Breathing New Life

I see Betty almost every day. She peeks through her closed curtains and looks towards my house. I wave. Sometimes she waves back and sometimes she doesn't. I've lived in my house for a year, and I've never seen her outside. Her husband says she has dementia.

Yesterday my son and his friend were in the front yard building dirt ramps for their matchbox cars. I was sitting on the porch when I heard Betty. "Hello Eleanor!" I had never spoken to her before, so I was surprised that she knew my name. "I hope you don't mind me being over here." She said as she walked to my porch. "I always try to watch to see when your son is out playing. It just warms my heart to see little boys play in the dirt. Your son is such a precious gift."

I thanked her for her kind words. "You know I once had two little boys of my own." She said. "Watching them play in the dirt was so special."

Later that evening, Bonnie made her nightly visit to our fence. She is a widow, and her five grown children have all moved away. "What's new?" She said. I told her about my visit with Betty. "She came out of the house??" She remarked. "You know about her boys, right? One of her sons has a mental disability and has a hard time. The other one was left by his wife and committed suicide about ten years ago. After he died, Betty just stopped coming out of her house. I guess that sweet boy of yours was enough to get her back out."

In his short life thus far, my son has brought joy to those who suffer simply by smiling his sweet smile, sharing his sensitive spirit, and reminding us of the gift of childhood innocence. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself because I only have one child and not a whole bunch of children as I had planned. But Betty reminded me that my one child is a priceless gift for which I am forever grateful.

Creative Pain

Pain, especially emotional pain, baffles me. It is at once impossible, stopping people in their tracks and weighing their souls down, and inspiring, pushing people to expand their world and grow their love.

Pain has been both of these things to me. A crusher of my spirit but also a giver of new life. This year has brought new opportunities to go medication free, to spend an incredible amount of time in therapy and 12 step work, and to experience painful growth in my marriage. 

Working through my pain is now giving me an unexpected gift. Creativity.

I never thought of myself as a creator. Never an artist. Either I didn't have these skills before, or my sense of creativity was stifled by pain, anxiety, and fear.

But God is guiding my healing in a new and unexpected direction. I am finding an amazing sense of peace in creating. I tackled my own kitchen renovation earlier in the summer, I've created design pieces for my home, and I've learned enough about sewing to make my first dress. It is satisfying to see a finished product, but as I've struggled through spiritual darkness, creating has become a form of prayer. It channels my pain into something beautiful, and it gives me the peace to see God's work in my life.

The Invisible Wife, Part Three

The Invisible Wife starts to hear a familiar voice. She feels herself in a familiar place, where all of her resources have been maxed out, her reserves empty, and her heart broken.

The familiar voice whispers, "It's time to let go. Rest for a while, I'll take care of you."

The familiar voice and the familiar place always give her that message. The one that is so very hard to remember. The message of surrender and acceptance.

She releases her grip, realizing how sore her fingers were from holding so tightly to the outcomes for which she hoped. She looks around and notices her toes need a pedicure. She notices that her aching shoulders could use a bubble bath. Her muscles could use a run.

The Invisible Wife is not invisible to God. She is learning a lesson she must learn over and over again. The message of letting go. God teaches her with ever gentle messages, allowing her to see beauty in her story and power in God's amazing work.

The Invisible Wife, Part Two

The Invisible Wife decides to isolate from the recovering addict. Feeling betrayed and abandoned, she spends her time alone, trying to figure out exactly where she went so very wrong. How did she get to this point of hopelessness and despair? She once had such strength, such determination, she thinks. There was a time when there was no problem she thought so big that she could not solve it by will power and careful planning.

But here she finds herself feeling alone and empty. No pulling herself up by the bootstraps now. The Invisible Woman is at a crossroads. She has exhausted herself completely. Fixing, guiding, leading, analyzing. Objectifying her marriage.

Where does The Invisible Woman turn at such a crossroads?

The Invisible Wife

The sick addict finally turns his life around after leaving a path of destruction in his wake. He is praised for his hard work and welcomed with open arms by his family. He feels satisfaction in helping those who are still held captive by addiction and devotes his time to answering late night phone calls and early morning texts.

And his wife, who at times remains bleeding on the ground from the destruction, starts to wonder. Why can't she welcome him with open arms? Embrace his newfound sobriety? Doesn't she know the story of the prodigal son or the lost sheep?

Right or wrong, the wife feels a bit ignored. Were it not for her sacrifice, suffering, and compassion, she thinks, the addict would for sure be bankrupt, without a family or home, and would possibly not even be alive.

But was she really involved in all of this? Is it even reasonable to expect the family of the addict to acknowledge her? A Higher Power and the addict are surely to be respected for this miracle of recovery, maybe the role of the wife is really just a role of observer.

She finds herself lying in bed alone at night, wondering if she might be The Invisible Wife.

Mourning My False Self

My false self has been nurtured well over the years. It's the parts of me I let people see. Fr. Richard Rohr (my absolute favorite spiritual leader/writer) says that this protection and building of the false self is part of the first half of life, the ascension.

I totally rocked that part of life. I could mold my behavior, my image, even my appearance, to be what other people desired from me. The goal for me, ultimately, was approval and praise.

The problem, according to Fr. Rohr, comes when one works so hard to cultivate the false self that she ignores and denies her shadow self. The shadow is human weakness, character defects according to 12-step.

And so it appears that living through D-Day has caused my false self to start disintegrating. Those things I worked so hard to protect, like the image of the perfect family, became impossible to protect. I started to realize that living my life to get praise from others was miserable.

Fr. Rohr describes the phase I find myself in right now as the descent, which is ultimately just plain old reality. I'm finding myself in situation after situation where my weaknesses are being made clear. I like to be right all the time, I'm stubborn, I have a serious emotional eating problem, and I'm terrified of intimacy.

The funny thing about this awareness of my weaknesses is that I'm overall happier now than I've ever been. Humiliated, for sure, but feeling more authentic.