The return of an old friend, part 2

If I thought that work/career had shaken up my quiet, connect-with-God mornings then having my first baby, five years into that career, was like being thrown into a blender. Of course, I was elated. As anyone who has loved a child more than they ever knew possible knows – the world looks different in light of that child’s existence. I understood in new ways how much God loves me and delights in me, no matter what, as I loved and delighted in Hannah. I went back to work on-call when she was three months old and even work looked different to me. I started taking time to rub patients’ feet, sit down and hear more of their story, and work on the “little” things that could help them or my coworkers out. It’s not that I didn’t want to do those things before, it’s just that they got edged out by other things that needed to happen. I only worked 1-2 days a week and had a baby girl to come home to and was learning a little bit about how to be more present-minded. I was mostly sleep-deprived and had no quiet, Bible reading morning routine, but somehow in the love I had for my little one, I was certain God loved me too – even with messy hair, bags under my eyes and a cup of coffee that was being heated up in the microwave for the third time (I know, gross. But that’s what survival mode does to a person, you know?). When Hannah was two, Emmett was born and that really did Rees and I in as far as love goes. The miracle of life to us was equivalent to the miracle of suddenly loving another little person every bit as much as the first little person. That gave me a teeny, tiny glimpse into the enormity of God’s love. There’s more than enough to go around and it’s always there.

We super-sized that blender to commercial-grade, high volume when Emmett was two months. We sold the majority of our worldly goods and moved to Seattle to be with our families for a couple of months before moving to Central Asia. I’m not going to get into too many of the details of that BIG transition in this post, but you can imagine what moving to a developing country, where we needed to learn pretty much everything, with a two year old and a four month old does to your morning routine. I was sick, often up most of the night, nursing a baby, trying to parent a spirited two year old while learning a new language and how to live in a completely different country. A country where electricity and water would shut off and apartments don’t have elevators. I was exhausted all the time. I applaud my husband for continuing to ask me how I was doing when he knew I would always say, “I’m exhausted.” Boy were there some exhausted years in there. It seemed we were just starting to get hopeful that we were becoming a bit more energetic when I got pregnant with Annabel. We had lived here for three years at that point. My weakness and exhaustion combined with my wiring toward being productive had already catapulted me into a big mound of grace (I’m embarrassed to say that I kicked and screamed as I flew through the air and even continue to). I got some practice dragging myself out of bed in the morning after an interrupted night of sleep – usually to a child demanding to be fed or someone pounding on my door (it’s totally acceptable here to pound and pound on someone’s door at 6am). The morning person in me was actually torturing me because even when Rees tried to let me sleep longer, I just couldn’t. I get all antsy if I feel like the world around me is up and at ‘em and I’m not. So we had a really pleasant morning situation in our home – an exhausted mom and wife who needs to sleep more and can’t and begrudges everyone else for preventing it. I had thrown out the idea of the quiet hour of prayer at some point in the early throws of motherhood and tried to just grab a few minutes of just plain quiet here and there and settled on locking myself in a room one morning during the weekend when Rees could keep the kids occupied (though they always had their radar tuned to this and would plaster themselves on the other side of the door, crying, “Mommy! Mommy!” As if they hadn’t spent every waking moment with me already). I had to accept the reality that I could connect with God and be close to Him in the midst of mess, action, need, and lots of loud. It started to dawn on me that if there wasn’t grace and worship in my everyday tasks and reality, then how could I pass on that grace to any local woman in my stage of life who has far less freedom in what her day-to-day looks like? If changing diapers, washing clothes, cooking food, parenting children, chatting with neighbors and cooking things for their celebrations and gatherings (because that’s what the community does) and connecting with my husband couldn’t be worship and honoring to God and even a joy for me – then what hope do I have to offer to anyone here? I really started to reach for the Bible and pray out of a deep need for His help and perspective and as I did, I began to rejoice all over again over how paradoxical God is. He uses the weak to shame the strong, the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. He chooses the one who isn’t super to show how super He is. I started to even occasionally laugh at the fact that He could use someone like me, someone who hardly got a minute of quiet prayer time, who takes a month to memorize a single verse due to exhaustion and who commits all kinds of faux pas all day long and often doesn’t even realize it. I didn’t even think about quiet mornings or hours of prayer any more. I figured that if I get to live to be an empty-nester, maybe that’s when I’d rediscover mornings.

An incredible gift has been given to me the last few months. We generally all sleep through the night these days (with the exception of sickness). I got up early one morning, not exhausted, and no one else woke up. I couldn’t believe it. Until now, whenever I get up early (in an attempt to find that quiet prayer time), it only serves to be an alarm clock to at least one, if not two kids. But there I was, up early, cup of coffee in hand, Bible in lap, quiet, in disbelief. A whole hour passed before a child woke up. I couldn’t believe it. I tried it again the next day and same thing – an hour, hour and a half of quiet. This has been going on for a few months and it is grace. So much grace. Such a gift and such a gift to be able to be thankful for it, to just appreciate each morning that I get – knowing that seasons change, such a gift of grace to not wake up early some mornings and not feel guilty about it but thank Him for a little extra sleep. What a gift to be able to greet little ones with a smile when they wake up (instead of grumpy-momma with “why do you always need something?” tone of voice). Suddenly those years of the slow disintegration of the morning prayer time seem like a good rebooting of my prayer life. It felt like getting out of touch with a good friend and then finding them on Facebook years later and getting back in touch again, discovering that you appreciate that friend more than ever. So for now, I’m really enjoying getting to know my old friend, early morning again, and by God’s grace, that old rascal guilt is being left out in the cold.

 

 

The return of an old friend, part 1

Something really precious returned to me a few months ago and I am treasuring it and appreciating it more than ever. It is the gift of the early morning. Treasured as only a morning person could. It has been a good 10+ years or so (possibly even 15 or 16) since I’ve been able to savor the early morning and I think I’m savoring it more than ever and that right there is a gift of grace. Fifteen or so years ago, I would have been able to give some tips to anyone about how to get up early and why that’s such a great idea. Now I realize that I’m just more of a morning person so it will just come naturally to me to be alert and productive in the morning and that’s not something I could give tips on. Years ago, two friends of mine were both piano teachers (Jamie Jam and Dana Little – talking about you!). Jamie was more gifted at flowing with the piano and just had a nack for it where Dana had to work hard at it but was also quite accomplished. They both agreed that Dana was the better teacher because she knew what it felt like to have to work at each step so she can break things down for her students. Whereas Jamie* can try to do that and inspire her students but just doesn’t know what it’s like to have to break everything down into small, simple steps and then struggle with them. I’ve thought about that explanation so many times. It highlights for me the reality that even being a morning person and naturally treasuring the early morning is a grace. Something I actually did nothing to accomplish, it is just a gift. And when we have teenagers who finally get around to talking to us at night, when their mom turns into a pumpkin, their dad’s night-owl wiring will be a great gift.

In college, I loved waking up with the rising sun and spending time in prayer and reading my Bible. I went to Western Washington University for a few years and there is an arboretum on campus and I’d get up early, grab my Bible and hike up through the arboretum to the look-out on top of the hill and spend the morning connecting with God while looking out on Bellingham Bay, the green trees and the beautiful mountains. It was dreamy. When I moved back to Seattle to do an internship at my church and then go on to nursing school, I was already in the habit of the early wake-up and my days got busier so I really treasured that quiet, alone time in the morning. It didn’t hurt that one of my dear roommates worked at Starbucks and got us free coffee to help out those gloomy winter Seattle mornings. Also didn’t hurt that we were just a half mile up the street from Magnuson Park and across the street from the Burke-Gilman trail so when the mornings got lighter, I could pop out for a jog, walk or bike-ride and once again be on the water or in a lush green space. I would have attributed more to my discipline in those days but let’s be honest – those are pretty easy places and contexts to wake up and connect with God in. Surrounded by natural beauty, no full-time job, no kids, no major obligations except studying and making enough money to feed, clothe and shelter your own self. That was before the major tech boom too so my roommates (and dear friends, Molly and Taj) and I had our desktop computers, a land line and a TV with antenna. We didn’t have any tech we needed to afford or constantly upgrade. I resonate so well with what Rachel Jancovich says in “Loving the Little Years”:

“The truth is my Christian life then was like a rock being refined by a slow river in a quiet place. It wasn’t as though I wasn’t growing spiritually, but my word! So easily! And so little! But God took me out of that life and threw me into the rock tumbler. Here, it is not so easy to feel godly, because we spend our days crashing into each other and actually getting our problems addressed. Here there is very little time for quiet reflection.”

Of course, it didn’t feel like that as I started to get tossed around and lose “my mornings.” Nursing school started to shake it up a bit as we had clinicals thrown into a full load of classes and labs. Sometimes we had multiple evening shifts during the week and had to wake up early for class the next day in addition to whatever we did to actually make some money to live. My mornings became shorter as I needed to add in some more schoolwork. I felt guilty about that. But I figured I’d “catch up” once I was actually working and not actually going to school any more. Toward the end of nursing school I got married which ended up being a great decision and I don’t regret the timing in the least. However, trying to figure out how my God-time was supposed to mix with Rees’ God-time left me feeling uneasy. Did I have to give up my separate time now that we were “one”? Hmmm. And I felt some more guilt because I didn’t want to share my bit of quiet time with my new husband who I was supposed to want to share everything with and we couldn’t figure out how to do that regularly anyway. I started to feel a bit distant from God. It felt to me like I had a container of quiet, connecting with God time and it could only stay full if I was putting an hour or so into it every day. Every day I didn’t contribute to it, it would drain and any subsequent time I put into it was only trying to make up a deficit but certainly not moving me into any surplus. But as long as I didn’t empty out completely, I felt like one day I’d be able to move back into the surplus.

Rees and I moved down to Portland once I was done with nursing school and I took my nursing boards down there and pretty quickly found my ideal job: a full-time day shift position in oncology. I remember when I was offered the position and immediately said, “yes!” and my manager, Lee, told me that I didn’t have to answer right away but could take a week to think it over and just get back to her. I tried to insist that I didn’t need a week, but she wanted me to take the time to consider it. Well, I was offered the position on a Friday and called her Monday morning to accept. I spent the next two years with my head spinning, trying to get the hang of being an oncology nurse and getting my oncology certification (which was more difficult than my nursing boards). As anyone can imagine, it was really intense working in oncology. I had the amazing privilege of working in a hospital that had a cancer research center and a really remarkable team of doctors and nurses. But, as we used to say, “we put the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional!” Between the physiology of what was going on or could happen with our patients, the endless treatments and keeping up on what gets treated with what and what can mix with what, the emergencies and the psychological impact of cancer on a person and their family (or the impact of not having a family or supportive community when you have cancer) – I was wrung out at the end of the day. Brain fried. I had to be at work early and my Bible reading and praying turned into more of a “help me, Lord, today!” and glancing at a verse, trying to get it to somehow sink in. What really horrified me was at the end of my shift, as I’d trudge out to my car, I’d realize that I hadn’t even thought about God that day. I’d only been trying to wrap my brain around what to do next. I felt so unspiritual, and guilty and would again apologize to God for not talking to him during my workday. But one day, after apologizing, a verse filtered up into my thinking:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).

The “with all your mind” part lodged into my heart and I thought, “Maybe that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m using my mind to do what you’ve allowed me to do right now – serve people with cancer.” Not being one to try to dodge a self-scolding, but rather wallow in it, I was worried maybe I was letting myself off too easy. Certainly God couldn’t be incredibly pleased with me not even talking to him at work. It seems silly, but to a more works-orientation-wired person, it felt like a big step of faith, like taking a step off a cliff – to trust that He was pleased with me and had grace for me in that season of learning a new, intense career. It felt safer for me to just feel guilty and let that motivate me to “do better.” But that wasn’t working and I certainly didn’t feel any closer to God. A thought started to niggle my mind, that maybe my feeling distant from God was largely or wholly on my side of the relationship. So, I started to fight that guilt at the end of the day by just saying, “I know you were with me today at work. Thank you for helping me.” instead of apologizing. That slowly gave way to more thanksgiving (I dare you to try not to be thankful if you’ve spent all day with cancer patients – you can’t do it). Then I started to ask Him to help me see Him and recognize him at work. A slow work of grace was steeping in me. To focus on Him more and less on my short-comings. To discipline my thoughts when they tried to hang out in the “I’m-a-lousy-believer-and-friend” place and instead say, “thank you for being with me and loving me, even when I didn’t recognize you today and thank you for grace that gives me a fresh chance to see you tomorrow.” Even when I didn’t feel it, I said it and that was grace. I can’t say that my mornings returned to an hour of peaceful communion, but I was more able to thank Him for a single verse and worship Him in the car on my drive to work.

Eventually, I settled into a bit of a rhythm with work. I learned how to delegate better, I learned how to anticipate emergencies and how to prioritize and then keep re-prioritizing as needs changed. My brain didn’t feel as terribly wrung out as it did those first couple years. We moved closer to the hospital and I began to chisel out 20 minutes or so to just be quiet and pray while I drank my coffee before going to work. There were still days that I was too tired to get up earlier than absolutely necessary and I felt guilty about that (surprise, surprise) but overall I felt okay with my routine and was at least 98% convinced that God wasn’t disappointed with me for my lapses.