When Helping Doesn't Help

The words "storage room" were much too generous a term. It was a dust-piled, dirt-shrouded mass of shelves and rodent-attacked cardboard boxes and bins.

Our job was to sort the hundreds of bottles in those boxes...to cull the pills and liquids and organize them into manageable stacks that the workers in this small Guatemalan building could use.

There were pills for dogs. Tinctures from veterinary offices. Large, chalky tablets that would choke a full-grown adult.

But this was a malnutrition center for babies.

To add insult to the already-overflowing pile of useless items, the great majority of the medicines were completely expired, vastly outdated. Something a U.S. parent would never, ever risk giving to her infant or young, sick child.

Yet that's how people helped: In ways that didn't actually help.

In another village nearby, teams of generous volunteers donated water filters in places where children's bodies were so wracked by waterborne illnesses that they were vomiting and defecating worms from their tiny frames. These filters would, quite literally, save lives. Yet in the rush to disperse the gifts, no instructions were given on how to use those filters and so, months later, when other teams visited the village, life-saving filtration systems had been turned into upside-down storage vessels to hold dry goods.Or planters to grow some herbs.

Yet that's how people helped: In ways that didn't actually help.

In the closets and classrooms of a local Guatemalan church building, volunteers spent hours hand-sorting tangled masses of clothing, pieces donated to the poor of our town. Nearly two-thirds of these stained, unwashed, often-disintegrating items were ones you or I would never consider wearing. They would have been cast aside or cut into rags to wipe down our toilets. They should have been. Sending them was, instead of useful, another burden. Now precious volunteer time and building space were wasted on what was no better than trash.

Yet that's how people helped: In ways that didn't help.

There were gifts of livestock to families who had no means of feeding and caring for such animals. There were stacks of children's DVDs. In English. To children who spoke two other languages fluently. And while the intent was love, the receivers felt only burdened with a new problem. 

As citizens of a generous nation, we can often skew toward a particular mindset: Across our nation's history, we have a tradition of being the fixers, the doers, the pioneers who fearlessly blast through geographical boundaries, who are among the first lining up to give our time and our aid to the least of these.

But sometimes our helping does not help. In recent days, as innocent people have faced shattering blow upon blow, we long to help. And we should. It is not a time to sit. It is not a time for inaction. Yet as we move forward, let us ask ourselves these questions: What do our friends and neighbors really need? Have we bothered to ask them? Have we decided we know best for them? Have we looked for the organizations already at work within their own communities? Have we, instead of choosing what we in our great United States ingenuity decide is best, asked the frightened ones what they really need?

In our little efforts in the villages in Guatemala, during our short years there, we slowly and often awkwardly, and with the great patience of our local friends and citizens, had to learn as well. We had to learn to be humble, to be listeners more than Master Plan Writers, to slow down and hear our needy friends instead of blasting down their fragile doors with our oh-so-privileged ideas of what they needed. And as we listened, the children began to receive the life-saving medicines crafted just for their sizes. The water filtration teams learned to spend hours with the communities, to teach each person exactly how to use the system that could bring a family back to health. The volunteers learned what kind of clothing was needed or, better yet, took the mother of the family shopping in the local markets for what her family required. Because the mamas always know best. Start with the mamas.

Let's be unafraid in these days of fear: Unafraid to admit what we don't know. Unafraid to be learners. Unafraid to be listeners. Unafraid to fall into step behind those already leading their hurting communities so well. Because we don't know. But we can learn and, in that learning, truly, beautifully help.

In The Bleak Midwinter

"In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow.

In the bleak midwinter,

Long, long ago."

I'm not sure when I first heard this song, but its words were stuck in my brain this morning; as stuck as the front door that wouldn't budge, its handle squealing its protest of my opening it to the cold world outside.

As I walked along my morning path, the ground beneath my booted feet could only be described in the words of that poem, "Earth stood hard as iron." My steps and the light prancing of the furry puppy next to me pounded against the rough, unforgiving surface, not even making an impression into its brutal coldness.

The world was so hard.

The world IS so hard.

We have all been hurt, sometimes in devastating ways...ways that shattered our whole being against the hard earth, ways that made us think everything we believed in was not true, not real, a wicked lie that made fools of us. Sometimes, the pain came from those who had promised to love us best, and sometimes it was in little, petty ways that were more of our own wounded heart's interpretation of another's intent. But still, there was great hurt. All of the things...big or small...have punctured our tenderness with their frozen steel-tipped arrows.

Just this morning, while the epiphanies of my stroll were still simmering in my brain, my impossibly cold hands wrapped around a steaming beverage in the hopes that some part of me could be warm; in the midst of breakfasts being eaten and dishes piling in and out of sinks and laundry never leaving and school questions flying around the air, there was a brief email that came in and took my breath away with the sheer insensitivity of it. Eyes began to sting. Heart dropped and sickened.

And I felt my heart close as tightly as a fist.

Hard as iron. Hard as iron. Just like the ground.

I wanted to be angry in the justifiable RIGHTNESS of my rage. I wanted to lash out and tell the world what a jerk it was being today.

But I've been as hard as iron before. And it's terrible. It means I look all around me just waiting for people to screw up and hurt me. It means I view everything through the scratched, fogged-up lenses of Let's See How This Must Be About Me glasses. It means I push people away with my prickliness. It means I'm cynical and closed off and eventually alone with my blanket of self-pity which, by the way, is a very thin and moth-eaten and lonely cover.

Instead, in the bleak midwinter of my hurt, whether that hurt is something simple that I can choose to step over and be done with in an hour, or whether it is something brutal that will take work and tears and years, I can be, instead of a hard ground, a soft and yielding place.

Instead of holding the hurt tightly in my icicled hands, I can become humbled and understanding and YES, ABSOLUTELY allow myself to feel pain and to cry and to say words that I don't want my kids to hear or repeat, but then...then, I have to allow my hands to open and release. I have to remember the things that I can change, which usually...well, actually, never....include other people.

Instead of allowing the hurt to fashion me into something hard and unyielding that shatters people when they come up against me, I can become a gentle place for them to fall. Because they will fall. I will fall. Instead of breaking against each other, we can catch each other.

Choosing the softer way means I will get hurt. A lot. It means I have to look at myself and say, Yep, I'm sensitive. Way, way sensitive a lot of the time.  I know that it means I have the beautiful, breath-catching capacity to Love Big, but it also means I have the terrifying, soul shaking capacity to Break Hard.

If we have lived on this Iron Earth for any more than a few years, we have loved and we have been broken: wide open, brutally and unfairly. And we can let our hearts be terribly frozen. But the wide open warmthness of heart and the way of gentleness and of love and yes, oh yes, of wisdom in how to navigate this way of love is too gorgeous to miss. It requires our boots and gloves and scarves, not to protect us against the pain (oh no, there's no armor for that). Instead of shields for our souls and our hearts, the gear we drape ourselves in becomes simply  a way for us to keep walking longer, to keep loving harder,  to keep reaching that hand to another and finding more warmth as we join those hands. To keep walking on the iron-solid ground of this planet, our footsteps together treading stronger than we ever would alone.

And what was once Cold and Hard and Stone becomes Life and Soft and Green. The bleak midwinter always gives way to spring. It always has, a million times over, and always will again. It is unstoppable. May it be unstoppable in our hearts as well.

In the Bleak Midwinter, Christina Rossetti, 1872

The Quiet Work of Justice

There is a moment for mouths to be opened, for shouts once locked up behind closed lips to be set loose.

There is a place for placards to be held high.

There is a space for slogans to be written.

There is a time for treading the path of the marchers.

This is the loud work of justice.

But what about the quiet ones, the ones whose hearts pull deeply down into the depths of grief for their sisters and brothers and lovers and friends....

For the quiet ones, the ones who will never stand behind a podium, lift a hand-scrawled sign, step into the footfalls of a protest....

For the ones who, every day, scrub and wipe faces and bodies and scrub and wipe again and again; who hold babies their own and babies not their own close in arms...arms not raised aloft holding markered words but arms wrapped warm around a fractured heart....

For the ones who walk, not in a march, but beside a needy neighbor, a broken stranger, a shattered soul, a bruised child....

For the ones who pass behind the blinding lights and the brocade curtains of the stage; who catch the falling pieces and right the crooked lines....

For the ones who do the quiet work of justice every day: You are the living, pulsing life-blood of peace in our world.

You may never be a name in bright fonts for others to admire. You may never be a sound ringing through the speakers, a face spotlighted with fame. You may never be feet worn through with marching and protesting. But your feet are still beautiful bearers of justice: Quiet Workers of justice in a world that is often too loud for you.

Walk on, dear one. Walk on behind and around and with your sisters and brothers who march in the lights. Your arms under and near are the beams that hold together the stage of solidarity.

Your feet, making your own way in the dimly-lit moments, will pave the way smoother for those who will walk in the noon.

Your eyes, watchful and waiting, will see the needy in corners, the hiding ones others will miss. We need your eyes and arms and feet. We need your Quiet Work of Justice to strengthen our own shouts, to hold high our tired hands. We need your particular brand of strength.

We are all doing the work of justice with different weapons, different methods, different volumes to our voices. But we are doing it together.

Walk on.

Sisters and Ducks

Perhaps you've heard of Pamplona's Running of the Bulls? That event's intensity pales in comparison to the excitement which occurs every morning and evening in my very own yard. We have dubbed it The Running of the Ducks, and it involves two steps: In the foggy-cool morning, sweet, fat, ridiculously-loved ducks are set loose from their kennel to dash (waddle) toward the pond (also known in Duckspeak as Nirvana) where they paddle and splash and eat whatever green growing things ducks eat all day long. In the evening, during the approximately 32 seconds between the sun beginning to set and absolute darkness, the ducks are then lured with The Great Red Solo Cup Of Duck Food back to their safe sleeping quarters for the night.

Except one night. One night it all went wrong. The sun set just a few minutes early, my people were distracted with books and homework and suddenly, night was upon us. My daughter and her youngest brother tried all of the tricks they could come up with. Offering more food. Handfuls of spinach held out enticingly. Promises of a warm bed to come. Pleas. Tears (mostly from the worried mama watching and trying/failing to not interfere). Nothing worked. Finally, one duck swam close enough to the edge of the pond for my daughter to grab her, so she was placed behind the locked-tight gate of the kennel. At least one baby was safe.

Until the protests began. Nope. Miss Duck would not have it. She couldn't even. She was panicked, afraid for her sisters who she knew were still in the pond. She was quacking and squawking so loudly we could hear her above our own sounds ringing throughout the house. So we brought her back out into the night and placed her onto the porch where she waddled back and forth, back and forth, pacing about in her little webbed feet, her small beak and eyes trained upon the water where her sisters were still in danger. Who knew what predators were gathering in the deep woods surrounding the dark depths that held the remaining ducks? She would not leave her sisters. And they answered back, longing to get to her but not knowing how, calling out but unable to see their path to her.

Eventually, we had to place the poor girl (the duck, not my daughter) back into the shrouded pond with her sisters, where they immediately swam in formation to the small island of land in the center and huddled together, a mass of feathers prepared to wait out the cold night ahead. They were so tightly packed that we could not, the next morning, tell how many had made it through the danger. Finally, the sun warmed them enough for their wings to spread out and for their little necks to reach up and greet the safety of the day. They had survived. Together.

Right now, in this very day, we have sisters existing in places where actual predators have gathered, where the only option is to huddle together. Where there is no way to flee, no way to see the path to safety. So they stay, a tightly-knit mass of sisterhood, and wait until the morning.

Right now, we have sisters who have made a wrong step or two....and who among us has not....and they feel trapped and alone on the island of those decisions. We can enter the water with them, remain closely packed together until there is a clear path, a new day. We can remind them and, in that retelling, remind ourselves that messing up doesn't mean we ARE messed up.

Right now, we have sisters who are in the murky waters of loss and grief. They just need a sister who won't leave them; who will say, "I won't try to explain this away or tell you to keep your chin up or Romans 8:28 you. I'm sorry and I'm here and I won't leave, even when everyone else gets weary along the journey of your sorrow and paddles away to shore."

Right now, we have sisters whose marriages are not the safe, happy places they once were. Maybe a sister has received the heart-shattering electric shock of discovering betrayal in her closest relationship. Perhaps life and work and hardship has worn her down and she doesn't even like who she is and who she married anymore. She needs a sister who can say, "Me, too. Me, too. But I'm here to be your mirror to truth and your bridge to finding home again."

Right now, we have sisters who are in the excruciatingly normal process of letting a child leave the nest. Perhaps a sister is caught in the current: She watches, willing her child to be a functioning, independent adult and, simultaneously scans the waters around him, her mother-vision eyesight (stronger than any military-grade goggles) lighting up the sniper here, the hidden land mine there. Her wingspan is no longer wide enough to hold the child under her care. She needs a sister who can tell her she's normal. She needs a sister who knows the stretching and pulling of a Mother Heart, who will not rationalize away the complex ache of her friend.

Right now, we have sisters in all of these places of need. Whether or not we have been on the same waters they now navigate is irrelevant. Pain is pain is pain is pain. Hurt and betrayal and loss and grief are universal.

This morning, as I look out upon the now-icy stretch of my pond, I know that soon the quiet early air will be swallowed by the sounds of duck sisters having their version of morning coffee together. They will discuss what area of the water looks most passable. They will feel out the food situation. They will splash each other playfully and dive under and pop back up, the cold droplets of winter water running off their iridescent feathers. But they will do all of this together. No one will float away alone. Their webbed appendages will push through the reeds and the swirling places as one unit, their journey only attempted  together.

Perhaps these silly ducks aren't as silly as I thought. Let's stay together, sisters. Let's not leave each other defenseless. Let's not compete: For boys, for accomplishments, for the approval of others. Let's not climb on each other's backs to get places; Let's watch each other's backs to usher us all to a shore of safety, an island of unity where we can keep each other close until the morning comes.

Addiction

I assumed it was just the curled-up body on the park bench, hand locked around its brown-bagged treasure.

I assumed it was the shaking hand seeking pockets for cash, a payment needed to still the tremors.

I assumed it was the selling of a warm body or a pint of blood or the spilling of the baby's piggy bank contents.

I used to think that addiction was something that happened to the Other. To the unwashed and the uneducated and the uncultured.  To "those" people. Until the day when addiction's breath blew the roof off my house; until I discovered that people I loved, those I trusted, more than one of them who held my heart held it in the shaking, seeking hands of an addict.

Sometimes, addiction looks like the white-collared man with 2.5 kids whose chest is crushed by the weight of responsibility that he can never escape. Sometimes addiction looks like the mom for whom the Lego-filled, snot-streaked days are endless. Sometimes addiction looks like the teenager whose heart squeezes so tightly with pain that he just needs a way to loosen the cords, to breathe. Sometimes addiction looks like the demon of damaging memories that will never stop chasing us down.

Addiction is the promise of a hiding place, a dark, warm cave where we can be safe. Yet in the rare flicker of light, we glimpse that the cave leads to nowhere; that there are monsters inside who lick their lips while they wait to feed on our flesh.

Addiction is the warm-blanket promise of comfort, of relief. Yet it turns out to be threaded with lies, ridden with vermin.

When someone we love is smothered by that blanket, snared deep in that cave, we think at first that we can rescue. We can fix it. We hack at the boulders, sure we can cut the body free. We dig deep into the night, sure we can loosen the cave's rubble. We wear ourselves down to blood and bone trying to be their savior. But real rescue only shows up when we put down the sword, put down the shovel and let the Truth in.

It is addiction's shamefulness that keeps us in the dark of the cave, pulling us back from the very light we need, a light that tells us this: It takes ropes and strength and pulling and sliding backwards and inching forward painfully again and again and again to pull someone free. When we shine the headlamp of brave truth into the cave, not everyone will welcome that light. Some will run from the tangled, putrid mess before them. Some will stay, and in those people you will find your tribe, your rope-pullers, your saber-wielders.

But before we even begin to attempt such a rescue, we must stare down the dark tunnel of this painful understanding: If someone we love is held in the false comfort of Addiction's lying arms, we cannot save them. We cannot change them. We cannot fix them. Yes, they can find the help and the hope and the wholeness they need, but the sharp-edged fact we must accept is that the healing will not come from us. The addict must pick up his own shovel, grasp tight his own rope. She must break addiction's hypnotic gaze, if only for a moment.  And when she does, we will be there. Only when she does. And only as part of a rescue team, only as one of many lamp-holders and shovel-bearers.

We would never dare storm a terrorist-filled hideout alone, with one gun, one bullet; and addiction is the ultimate terrorist. So gather your weapons, ready your arms for battle, and wait: Wait for the cry for help from the cave. And when you hear it, run toward it, but in the running, know this: Addiction is a hell of a fight. It is a battle that will take out the stragglers, the lone warriors who try to go it on their own. Run together. Run with those who know your story, with those who hold up to you the mirror of honesty rather than the funhouse-distorted reflection that addiction waves before your face.

If you feel alone in addiction's fortress tonight, if you feel that the lies of someone you love have twisted your reality until you know longer recognize what is real, know that this is addiction's agenda: To keep you alone and isolated until you are another tally mark on her wall, another victim of her deceit. Those who are in some way shattered by addiction are standing and walking and working all around us today; so many of us look like the moms and dads and carpoolers and classmates and professionals and students who have it all together, who have the pinterest-perfect lives. We don't. Not one of us does. It is time to break down the wall of shame that has hidden you from help. The good news is, you don't have to bludgeon down the whole rocky span. You just need one small, tiny space with which to reach your hand through. There will be a hand on the other side to grab you....the hand of a fellow warrior who will pull you through, who is there waiting for you to ask.

"It is absolutely terrifying the kind of deep suffering the happiest looking people are able to hide inside themselves." Nikita Gill

There are so many resources out there for those who are either in addiction or in relationship with an addict....a parent, a child, a spouse. Some of my favorite organizations are AA and Al-Anon. Celebrate Recovery is another excellent program with a Christian perspective to its 12 steps. If you need more resources, please feel free to message me as well. 

Who Are My Neighbors?

It was a near-daily occurrence for my son and me. We were taking a stroll down the long, tree-shrouded stretch of land which I believe city folk pave with asphalt and dub a "driveway," chatting about the little things like John Oliver's latest episode and the big things like what would be on the dinner menu. Then we heard it: the crunch and squeal and slam of what could only be an accident, followed by a new sound carried above the rest, that of a man yelling for help. My son turned to sprint around the tree line, his feet sliding on the gravel as he came to a stop and saw before him an ATV flipped against an oak, a young girl lying beside it.

All that my son and I and the neighbor who came upon us could do was talk quietly, soothingly to the girl as she tried to hold her trembling body very still. Her distraught father, who had raced down the lane to summon aid, tore back toward us in billows of dirt and smoke, rocks and dust kicking up around him. And he didn't come back alone. Almost immediately, person upon person began to arrive for the child's rescue, car upon car, people piling out of vehicles, more than I'd ever seen on our country road. There was no asking whose fault the crash had been. There was no assessing responsibility. There was triage. There was response. There were gentle words and helping hands and, later, there would be the good news that the only repair needed was on the girl's broken arm.

In recent days and weeks, brokenness has been set before our eyes in horrific and graphic words and images. We, too, have been asked to act on behalf of strangers, to bring help to the injured. Yet it is not the first time we have been asked to act as rescuers of the wounded. If we look back just an inch on history's timeline, we can see the shadows....

When the soldiers came in the night, shattering homes, burning sacred places, snapping necks, taking fathers away from children.

"That's so tragic," we said, shaking our heads and looking away.  And we went about our business. And the night was given a name, "Kristallnacht." And the world would never be the same.

When a ship sailed in the night, bearing cargo upon which no price could be placed, Jewish souls who sought refuge from the terrorism happening in their homeland.

"That's not our problem," we said. And we went back to work. And the ship was given a name, "The Voyage of the Damned." And other countries took in the wanderers, the ones we had turned away.

When one quarter of a country's population was murdered by war criminals, we waited. And considered the options. And did not bring the executioners to trial until more than 30 years had passed. And Cambodia's nearly two million dead would not know justice.

When men bearing weapons went from house to house in Rwanda, slaughtering and raping and destroying. "We are only here to monitor, not to act," the nations declared. And carefully crafted their statements to avoid the word "genocide." And a nation was ravaged while those in charge chose politically-savvy sound bites instead of safe havens for the wounded.

And now, as so many other times before, bombs have dropped into the night, and bullets have sprayed during the bright spotlight of day, shamelessly splitting legs from torsos, bodies from souls, pulling mothers from babies.

"There's nothing we can do," the world said. And tweeted about the latest antic of a celebrity's lip-sync scandal. And those with the power to act stopped their ears to the children's screams. And the days were given a name, "The Battle for Aleppo." So civilians picked up food-filled bags and were brave enough to cross battle lines and bring care to their fellow men and women. To the bruised and innocent tiny ones.

For weeks now, we have seen the faces before us: soot-streaked, blood-marked. Yet when the bloodied have begged for aid, many have handed out...instead of help...the age-worn argument of focusing on the need in our own land. There is great need here.  Absolutely there is. Yet we don't have to choose between helping us or helping them. When there is a crash, an emergency, within our eyesight, within our knowledge...when we come upon a smoking wreckage before us, we don't stop to ask questions about who needs to be pulled out of the fire, how much it will take from us to give to them. We don't evaluate whether or not to help. There is no us or them. There's only us. And in emergencies, we act. We triage. We stop the hemorrhage.

Let's be the hands of the neighborhood today. Let's not argue with the cynics who wait and weigh and wonder. Syria's people are our crash-wounded neighbors. They are broken and battered and begging for our help. Let's circle around the wounded, giving what we can. Like our neighbor girl who needed experts and technicians and long-term treatment, the shaken of Aleppo will need the same. But we can't wait until the strategies are formulated and the treaties are honed. There are already humanitarian boots on the ground, passing out nourishment and blankets to fill hands that have, until now, been holding children's bodies and hastily-wrapped parcels of possessions with which to flee their homes. Let's line up behind those boots, fueling them with the tangible expressions of love we can give to our world's neighborhood today.

P.S. There are many organizations who are doing great work in shattered places. One of my favorites is Preemptive Love. Check out their brave and beautiful work here: www.preemptivelove.org

Looking for a loophole [the religious leader questioned Jesus]  “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

 Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’

 “What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.

Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10:25-37, MSG)

Photo Credit: Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, NYT Article, August 21, 2016: "One Photo of a Syrian Child Caught the World's Attention"

(Stats on Cambodia from Miranda Leitsinger, Casey Tolan, CNN article entitled, "A timeline of the Khmer Roughe regime and its aftermath," April 16, 2015, cnn.com)

(Douglas Jehl, NYT, June 10, 1994, "Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings 'Genocide' ")

Ahmad, age 2, who died from his injuries shortly after this photo was taken

Have Yourself A Very Imperfect Christmas

I had a list. I always have a list. It's a genetic thing and a Type A thing, and I get a little thrill when I cross items off of the to-do category. But this day, as I walked with multitasking purpose in my stride, checking things off both my actual list and mental list simultaneously, I happened to glance up at the store window in front of me. "We Wish You the Perfect Christmas," it said. The Perfect Christmas. I happen to know that a Perfect Christmas does not exist.

I have had many Not Nearly Perfect Christmases. I have had newly-married Christmases in which I tore into my gifts with ridiculously high expectations and then had to pretend that the fuzzy socks or water filter or TURKEY BASTER I was given was exactly what I wanted. I only wish I were kidding about these aforementioned gifts.

I have had Very Imperfect Christmases where I was a newly-postpartum mom who tried with all of her sleep-deprived bones to make the holiday flawless for her people. To bake and decorate the ideal snowman-shaped cookies. To get the lights and the gifts and the concerts and the food just so. To create the ideal Christmas Experience. And then to finally take the antidepressants her doctor prescribed and wonder if she were a total failure for doing so.

I have had Emotional Christmases in another country where the gifts had to be carefully weighed and packed in suitcases in order to be brought to my kids, and the meal was delicious but not our familiar fare, and we were with sweet friends but family wasn't there, and there were new traditions to learn... tiny little things like war-zone-caliber-firework explosions ripping through the world at midnight on Christmas Eve. Have a Silent Night, everyone.

I have had Lonely Christmases where I read all of the wise books and practiced all of the spiritual disciplines and tried to hush the noise and remember the truth of the season. Yet it felt like a dark mist separated me from any comfort that a manger-held baby might bring. 

But my Ghosts of Imperfect Christmases Past remind me why this season can be its own minefield-littered land for so many of us: It's because everything is heightened at Christmastime...the feelings, the hunger, the happiness, the loneliness, the wondering. It's as if a spotlight is clicked onto our lives and the highs are brought into sharp relief while the dark shadows become even blacker. It's why there aren't enough things to eat or glasses to drink or packages to open. It's the reminder that Christmas, like life, will never be perfect, that expectations will never be completely met, that tiredness and old hurts will never be overcome by sugar and cocktails and lights and glitter. It's understanding that even the beautiful things like love and friendship are a challenge. That they cannot be measured in a value marked on a gift receipt, that their worth cannot be wrapped up and boxed in. When we try to show each other how much we love and appreciate each other in the form of a thing, it will always, always fall short. It can't be given and shown on one single day of the year.

So for all of the moms who are just too tired to do Christmas this year; for all of the brokenhearted who are lonely and wish the day would pass quickly; for all of those who add and subtract and re-add and subtract and worry over the numbers in the bank account that won't stretch far enough; and even for those who have a loud family and a gorgeous tree and more food stuffed in the fridge than they could ever eat in 24 hours....Lay down the expectations of the season. Give breathing space for imperfections. The dog will probably get into the stockings and eat 82% of the candy. One or 18 shatterproof ornaments will shatter. The cinnamon rolls might fall flat. The memory-making traditional casserole probably won't taste exactly like you remembered it. The power will go out and the two-thirds-blinking Christmas lights will require a curse word or five, and the star-shaped cookies will resemble The Blob more than any recognizable celestial body.

But in the midst of the noise and the mess, perhaps we can sit quietly with a new definition of perfection. Perhaps we can resolve to do it differently this year and know: 

That we can set this day free from the chains of expectation. 

That we can sit in the bright moments of joy, soak their light in, accept them for the moments that they are, and then let them fly away on their shimmering wings. 

That we can, in giving comfort to others, find comfort for ourselves. 

That we can, in forgiveness, find healing for some of the hurts of Christmases Past. 

That we can, in remembering, recall that the whole point of the season is the good news which comes after the waiting, the wanting. And that the waiting and the wanting makes the good news immeasurably sweeter. 

That we can, in our waiting, find acceptance: That some Christmases may be holly and jolly, and some may be small and quiet, and some may be bright and glittery, and most may be a gloriously tangled strand of them all. But they are, even in their shatteredness or stillness or loudness, perfectly imperfect. That we can give room to ourselves and to others. That we can allow the sweetness of the light moments to hold us in the times when the light is hard to find.

A Very Merry Imperfect Christmas to you. 

Little Ears and Hearts

I want to raise good citizens.

I want to raise moral, generous people who will fight injustice wherever they see it happening.

I want to see honorable, compassionate, empathetic adults emerge from the children in my care. But too often I forget this one detail: They are still children.

This past week has uncovered a selfishness I never knew existed in myself and other adults around me. We want to rage and express our fury and take sides and make statements and fight for peace. Because peace is so very often a fight. But in the exercising of our rights to speak up and speak out, we are forgetting that along with those rights comes, as always is the case, responsibility.

We are forgetting that there are little ears and eyes everywhere. We are forgetting that, as any person who's been a parent for more than 5 minutes can tell you: Children are incredibly perceptive. They may not hear us ask them to TAKE OUT THE TRASH until the 66th billionth time we say it, but they hear the whispered worries, the muttered curses, the dining-room discussions. And more than that, they hear the unspoken things: The tones, the stress-filled sighs, the clenched jaws, the slamming and the stomping.

This week, children under my care have asked questions no child should ask. Children under my care have dreamed nightmares no child should dream and have spent truly sleepless nights with the lights on, lights intended to chase monsters away. The problem is, those monsters are not my child's monsters to fight.

This week, I've experienced my own Parent Guilt over my inability to protect my child from the fears all around. Yes, those fears are often legitimate. Yes, those fears are worth weighing and working through. But as we weigh them for ourselves, let us remember to weigh them on a vastly different scale for our children. If we as adults are aghast and appalled and we actually HAVE the tools and resources to do something about what we see happening, how much more anxiety and fear are we placing on the small shoulders of our youngest citizens?

Shoulders which cannot and should not be asked to carry these things.

Shoulders which will crack under the unjust load.

Shoulders and hands which, in most cases, have no power to effect change on the issues and will stand helplessly bowed beneath the burden.

The truth is, all of the children are under our care. We are the ones with the power and the money and the tools and the wherewithal. We can and must protect the voiceless. But in our rush and rage to do so, let us not forget the voiceless and powerless right in front of us. Let us stop and breathe and wait before we speak. Let us remember that innocence, once it is lost, is truly lost. There are years enough ahead for the little ones to lift their share of the load. Don't ask them to do it too soon.

Maybe set aside the politics for a moment. Take the tiny ones on a walk. Read them a sweet story. Snuggle under the covers. It will be healing for them and maybe, within its quietness, we will find healing for ourselves as well.

"Careful the things you say/Children will listen/Careful the things you do/Children will see/And learn." (Stephen Sondheim, "Into the Woods")

The Greater Good

     It was a black-sand volcanic beach in Guatemala. The waves were intense and the undertow more than even our YMCA-swimming-class-honed skills could handle, so we spent most of our days in the pool, our kiddos wearing themselves out and never wanting to leave the water, though every finger and toe was completely pruney and blistered.

     We had traveled from our home in Antigua, Guatemala to the coast for a little R&R. It was a gift from our friends to stay at a lovely resort and just unplug for a few days. Each night we dried the kids off, threw on something more than a swimsuit and tromped across the exotic-flower-speckled lawns, gasping and gaping along the way at the basilisk lizards criss-crossing the grass all around us. We were always the earliest customers at the hotel's restaurant for the buffet dinner, and we were lucky if all three children made it through the meal awake enough to walk back to our room.

     One evening, we noticed a table full of American men near us. My husband graduated from the Air Force Academy and spent several years as an Air Force officer, so he can pretty much spot a military man or woman from 80 paces. He knew immediately that these men were military. We surreptitiously watched them as we carried our plates back and forth from the buffet, but we never said anything to them and didn't see them again until the day we checked out, when they happened to be checking out at the same time. My husband approached them, made small talk and eventually mentioned that he'd been in the Air Force. True to military form, they ribbed him, telling him they were sorry he'd been in that particular branch, and then they mentioned that they were in Guatemala for some training, although they were very vague, revealing nothing specific about their time there. There was more chit chat and, as we were leaving the lobby, my husband and son thanked the men for their service to our country. It was only then that one of the soldiers turned to us and shared that their duty had cost them each greatly. He told us that most, if not all, of the men in his group were divorced or on the brink of divorce. He explained that they were gone from their families for most of the year, missing every major event that a family builds its memory upon.

     We left that hotel lobby sobered and humbled. We left that lobby newly aware of just how much our military sacrifices for us. We left that lobby reminded that the United States, despite all of the flaws that are daily and hourly and incessantly pointed out to us by the talking heads, is a country that has always been known as a nation willing to sacrifice for the greater good. There is nothing like living in another country to give you perspective on just how unique America is. We are willing to fight for those who don't have a voice, to defend the weak, to pursue justice to its end....sometimes to a fault....and why? Because sometimes individual people sacrifice their rights and thousands upon thousands and over and over, even lay down their lives for the greater good.

     It took living in a "survival-driven" society, a society in which too many people HAVE to fight for their daily bread, a society in which basic human needs like food and a place to sleep are very real worries to teach us just how inordinately blessed we as Americans are. Even my poorest, change-counting-hoping-my-checks-clear days are rich compared to the devastating needs I have witnessed in another land. Even my gripes with my government fade when I remember that I can walk into a polling place and vote, free from any fear of violence against me, free from any restrictions on my vote as a female.

     Giving up something dear to me for someone else to receive is not natural. It's not convenient. But oh how grateful I am to those who didn't stop to consider whether or not my life was worth theirs. They gave...all of it....the most precious and sacred gift anyone could give. So today, as we honor our veterans, I receive that gift with humility. I receive that gift with the promise to make sure my children know why that gift was given. I receive that gift with the knowledge that, though I may never agree with the shrouded political reasoning that brought about the circumstances of that gift, I understand its honor, its ultimate surrender, its beautiful power.

     Thank you, veterans. Our debt is not repayable. All we can do is thank you. And we do.

"None of you should look out just for your own good. You should also look out for the good of others" (Phil. 2:4 NIRV)

Another Way

I have a friend whose dad is a bully. A real jerk. He blazes a path to The Land Of Whatever I Want, burning the ground around him and leaving others to clean up the mess.

But my friend isn't like his dad. He chose a way around the nuclear wasteland his father left behind him. He chose a different trail, one of kindness and courtesy.

I have a friend whose mom is cruel. She uses words as warheads, bombing others' hearts and feelings. Her anger cuts deeply and leaves scars.

But my friend isn't like her mom. Although the weapon-wielding of words would feel easy and natural in her mouth, she closes it. She waits. She weighs. She considers.

I have a friend whose boss is a dictator, an amalgamation of every bad-boss movie you've ever cringed your way through. The boss who Scrooges his way through Christmas and tramples on your vacation plans and fires and rehires with the finesse of a tantrum-throwing toddler.

But my friend isn't like her boss. My friend tightropes the delicate line of respect and chain of command and keeps her integrity as close as a balancing pole in her grip.

We don't have to reproduce what we are handed. We don't have to let the trickle-down trickle down.

We can disagree with the dads and moms and bosses and bullies. We can practice the most important job of multitasking we've ever been called upon to do: Showing respect where none has been shown to us and spreading it around by the truckload even if nobody filled up that truck for us.

We can. And today, we must. We are not our genetics. We are not our politics. We are humans in need of empathy. We are hope-givers and compassion-sharers.

We are motivated, not by fear, but by love and commitment to another way, a way around the unkind and the unjust. A better way, not because it is newer and slicker, but because it lifts up the lowest and binds up the most broken. Let's trod this way today.

"Humankindness is overflowing. And I think it's gonna rain today." Randy Newman

No More Qualifying

It all started with a little blue passport. Five little blue passports, to be exact. When you're residing in a Third World Country, your passport is something you file under Very Important Documents. If anything were to suddenly go wrong where you lived or if anyone you loved back in the States had an emergency and you had to make a rapid exit, you needed to know exactly where it was. You even needed it for basic financial transactions around town.

When we lived in Guatemala, we were not official residents of that country, so we were required to cross the border every 6 months and get our passports stamped. Now, due to all of the lovely political fights and deals and "Hey, we don't like your country now!" decisions, the borders that counted toward our stamps were very specific. One country we could cross into was Mexico.

So all 5 of us loaded up onto a Greyhound-type bus and began the long trek to a little border town in Mexico. The journey started off quite promisingly with an explicit movie being shown on the screens right above our open-mouthed children's heads and progressed to even more exciting levels when we all took turns using the "bathroom" on board. This is an excellent cross-training activity. You get to practice isometric squats as you attempt to avoid touching any surface whilst the bus changes lanes and veers around curves at 186 mph. You also get to hone your lung capacity since the smell of the "room" is so intense that you know, once you breathe it in, you are unlikely to eat anything again. Ever.

It was somewhere along a Guatemalan road that we realized that our 6 year-old was ill...quite ill. Now, having parasites was an all-too-common experience for us Gringos. It was just a side effect of the less than clean drinking water we were exposed to. You dealt with it and moved on. But it was a little harder for the little ones. And this time was particularly bad.

There was nowhere to get off the bus except a random village here and there along the road, so we kept going. And kept realizing that things were getting worse. The journey became an increasingly worried-filled one, our stomachs now twisting, not in sickness, but in fear.

Finally, we reached the bus depot in the border town. I was standing by a cracked, plasticky chair as sickness poured out of my sweet child, again, and helpless, panicked tears poured out of me. Suddenly, a tiny, precious lady was beside me. Through my broken, weepy Spanish, we somehow communicated, and I discovered that there was no hospital. But there was a Cruz Rojo. A Red Cross.

Minutes later, we found ourselves in a cinderblock structure, a dirty bucket in the middle of the floor to catch the rain. I divided my time between sticking my head out of the plasticky curtain to check on my two eldest children, sitting beside their new BFF, the taxi driver who'd brought us there, and rushing back into the space that in any US city would be considered a very basic garage, much less an ER.

There was an order for a shot to be given, and then there was a moment when the needle fell. To the questionably-clean cement floor. Before a word could be said, it was scooped up and inserted into my child and I wasn't sure if that moment made me the World's Worst Mother or the World's Calmest.

The phrase "the longest night of my life" is cliche, but there are no better words than those to describe that night in our hotel room. The sickness wouldn't stop. There was no sleep for my son and my brain swung wildly between desperate prayers and trying to decide how we would find a hospital in any town nearby.

Until the dark-shrouded hours of the morning, before the sun, when an exhausted little boy finally crawled to the edge of the bed and asked for Gatorade. And he drank it. And he slept. And the sickness was gone.

I know his life was spared that day, and yet, for years, I mostly avoided telling this story, because my gratitude felt like a slap in the face of another's pain, an insult to other parents whose stories did not end as happily as mine. My default mode has been to share a tale and in the same breath qualify that ohhh but other people have experienced much worse so I should be grateful and ohhh did I mention other people had it much worse?

They do. Absolutely they do. But no more qualifying. No matter what difficulty or pain or fear or betrayal we are going through or have experienced? It is difficulty and pain and fear and betrayal. It just is. The end. Period. Yes, keeping perspective is a healthy thing, but not if it walks hand in hand with denial. Yes, we can and must remind ourselves that most of us are the privileged, super-lucky ones. But hard is still hard. And our stones of remembrance...our stories...are still just that: Our stories, meant to own and meant to share, without qualification.

So tell your stories today...to your friends, to your people. And then put a period on the end as you close your lips tight around the tendency to downplay your experience. It's your story.

With no more apology.

No more "ohhhh buts..."

No more wondering if your story is worth another's listening ear, if it is enough.

No more qualifying.

"The story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all." Frederick Buechner