in my fifties

It’s my birthday. I’m an age I couldn’t have imagined when I was twenty or twenty five. I’m fifty-three years old today, and it’s a mystery how I got here.

I was single most of my twenties, going to school and working. I was married with children in my thirties, barely conscious much of the time.

My forties were a rebellion. A mid-life struggle, maybe. An examination of faith and church and what it meant to be a woman who was not just a wife and a mother.

Now I’m in my fifties and it’s an exhale. It’s a bit like I’ve been holding my breath for decades, trying to be good at stuff, and now I am letting it all swirl away in deep sighs of release.

In my fifties, I’m giving myself permission to not be amazing. In my fifties, I’m believing what I told my younger self – that God is good and I am enough.

 

what I lost (and found) when I moved

I’ve lost my way, just a little, with this move we’ve made, away from prairie farmhouse and spring crocus and so much family history. I’ve landed in this mountainy place, beautiful but so new, and it’s not been without small challenges.

It is like the suitcase I’ve been packing for so many years – my whole life, maybe – spilled out along the journey west and I have spent these months trying to find my scattered stuff.

I used to write about family and goats and prairie life and raising rowdy boys and finding time.

All of a sudden, or so it seems, the goats got sold and the prairie got left and the boys grew up and the rhythm of the days changed.

Somewhere between Saskatchewan and British Columbia, I lost my babies and my home and my ministries and my church. But mostly, I think, I lost my purpose.

I’ve spent these past months trying to find these spilled things or, maybe, mourning them. But I realized, just the other day, that those things are lost for good. They are gone. They are memories. They don’t fit this new life in this new place.

We’re all faced with change in our lives. If we are moms, our kids grow up. If we are athletes, our careers end. If we are ministers, our ministries evolve. All of these things must happen. Anything else would be unnatural.

What doesn’t change is our desire to contribute, our need to create, our search for purpose.

Purpose is an elusive destination, a shifting X marked on an uncertain map. It’s more likely to find you than for you to find it. That’s the secret of it. I’ve heard it said it may even grow out of your weakness instead of your strength.

Maybe purpose is found in surrender, not accomplishment. Maybe it is more about listening and less about gifting.

 

a worldview of abundance

Mercy is not a virtue that you choose to put on one day. Mercy has to be your deepest way of seeing, a generosity of sprit that draws from your identity, your deepest dignity, which is love. It is basically a worldview of abundance, wherein I do not have to withhold, protect or hoard myself.  Richard Rohr

Isn’t that beautiful?

I can mercy all over the place when I have a worldview of abundance, when my spirit is not shackled by fears of not having, being, or doing enough. “Not enough” is the death of mercy.

Even “just enough” is limiting, if I think about it. Just enough suggests I’m good, I’m taken care of, I have what I need. Honestly, it keeps the focus down and in instead of up and out. Just enough is the mantra of Justice.

The scenery of merciful abundance, though, is expansive, lush, gorgeous… more than enough. Mercy is kindness and patience and generosity. Mercy looks beyond the limited view of just enough to the expanse of more than enough for all. And in that grandiosity, from out of that deep well of love, is drawn the overflowing bucket of understanding, forgiveness, compassion, and kindness.

Justice is important. Mercy makes it beautiful.

 

waking up to lent

Wait. What? February?

I’ve been sleepy since December. I’ve been yawning and stretching and snoozing, slow-poking my unpurposeful feet through days of HGTV escapism and too much sugar.

I went to church a few nights ago with a boy, the middle one, the one leaning into Catholicism, and sat with him through the Ash Wednesday service. Prayers and bells and songs and then the invitation to come for the marking with ash.

“Is it just for Catholics?” I whispered to my son.

“It’s a blessing. It’s for anyone,” he said, so I followed him through the crowd and stood in front of a stranger who dipped his fingers into an ash-filled bowl, marked my forehead with an ashen cross, and offered me a word of blessing.

I was prepared to feel something in this new experience. I was expecting some kind of joy or a spiritual something, but I was not ready for the hot prick of tears when his fingers touched my skin. The emotion of being touched unsettled me, even as I smiled and turned and went back to my pew and all the while I wanted to raise my hand to my dirty face.

I stood in my place, all uncatholic and uncertain, and I watched the worshippers around me as they dipped and bowed and kneeled, as they crossed themselves and as they folded their hands in prayer, finger tips together in a steeple, as I did when I was taught to pray in Sunday School.

These are things I’m not used to. I’m not familiar with kneeling for prayer. I’m not comfortable with being touched in church. I’m not experienced in such physical expressions of worship and that is my loss, I think.

Faith-family, back in the day, was a physical thing. Reclining at the table together and holy kisses and washing each others’ feet. Our ancient brothers and sisters exerienced their brotherhood and sisterhood in tangible, touchable ways, and I find myself moved by a thing I didn’t know I was missing.

I’m not criticizing, mind. There are beautiful congregations of worshipful people, living their faith in service-filled ways, and I’ve been blessed to be a part of many of them. It’s not a this -way-is-better-than-that-way thing.

But a few days ago, a stranger-brother in faith marked a dirty cross on my forehead, and I was undone. It woke me up, and today I washed the sleep of inertia out of my eyes and wrote these words for you to read but, mainly, for me to remember.

It’s Lent. I’m walking toward the cross.

 

 

a better goodbye

He left this morning, this oldest boy of mine. I should have been zipping him into a bright red snowsuit, kissing him on the nose, and sending him outside to play with his brothers. Instead, early in the morning, I stood in an airport, tiptoed up to kiss his bearded cheek and whispered I love you into his ear. Time really does fly.

I had him for three wonderfully ordinary weeks, full of the glory of doing nothing special. Yesterday, though, I felt the temptation to make the last day meaningful. I’ve made this mistake before.

Nothing ruins precious time more than the pressure to BE MEANINGFUL.

I’ve learned it’s better to spend the days with open hands, letting the time run freely through my fingers until there isn’t any left, and I am gentle with myself and my few tears, because I’m his mom and I love him and it’s all so very precious without me having to make it so.

 

 

saying goodbye to India

Today I was supposed to go shopping.

It’s my last day in India, and I had planned to spend it in the markets in Delhi. I’d thought I’d buy a cashmere shawl, maybe, or some earrings for myself, and maybe snap a few more photographs of this ridiculous, frantic city.

Instead, I am in the hotel. My son is sick, so I’m a mom instead of a tourist, and my last chance to see India before going home is a bust.

I’ve been a bit concerned about going home, to be honest. After seven weeks in India, the thought of landing back home just as the Christmas season is gearing up is daunting. I’ve been wearying myself with the thought of trying to put together a short-order Christmas in a borrowed house in a new town.

But, today, my child is sick, and I find myself immediately okay with stepping out of my India shoes and slipping on my taking-care-of-my-family ones. It’s time.

Soon, I will hug my dears and sleep in my bed and drink real coffee. I will put on some Christmas music, then, and bake pecan tarts and decorate the tree and watch corny holiday shows with my husband.

India is over, and home is calling.

 

being stared at in India

I am a middle-aged mother with a chin hair problem. Trust me, I have not been stared at while walking down the street in a long time, unless it’s because my skirt has been accidentally tucked into the back of my panties.

I have been stared at in India for thirty-something days, now. It’s because I am white, of course. I am very, very white, right down to my chin hairs, and that makes me obviously different. I also dress and talk and eat and laugh in distinctly different ways.

I am not used to being this obvious.

Here in India, in public places, people will often ask me for a photo. Momma and baby will stand beside me and I will smile with these strangers while Daddy takes the snap. (That’s what they say here. Let’s take some snaps to remember each other by.)

It’s a bit weird and uncomfortable, and I haven’t quite worked out the motivation for it. I’m guessing it’s a combination of novelty and misplaced white-person honour, but I really don’t know.

The street markets, though, are the most challenging. On a good day, I ward off the stares with nonchalance and self-confidence. On a bad day, I’m certain they are all passively annoyed at the clumsy, foreign woman who is willing to pay four times the going rate for a chocolate bar.

Occasionally, when I am feeling righteous, I think things like:

• This must be what it’s like to have a visible disability.
• This must be what it’s like to be an immigrant or a foreign exchange student.
• This must be what it’s like for my really tall friend, Dawn.

In my not-so-righteous moments, which are most of my moments, I am mostly annoyed. I don’t like being stared at. I don’t like feeling like I am different. Being watched makes me feel defensive and feeling defensive makes me suspicious. I assume things about what others are thinking.

Then the t-shirt vender smiles at me and I realize I don’t have a clue. I really don’t. And I am so ridiculous.

They stare, sure. Maybe some of them have negative thoughts about me, but most of them have forgotten about me three minutes after I’ve passed by. I’m no big deal. I’m a passing curiosity at best. And, let’s face it, I’m staring at them, too.

Being stared at in India has been good for me. It still makes me uncomfortable, but uncomfortable experiences are often important, humbling, learn-something-about-yourself experiences.

So, thank you for staring, India. I hope we will be mutually respectful in our curiosity. I hope I  will be a positive example of a foreign tourist in your midst. And when I blunder, I hope you will laugh with me and forgive me my boorishness. It’s not intentional.

 

Stubbing my toe in India

India is built on levels. I am stumbling over little ledges and uneven stairs, every day. I am slow to learn that a walk across a floor or a sidewalk or a road does not assume the surface will be smooth.

After three weeks, I am more cautious. I expect a few challenges as I move about. I accept the stubbed toe with less frustration over the different-to-me architecture and remind myself to lift my feet higher or move more carefully than I do in my familiar homeland. I try to do less charging around and to be more observant. I remember that I am the visitor. And in the dark, I take the arm of my son, whose eyes are better than mine and whose steps are less practised in stubborn habit.

There is a metaphor here for the traveler, I suppose. A lesson for me, at least.

 

the photo I can’t take in India

the market in Shillong

I would have missed him if Ray hadn’t stopped and pointed him out.

“How would you like to make your living like that?” he says.

I look down and see him, sitting in a little window-like depression in the wall, half-buried below the road, his knees up under his chin and his head tilted forward. A folded up man; he could have fit into my suitcase. On the ground in front of him are locks and keys, his wares for sale.

My hand finds my phone in my pocket, but I can’t bring myself to pull it out and take a photo. I feel every inch of my white skin, standing there, looking down at him.

I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know the things he thinks or feels, whether he has a family, what he will eat for supper or where he will sleep. I can’t begin to understand his life.

For a half a minute, in the busy Shillong market, I look at a man in a wall like I’d look at an animal in a zoo. I can not bring myself to photograph him. I walk by and on the next block I buy a scarf. This is India.

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the struggle of sharing without words

I have been asked to teach a class to a room full of women. I sit on a chair and smile at them, and they sit around me on chairs and wooden benches, and smile, too.

English? I say.

They look at each other and look at me and we smile at each other some more.

I am teaching a class to women in Lalmati, in the province of Assam, in India, and I do not have a translator.

I tell a small story. I act it out with flapping hands and waving arms and pointing, using all my limited acting skills, and they watch, intense and focused. I know they are not understanding but we try, together.

I pass around pictures of my family and my town. We manage to learn a little about each other, mainly the number of children we each have.

I give each woman a snowflake Christmas ornament. One woman who can speak a tiny bit of English, says, “Flower?”

“Snow,” I say, and I spend fifteen giggling minutes trying to explain snow to women who have never seen it.

Wendy and I bring out plastic beads and gold elastic, and they jump up, eager to each make a bracelet. It seems a cheap thing next to their beautiful saris, but they are excited to make and wear a pretty thing.

I am tired, walking down the mountain at the end of the day. It seems, perhaps, a silly thing, trying to share stories with people to whom I can’t talk. I don’t know their thoughts or impressions or ideas of what we did together. I don’t quite know my own.

We sat in a circle and smiled and struggled to know each other a little and, common language or not, maybe now we do.