because parenting is exhausting.

  He’s so cheap, and that’s why we have money, which is a good thing for a Singleton because we’d be on the dole, the way Irish author Frankie McCourt described his struggling family’s charitable assistance from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

  He recycles, which includes wearing clothes from 1972. I think I mentioned that already. (Dirty little secret: I’ve sneaked some of his older ties out of the house and off to Goodwill.)

  He’s very generous.

  He insists on doing his own yard work. I’ve learned that he can create a thing of beauty with rocks and plants, e
ven if our yard does always need to be mowed in the summer because he’s too busy building gardens to cut the grass!

  He loves animals and carries Penn’s cat on his shoulders like a sack of potatoes to put in our big boy’s room for the night. That makes me smile before bedtime.

  He will go see any movie I want to see, even chick flicks and action and Disney movies. He actually loves theater. You never know about former Marines.

  He goes along with my love of the beach.

  He has rarely ever missed a sermon I’ve preached and has always supported me as a pastor. Once he wrote a wonderful Christmas hymn for the church I served.

  He gave me my children, and no matter how many nasty science experiments I find in the freezer made by sweet little boy hands, I will always love him for helping me get them here.

  “See there,” says God slyly, “it takes both sides to make the glorious whole, both the in sync and the distinct contrast.”

  Lord knows, I have my own two sides, including Sweet Sass and Sister Sinister.

  I’m sure my desire to change everything every five minutes is about the most upsetting reality in Victor’s world. I’m impatient and creative, and my tail sometimes wags faster than a dog’s. I’m bright red Hot Tamales in a box. I’m an annoying bee in bright yellow and black stripes. I laugh too loud, slap my knee, and use strong language when I get a strong whiff of phony, narcissism, or a snob job. And then there’s the sad-sack-clown me from Toy Story 3, Chuckles, who crashes hard and goes monotone. Sometimes you just have to let the clown go all boo-hoo with a time-out and the reassurance you will be there when she (or he) is ready. Victor mostly gets all that spicy, but exhausting me, both sides of the same coin. And I mostly get him. Together, we’re creating something new. It’s our story, and God is in our story, and each day we choose each other all over again. That’s what all couples must do to grow. It’s some of the deepest and hard spiritual work you will ever do.