Dying

I'm dying.
I mean, parts of me are dying.

Parenting is taking all of me and then some. It feels like everything else is withering. My writing progresses at a snail's pace, if at all. I can't start a new poem right now because I know I'll stay up too late finishing it and then be a cranky mama for my most important people.

Tiny forays into singing and songwriting demand a disproportionate amount of money, organization, sleep, and thought. Sleeplessness, speaking of, has shot to tatters my ability to think, create, converse, focus, know. Also, dishes? Laundry? Ha.

My prayer life is puny and my Scripture reading brief. I barely know my neighbors. I take hours/days/weeks to reply to texts/calls/emails.

I am less. I hope He is more, because I am definitely less.
...

Matthew and I listened to a podcast  last night about taking up our cross, giving everything to gain Christ. The guy said all of us have an obstacle between us and real life.

It might be the love of money or family or education or sex or freedom or approval or influence or pleasure or whatever. Those things aren't the obstacles, but their hold on me might be.

Any love sweeter to me than Christ impedes me from experiencing His abundant life.

And that full, abundant life is not actually found in fulfilling self. It's not found in "being true to myself." (God-given identity is beautiful, but the self was never meant to be a ruler, and when it is given power, it is a total slave driver, capricious and cruel.)

You know what's crazy? The abundant life begins with dying to self. Surrender. It's counterintuitive. The death Christ calls us to, the burial He allows, and the resurrection He most assuredly brings - that is real, ripe, free, big, wide good beautiful LIFE.

So I am struggling to thank God for the things that are killing me. I will only consent to these deaths if I trust my Lover. I will trust Him only if I remember how He has held me.

My whole life, God has been my best friend. The One Who chases me. I remember Him using a lightning storm once in the Rocky Mountains to pierce through a thick spiritual fog. I remember, more recently, a moment in the car when Him shifted some restless anxiety into bold peace. And when I read the Scriptures I see a Lover more passionate than our rebellion. He is better than life. He IS life.

So the self whistles down to the ground and lies buried. She is not dead, He says, only sleeping...

Four Fifteen

I have known this night.

I know what time the streets closed
And sent their mad jokers wandering home
Or down to the parking garage
To sleep in huddled clots;
I know how many car alarms
Scolded, pulsing, insulted, and when
The sirens soured on Tenth,
Although not why;

I know when
My husband flapped the sheets
And my mother's air mattress creaked
In the tepid hour
Of unstirred air stifling dreams,
And when my daughter
Whimpered in her sleep,
Although not why;

I can tell you when
The trucks heaved up to rumble on,
Just before today's dawn slit
The thick-wrapped bolt of night
And through the rip
The first bird flung
Its song.

If You Love Me

I am human: I will always be obeying something. God is the only Master Who invites me to obey as His daughter instead of a slave.

In Christ, obedience is no longer wrenched from us by guilt, terror, humiliation, addiction, greed, or pain. Now our obedience flows out of surprised gratitude and ever-growing love. 

Not that a submitted life is all sweetness and breathy joy; it is often hard. Loving surrender sometimes looks like Jesus sweating blood in the Garden, begging for any other way, but accepting God's will. It looks like wistfully watching two rare hours of free time ebb away because my neighbor needs to talk. It looks like praises leaving the battered lips of kneeling men about to die. Obedience to Christ demands sacrifice - the cross born -great and small. 

But the path of obedience often winds through pleasant places too. I followed God's call to a ranch way up in Pike National Forest, CO, and spent nine months in soul-filling natural beauty. I obeyed my Father and married the strong, goofy, godly man I woke up next to this morning. 

Mary's obedience to God gave her the joy of the world's only perfect son. It also pierced her with the horror of watching Him die. 

I don't know where obedience to God will take you. But I can promise that He will allow no act of obedience to be wasted. He grows the smallest mustard seed, fallen and crushed, into a huge, fruitful, sheltering tree.

Before and after we come to God, His love is always intervening, redeeming, and saving. Obedience is the only possible response to so complete a rescue.  And it is the only path to true freedom.

"It was for freedom that Christ set us free! Stand firm therefore, and never submit again to a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1

"If you love Me, you will keep my commands." John 14:15

Lame Parenting and the Torrential Downpour

Why I Backpack with a Toddler

All photos by J.D.Grubb

3am.

Insistent, shifting gusts slammed rain against our tent. In the loud dark, the wind wrenched tent pegs from the ground, ripped the raincover from our packs. Sudden drops penetrated the rainfly to pelt my face, my sleeping bag, and tomorrow’s clothes.

I spent no part of the night asleep. I focused instead on balancing my toddler’s body on my chest to protect her from the bag’s wettest patches. Into my dampening pillow I grumbled, “Drought shmout, California.”

The Road Here

We were so excited for this trip. It was to be our first backpacking trip longer than one night with our little one.

Before we became parents, friends used to smile at our dreams of backpacking, rock-climbing, and sailing with kids. “You better do the fun stuff now,” they warned. “Kids come along and your adventures are over.”

We pretended to listen, but of course we expected to be the exception. Having a child wouldn’t squelch our yearning for the extraordinary. Other people didn’t share our values. Other people liked comfort and convenience more than exploring the great wild unknown together.

And then, pregnancy. An incubating dream, the tiny wild unknown inside me.

I stayed active. I jogged, kayaked, swam, and took backpacking trips at 2 months, 4 months, and 6 months in. I got a lot of props for this, and I do love props. And there was part of me that wanted to prove: if you love it, you will do it, even with kids.

Backpacking with Matthew. I'm four months along here.

The day after Vienna’s delivery my hips and pelvis wobbled, rubbery, when I tried to stand up. Birthing demands much of the female body. My inability to instantly do and be exactly what I had done and been before Vienna surprised me. I wondered if my single and kid-free buddies would now lump me in with Everyone Else.

Maybe this backpacking trip, longer than any we'd done since Vienna, was my chance to prove them wrong.

Climbing Muscles
The hike up, a few hours before the downpour began, was physically arduous for me, but visually stunning. I was new to my pack, the Osprey Poco, snagged for cheap and good for carrying both gear and toddler. I was new to the trail as well, a 4.5 mile ascent in the Sunol-Ohlone wilderness just north of Milpitas, CA.

Ready or not, here we ascend.

I felt the difference between baby and toddler with every step. My shoulders bowed under the pack, and my butt, I was pretty sure, would burn flat off by the trip’s end. But I also reveled in my sure-footed steps, in the generous expansion of my lungs, and in my leg muscles, aching but capable.

“What a good way to be a woman,” I chanted to myself, panting. “What a strong way to be a mother!”

We wound endlessly up golden hills as the sun sank beneath them and the breeze lifted the day’s heat from our necks. Above us, stars intensified and multiplied as we left the city’s lights behind.

Passing the Night

As we set up camp at the top, a mist turned to drizzle, then matured into a full-blown deluge before the stovetop mac n cheese was done. The summit was suddenly cold and very, very windy. I bundled Vienna into the tent, gobbled dinner, and followed in after her for a night of nurse-dozing, dodging drops, and one half-clothed dash outside to restake a peg.

In the night I agonized as only the insomniac can. Would I be strong enough to push on for 12 miles tomorrow? What if the next night was just like this? If I wimped out, what would it say about me?

Descending

Morning dawned unrepentantly sopping.

“We’re packin’ it in,” I told our friends. Vienna’s health trumped everything; I knew I couldn’t guarantee her a dry night. But I was desperately hoping our pals would bail too, so that it wouldn’t be a lame parent thing, just a lousy weather thing.

Breakfast in the morning, a hurried, soggy affair. Thank God for light cheap ponchos.

Vienna and I get ready to pack it in.

They deliberated over breakfast. And decided to push on. My identity as The Up-For-Anything Mama took a hit.

But as we began the descent back to the car, it was impossible to stay discouraged. The gray clouds receded, revealing wide green pastures and huge fortresses of rock, all the more richly colored for being rain-soaked. We saw hawks idling above us, looking for prey, framed by redwoods older than the town below. The air was so fresh, breathing felt like drinking.

Vienna sat cozy in her flannel footie pajamas on my back, singing in a high soft babble about everything we passed. Matthew and I murmured to each other on the way down, pointing out a cluster of poppies, a monstrous fern frond, a black squirrel scattering raindrops down onto us.

Rest

At the bottom we all lunched together before parting ways. Now dry and warm, Vienna bounced into motion, collecting pine-cones, chatting at the racoons, and flirting with everyone we met. To her, lunch-time alone was a smashing success, not to mention the joyful ruckus preceding it.

And she was right. The whole thing was a success. Because I don’t backpack with my family to earn props, to illustrate that parents can be cool, or to prove anything to anybody, including myself.

I backpack to breathe the clean air and walk at nature’s pace for a time. To journey, with the people I love best, into a realm outside our control. To enjoy the singular simplicity of a year, or a day, in which to Walk, Marvel, Eat, and Sleep are the only tasks - that is the real adventure.

Between

After Easter's whoops and incense,
Pollen and bells,
When Christ tells us
"Wait - "

Before we priests
And makers of tents
Duck, surprised, beneath
The holy flame, and find
Our tongues alight as well,

We have creeks to dredge,
Cars to sell,
Children to bathe again,
Mops to push through puddles,
Levers to nudge into place; our

Eyes flicker upward.
Knuckles and knees and elbows ache
To be indwelt.

Life Without Plumbing: The Chaos, The Beauty

Welcome home, selves. No running water for you!

Vienna, Matthew and I made it back from Denver in one piece, but just barely. I spent the flight with my green hoodie cinched tight round my face like a dying vampire, hunched over the tray table trying to sleep through wicked chills and the pulse in my eyes.

Actually, maybe I was the only one struggling. Matthew and Vienna were cheerful-to-raucous while waiting for the carseat to come thumping off the conveyor belt; I was the one considering a nap on the airport floor. I knew I had a fever and was praying Vienna and Matthew wouldn’t get sick. I figured we’d all be fine if we could just get home to our quirky old apartment, flop into bed, and fly under the radar for a quiet little while.

Cue the landlady’s note on our apartment door.

Don’t use sinks. Don’t use toilet.

Plumbers here all week.

See can of Febreeze and sweets on counter.

We are on day four of having no shower, sink, or toilet. Or day five? It’s all starting to run together.

There’s this Jenga’ed  mountain of dishes teetering against the kitchen wall.  Obviously I smell and my hair looks – um – shabby chic? The cloth diapers are ripening fragrantly.  Vienna, a new scoocher fiercely committed to dust bunny digestion, cannot be let on the floor at all. I’m pretty lasses-faire about germs, but even I realize how disgusting the possibilities are right now.

I swallow my pride and ask my neighbors, several times a day, if I can please use their toilet. Sometimes nobody’s home and Vienna and I walk to the library to, you know, see a man about a dog. Matthew and I have spot-bathed in whatever sinks were available to us, and Vienna has just had wipes-baths.

Regarding the injection of noise, chaos, and clomping around of workmen into my desperation for rest, God has provided amazingly. He’s been maximizing Vienna’s every nap. To paraphrase His famous parable about the lilies of the valley, she has woken not, neither has she stirred, not for the sawzall cutting tile by her bedroom door nor for polka music blasted from the bathroom. In fact, I think she likes the polka music.

And I thought I would hate being sick with strangers in the house. Don’t you just want to bum around in sweatpants when you’re sick, and not wear your contacts so you can sleep on demand, and watch Cosby Show episodes all day without anybody around?

But it’s been kind of cozy. Vienna and I have more or less holed up in the bedroom. We play and read on the bed, listen to the Hillsong worship station on Pandora, and do some mild dancing when we’re feelin’ it. We drift in and out of naps. I nurse her for long, sweet sessions that don’t end for errands, laundry, or cooking because hey, that’s all a lost cause at the moment.

Life feels simpler.

When energetic, we poke our heads out. I chat with the plumbers while Vienna peers at their grout trowels, copper pipes, and drills. Marco’s daughter is the same age as mine. Juan is a long-practiced dad, who helped me baby-Heimlich a broccoli stem out of Vienna’s throat last night. Then we bonded over World War II trivia and I hear about his newest baby boy.

One day it all got to be too much, though, and I was going to cry from exhaustion and frustration and oh, yeah, I was still sick. I Phoned-a-Friend, she let me into her house (oo, running water!), and we had the loveliest chat while Vienna took one nap without construction clamor.

Life feels more relational.

Don’t’ get me wrong. Life also feels a heck of lot dirtier and less convenient. I’ll name no names, but somebody in this apartment peed in a vase in the middle of the night. If you ever come over here after reading this, you will NOT encounter this item. Promise.

At our church there’s an ongoing campaign to build wells in areas without clean water. You know what? I’m suddenly paying attention. I wasn’t before, to be honest. But now, I’ve actually been thirsty. I’ve been unable to wash my dishes or cook a lot of my food. And I know I could go to the neighbors or down the street if I really needed clean water.

How do people survive without any access to clean water at all?

A lot don’t survive. And now I care. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it yet, but I’m starting with caring.

So, anyway, these are some of the things I’m learning during this feverish and filthy phase of life. When it’s all over, I think we’re going to have a Plumby New Pipes Party. You may come. There will be lots of clean dishes and fresh tap water, no cut flowers, and no polka.

For Martin

Short stubble
on his neck
like sand from lava,

His shoulders platforms,

A self swallowed in cause,
or made most manifest therein,

In throat tongue spit
the rhythms and heft of grace,
hoarse lilt drawn over the mad many,

Life to the hilt, meaning
death to the mad self, on behalf of
anyone else,

Everyman shoes slap
pavement by the lolling tongues
of dogs and snub
noses of clubs.