A New Wine

I sat across from a wise woman ten years ago. 

 I was aching and feeling disconnected from myself. Mothering three young children, busy at church and in the community, and striving to be a modern day Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way, I was suffocating my heart. I found myself checking out at night with a couple glasses of wine, dulling the ache of my locked- up heart.  

I've discovered that hearts are funny things. Seemingly docile and well behaved, hearts won't act out until you try to silence them and lock them away. Then they will stomp around and demand you honor their truth. And if you don't, if you pretend not to hear, you had better be careful- things can and usually will get ugly.

Parker Palmer, in his book Let Your Life Speak said, "True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth."

Ten years ago, looking into my eyes, the wise woman asked me, "When you were a little girl, what did you love? What made your heart leap?"

It didn't take long for me to answer. "Books. Poetry books. Any books. Words. Writing words."

"Are you reading books now and writing?" she asked.

"No", I sheepishly responded, "I've been too busy."

"When did that become okay?" she pressed, "Why did you send the words away?  It's no wonder you self- medicate at night. Your heart is dying to be let out and you are denying it."

Her words, both welcome and frightening, were like a stream of light through a crack in a closet door, penetrating a dark place. I reasoned that I could not possibly have denied my heart. Surely I was using my heart to raise my beautiful children, to be the stellar wife I thought I was, to minister to hurting people? I fought against her words. I felt she was mistaken.

She continued to probe and poke, and her words, like a rare bird singing me a new song, a song of hope, invited my hidden heart out of the dark corner to a new place.

The wise woman then emphatically said, "You need to read books- and not just any books, but difficult books, books for which you'll need a dictionary nearby. And you need to write poetry and invite trusted writer friends to read your poetry and tear it apart."

And then she said something that I will never forget. Looking into my eyes, a Wise Spirit shining there, she spoke: "The world as well as the Enemy of your soul will rail against the very thing God made you for, because your soul's passion, the thing that makes your heart sing, is the very way God will be most magnified in your life."

Walking out her door, I knew all this would take courage.  I went home and found paper and a pen and began to write. It felt like a new wine, a refined, aged wine, not one that poured into me, but that poured out of me, and it left me dizzy.

I'm not poet laureate material.  I often use rhyming in my poetry.  But that's okay. My heart is out and breathing and growing.

This was the first poem I wrote after the conversation with my wise friend:

March 22, 2005

I stand on a cliff
Wind blown

Bully whispers to me, frightened,
"You don't belong in this place,
Go home, it's not safe."

Abandonment beckons me
Through Wind's call

I step to the edge
and
jump

Kind-Wind makes me buoyant
In this vastness

Don't know where I'm going
But it's sure fun to fly.

 
August 2009

The birds inside my garden
Are funny little things
For they like to sit a perched
Upon my sunflower's leaves like kings

I imagine that they revel
In the swaying breeze
And would rather cling to flimsy leaf
Than to a sturdy tree

How oft I choose the sturdy limb
O'er risky feeble leaf
But miss the riches of the ride
Hid in my safety tree.

Upside-Down Life

I sit on an icy bench amid a cathedral of white- frosted evergreens. Leaning into God, into the practice of solitude, I steel my will to be still, to silence my jabbering thoughts. My phone shouts at me with texts from my kids and friends and with notifications of new emails. I reach into my pocket and silence the little pest.

Earlier this morning I cross-country skied on five miles of trails through Hartman’s Creek State Park in Waupaca, Wisconsin. I shared the trails with no other company but a few birds and a couple of squirrels. I felt warmed by creation, as a playful breeze blew snow from a nearby pine and covered my cheek with a cold, snowy kiss.

Now I sit on a chilly bench and stare out at the white landscape, a snow-covered lake in the foreground, a bridge crossing a dam, and a simple playground feature equipped with two toddler swings, turned upside down. 

As I continue to quiet my thoughts, my attention settles on the two swings.  I stare for a while, and in the quietness of my spirit I muse, “Those upside-down swings in a sea of snow perfectly reflect my life right now- upside down and wintry."  I feel turned upside-down at times with the loss of my childrens' youth, the impending loss of my own youth, and the cold, barren loneliness I feel at times. 

I thought of my children as squealing toddlers, with me pushing them high and higher on swings in parks.  I couldn't help but squeeze their chubby legs as I navigated them through the openings in the swings. I could hear their squeals of delight as I pushed them high and higher, sensing their trust as they reveled in the thrill.  I recalled endless games of “Gonna get your toes, gonna get your belly, gonna get your chin” as they swung towards me, my hands reaching out to carefully tickle them as they swung through the air, their screams of wild delight making me grin.

I sat on the numbing bench and I cried. Life feels upside-down and wintry in my soul. My toddlers are teenagers with messy rooms.  I miss nuzzling their necks and singing silly songs and reading Dr. Seuss.  I miss a time when they found me hysterically funny.   I miss my three-year-old daughter Lily turning my predictable lunch of a peanut-butter sandwich with a side of sliced pears into a pear and peanut butter sandwich and devouring it.  I miss the peculiar dance my daughter Emma used to do around the house, bopping her fists together.  I miss rocking Asher and singing him made-up blues songs.   And I miss parks,  high swinging, impossibly blue skies, the smell of sunscreen, and the tickling of all available toddler parts.  

As I was feeling perfectly sorry for myself, my phone buzzed again on vibrate, and my middle child, Lily, a sophomore in high school, asked me to bring her a fast food burger for her lunch break. I chuckled to myself as I texted back, “I’m 90 minutes away, in Waupaca, skiing.” I also had to laugh when, my nineteen-year-old daughter, Emma,  announced she was simply “starving”  and my son, Asher, begged me to make more homemade ham and potato soup after we finished it off tonight. 

These days of my mid-forties feel barren and wintry at times.  The house is quiet and empty for much of the day, the girls do their own laundry, and the kids are beholden to their own social schedules.  It seems the landscape of my heart is wintry lately with a dying of sorts taking place.  Yet I know the memory seeds  are resting in this season under the blanket of our hearts.  I know they haven’t died, and though the memories we make are different now, and parks and training wheels and bandaids on boo-boos are mostly things of the past, I wait for new life and growth to spring from those seeds. And I know that they will, for spring, like winter, always comes.