"wide open like a lake..."

"...Let the noise and clamor cease
Be still and know that He is God
Be still and know that He is faithful
Consider all that He has done
Stand in awe and be amazed
And know that He will never change
Be still and know that He is God
Be still
Be speechless..."
- Steven Curtis Chapman

On a day like today...raindrops streaming down the sides of the birdfeeder outside the kitchen window like giant tears falling from heavy gray clouds, the bare black branches of still leafless trees reaching out with dark knuckled fingers, pointing to an empty heaven...on a day like this, there is no time or space for me.  In an instant, I find myself on a tender journey back to an early spring morning almost two dozen years ago, and I am as empty as a discarded barn swallow's nest.

It is in the sanctuary of this space that Steven Curtis Chapman's "Be Still," reminds me that, as Kahlil Gibran wrote:

"The deeper sorrow carves into our being,
the more joy we can contain."  

That spring, the son we were in the process of adopting had been taken back by his birthmother, relationships seemed shattered, my body was riddled with a life-threatening disease, I'd given up my career to be a full-time mother, and we lived in a remote summer community that was practically empty until June. 

As I sat on the sofa in the living room, looking out at the lake our property sloped down to, I wondered why my body still had the ability to function and move.  I moved my fingers and was surprised to see them express life.  I felt absolutely empty and lifeless within, had already accepted the final stages of my disease, and almost wished it would hurry up and put me out of my misery. 

I'd called a friend, who was also my teacher in Christian Science, the night before and told him that I didn't know why I was still alive.  He had chuckled kindly, and suggested that I sit quietly and listen for God's desire in my life...since, as he reminded me,  I was still living, so I might as well live with some sense of spiritual reason.  I agreed that this might be a good idea, and promised to give it my whole heart.

And I did.  I sat in the same place, practically in the same position, all night long with my eyes closed just listening and praying.  I heard nothing.  Nothing.  It was an inspiration-free zone.  My thoughts felt as empty as my body and my life. Deteriorating health, all alone, no job, no purpose...and most devastating, no baby.

Dawn came, and with it the realization that I hadn't heard anything and I was just as empty and in pain as I had been the day before.  I felt exhausted and hopeless.  That was when Winnie, our sweet puppy "daughter," sidled over and nudged my elbow with her nose...over, and over, and over again.  No matter how many times I suggested she "just go lie down,"  she kept returning.  So, I gave in and pulled on a pair of jeans under my flannel nightgown, a pair of boots over my wool socks, and opened the breezeway door leading out into forest just beyond the brick-paved walkway. 

Winnie was a hunting dog, so her normal path from "here to there" was to weave her way through the brush and bramble...stopping every few moments to point a squirrel or flush out a bunny.  But this morning she made a b-line for the lake's shoreline.  And once she arrived, her nose was down and her entire attention was focused on whatever was at the water's edge.  And no matter how many times I called to her, she ignored me and kept her complete focus on whatever she saw in the shallow water at the edge of the lake.

I made my way down the hill, reached her side, and got down on my haunches to see what had her attention.  But all I could see was my own face clearly reflected in the still surface of the lake at dawn...and everything that was just below the surface...tiny minnows, pebbles, and bits of grass. 

That was when a divine message finally came through, and it came through with such striking clarity that I was knocked back onto my bottom.  "This is what I want you to be...as still as this water..."like this lake*,"...  In this stillness you will be able to see what is true within yourself, and anyone who is in your presence can see the truth of who they are in the stillness of your being, a stillness that only reflects truth and never attracts attention for your ego...or their's."   

And then, on the heels of that message,  in that very moment a strong wind picked up and within seconds the entire lake was choppy and disturbed.  And at the water's edge all was foamy and obscured.  I couldn't see my own reflection or anything below the surface. 

The message continued, "And this is what happens when you allow yourself to be stirred up by emotion, anger, and drama."  The message was as clear and pointed as it could have been.  As Winnie wandered off into the nearby bramble to search for bunnies, I stayed at the water's edge transfixed on the moment, begging for direction.

"But just tell me what you want me to be, and I will be the best "it" there has every been.  If you want me to be a mom send me a child.  If you want me to be a wife, bring my husband home.  If you want me to be a career woman, tell me what job to focus on.  If you want me to be a healer, a poet, a lawyer, a writer, an artist, a publisher, a teacher...just tell me, and I will be it, and I will give it my everything.  Just tell me!"

But God said, "You aren't supposed to be just one thing forever.  You are my All-in-all.  You have all that it takes to be whatever I need you to be at any given moment.  You cam be all that you have asked, and more that you can ever even imagine.  Just like the water in the lake...just as every single drop of water is made up of H2O.  Two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, you, as my reflection...my child...are all that I am.  You have the same elemental balance that I have...I am Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love to the infinite degree and measure, so are you.  You are not a portion of my being, but the allness of all that I am."

I was suddenly reminded of a statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy which assures each of us that: 

"As a drop of water is one with the ocean,
a ray of light one with the sun,
so God and man, divine Principle and idea,
are one in being."

I got it.  I could be anything God wanted me to be in any moment.  Just as a drop of water could be refreshing, nourishing, cleansing, purifying, buoying, serve as ballast, revive a man thirsting in the desert...depending on the demands of the moment...I had all the qualities and attributes as part and parcel of my being in infinite measure, just waiting to be drawn upon.  In a fishbowl a drop of water is the breath of life to a little goldfish. On the tip of your tongue the same drop of water is refreshing, on a child's dirty face it is cleansing, It's individuality and identity are defined by the demands of a moment and the context it finds itself in.  The water doesn't decide to be refreshing, it doesn't get a degree in being cleansing and then is only capable of serving in that capacity.  Any drop of water is able to do any water-like function.

God was telling me that this was true of my identity....and not only mine, but it was the truth about each of us...impartially and universally.  We are all identical with God's character and nature.  We don't bring a measured portion of God's allness to each moment as our unique identitiy,  talent base, or skill set.  The moments and opportunites themselves, draw from our infinite individuality what is needed or required of us in any given moment or situation.   And sometimes it is what we least feel we have to give, that we most need to learn about ourselves...humility, grace, patience, meekness, kindness, non-judgment...which we find being  called forth.

All I needed to be was still....not just peaceful, quiet, and motionless, but constant, changeless-in-my-allness, and nevertheless...nevertheless than the allness of God's being in each and every moment.  This never-the-less-ness was the river-like being, the selfhood and identity, I would one day realize was my only purpose and calling.  That was over two decades ago, and I think that I am just starting to "get it".

A friend recently gave me this poem by poet, William Butler Yates, as a blessing...and as a gift:

"We can make our minds
so like still water
that  beings gather about us
that they may see
their own images,
and so live for a moment
with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet."

Thank you dear friend...

In stillness...always and never-the-less,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS


*And here are the lyrics to Sara Groves' "Like a Lake" (linked above):

"so much hurt and preservation
like a tendril round my soul
so much painful information
no clear way on how to hold it

when everything in me is tightening
curling in around this ache
I will lay my heart wide open
like the surface of a lake
wide open like a lake

standing at this waters edge
looking in at God's own heart
I've no idea where to begin
to swallow up the way things are

everything in me is drawing in
closing in around this pain
I will lay my heart wide open
like the surface of a lake
wide open like a lake

bring the wind and bring the thunder
bring the rain till I am tried
when it's over bring me stillness
let my face reflect the sky
and all the grace and all the wonder
of a peace that I can't fake
wide open like a lake

everything in me is tightening
curling in around this ache
I am fighting to stay open
I am fighting to stay open
open open oh wide open
open like a lake "

[photo credit: Gabe Korinek 2010 all rights reserved]

"He talked of life..."

“I knew a man Bojangles and he'd dance for you
In worn out shoes
He looked to me to be the eyes of age
as he spoke right out
He talked of life, talked of life,
he laughed, clicked his heels and stepped
Mr. Bojangles, Mr. Bojangles
Mr. Bojangles, dance”
-Jerry Jeff Walker

I am realizing, more each year, what a pivotal role the summer of 1969 played in my spiritual chronology.  That was the year my parents decided to move our family 2,000 miles across the United States so that we could be nearer the grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins we had rarely seen while living in “the wild west”.


After the going away parties, the last…well, everything…day at the pool, the walk to the 7-Eleven, the bike ride to the local movie theatre, and finally the last sleepover at Becky’s, we were on our way.  Mom, dad and six of their eventually eight children packed tightly into dad’s pride and joy…our “new Sequoia green 1969 Chevrolet Brockwood 9-passenger station wagon” (can’t you just hear the Price is Right’s  Jon Pardo).

With a U-haul in tow and the roof rack loaded with camping gear and bikes, we took to the highway like a band of gypsies.  We set up the tent in roadside campgrounds along the old Route 66 and ate endless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches--or on special occasions velveeta cheese and Miracle Whip--on Wonder bread at weathered picnic tables while we saw “the USA in our Chevrolet.”

By the time we reached rural New Jersey I was tired of “the way back”… you know, that horrible backward facing seat that must have been designed by a sadist.  I had read every Nancy Drew mystery I owned…more than twice…and I couldn’t wait to find some statistics on sibling torture.  I was sure I had a lawsuit against my parents for the cruel and unusual punishment I had endured.

But within 24 hours of arriving at my cousin’s house in bucolic Basking Ridge, New Jersey, I was grateful for every horrifying mile of cornfields and road signs from West to East.  I loved my cousins, I loved my aunts and uncles, I loved playing tennis at the nearby courts, I loved the yellow and white striped wallpaper in my cousins bedroom that she didn’t have to share…with anyone…I loved picking blackberries to make pie…

And…I loved the Beyers. 

The Beyers were a family I had grown up hearing about from my mother.  She would refer to Fred Beyer with the same brotherly affection that she had for her own brothers Griff and Rich.  I had long since assumed that the children of Fred and Phyllis were like cousins.  But that summer the last thing in the world I wanted to believe was that the two oldest boys, Scott and Eric, were anything near “real” cousins. 

Eric was shy that summer and I was sure that if he were to "like" (or as my daughters would say, "you know mom, not like, but like like") my cousin.  So that left Scott.  And I didn’t care if Scott liked me.    I adored him….and he deserved it.  He was kind, gentle, altruistic and tolerant of an almost high school sophomore with stars in her eyes and her heart on her sleeve.  Scott was a senior. He was smart, funny, and he looked like Glenn Campbell in the True Grit days…or at least he did to me.  I really was smitten.   I communicated my tireless devotion by obsessively baking pies that my cousin and I used for luring “the boys” (and their attendant parents and siblings) over each summer evening that we could do so…without appearing desperate and silly….which of course we were… desperate and silly that is (or at least I was).

Scott, with his Beach Boys sun-drenched surfer-boy good looks was everything a teenage boy should have been in those days.  Respectful of his elders, a safe driver, and funny.  But it was the “something more,” the something that you couldn’t see at first glance that made him what I now realize was one of the greatest influences on my life.  And it wasn’t just because he was young and cute and hip.  I think it was because he was the first young person I had ever known who really cared more about making a difference in the life of others than he cared about “getting” the girl.  Scott and Eric, like a number of their friends, had spent the early part of that summer at a camp devoted to helping children and teens not only approach problem-solving and relationship building from a spiritual perspective, but encouraged selflessness and service to others.  This practical application of spiritual principles seemed to permeate everything they did. 

(actual friends of Scott and Eric's from Camp Owatonna - photo by G. Johnson)

I remember one night in early September later that year.  My family had moved into an old house in a wonderful small town almost an hour from my cousins and the Beyers.  My contact with Scott had waned and I felt pretty isolated from the wonderful Sunday School classes that I had enjoyed with him, his brother, my cousins and other teens from their area.  Our new Sunday School was another twenty minutes further away from their church and I was in class with my younger sister and a boy who thought we should just read out loud from the Bible for the entire hour.  I had pretty much given up on the me who had engaged in rigorous spiritual discourse during the summer.  I was certain that my spiritual life was over and I was destined to be just another cheerleader who spent her weekends doing household chores, babysitting her siblings, going to football games and enduring Sunday School.   But that September night, hope came crashing headlong through the phone lines with all the altruistic abandon of Scott Beyer’s will to make a difference. 

Scott was missing our discussions as much as the rest of us were and he had decided to take the matter into his own hands.  We were going to meet on Sunday evenings in his church’s Reading Room and we were going to talk about real things.  He even thought he could get some cool adults (mostly from the Adventure Unlimited chapter we all belonged to) to join us, and let us ask them questions.  He wanted to know if I would be interested. 

Hmmm…duh. 

But then it hit me like a tons of bricks.  I lived an hour away, my family had one car and my parents had five other children to get ready for the upcoming school week on Sunday nights.  My heart hit the floor with a thud. I really wanted those discussions…heck, I needed them…and I had no way to get there. 

I thanked Scott for the invitation, but begged off with some lame excuse about homework.  All week long I thought about the discussion that would be happening that next Sunday night in the Berkeley Heights Reading Room, and I felt sick. 

Sunday School came with a whimper and went out with a whine.  I was in the kitchen late that afternoon making a peach cobbler for our Sunday night dessert when in walked Scott with my mom trailing…barely.  He explained that the meeting wouldn’t be the same without me and he was going to either make arrangements for me to get to the discussions on Sunday night with another friend or he would come and pick me up himself.

“Let’s go” he said. 

I looked at my mom.  I knew that my parents were VERY strict about my being in a car with other teens driving.  I wasn’t sure that they would even allow me to go.  But there was my mother tipping her head in the direction of the front door with a big smile on her face.  Scott promised to get me home as soon after the meeting as possible and there was my own mother nodding and saying that he should drive safely and do the best he could, but not to rush.  Sometimes mothers are saints.

That Sunday I felt like the whole world had opened up in front of me.  Suddenly I was not the oldest of eight, I wasn’t a cute cheerleader, I wasn’t a sophomore, a bookworm, short, or perky.  I was a valued member of a spiritual community of thinkers and we had questions to ask each other…and anyone else who wanted to join us.

Through that Fall, Winter and Spring we could often be found dissecting the lyrics to popular songs by writers like Cat Stevens and Stephen Stills and Donovan and Dylan, reading the poetry of Rod McKuen, or questioning the wisdom of Kahlil Gibran's “The Prophet”. Over the course of Scott’s senior year of high school we met with some wonderful adults who were on the cutting edge of questioning their own spiritual practices and the validity of long established cultural paradigms and rituals.  One Sunday, Richard Bach, author of what was one of my generation’s modern quintessential spiritual allegories, Jonathon Livingston Seagull, was the centerpiece for our feast of Soul-filled questioning.

We took up causes, to pray about and, to volunteer our time in support of.  We talked on the phone and made efforts to help one another think through choices and decisions we were all making throughout that year.

After one of our last Sunday Evening meetings, Scott and I drove to the Watchung Reservation tower on our way back to my parents house.  With black permanent magic markers we wrote the words to Mary Baker Eddy’s poem “Love” (verse below) in very small letters along the railing of the stairway, just above someone else’s writing of the lyrics to Mr. Bojangles.  We needed to say something to the universe...and we wanted to leave a record of what our hearts' had discovered about love...and life. 

Today, when I look at graffiti and the tagging done by urban artists on public spaces, I am horrified by my own once thoughtless marring of public property.  But I also understand the desire to say something when you feel voiceless in the world.

Beyond sharing one very sweet and innocent kiss that first summer, Scott and I were never more than friends.  I loved him for his mind, and for his heart.

I didn’t see him again for almost twenty years although our parents kept us informed of one another’s adventures and travails.  When I did see him next I was facing one of the most difficult times of my life. At the time "Uncle Fred" and I had worked for the same organization and I would often see him in passing.  After sharing a hug he would bring me up to date on what Scott, Eric, Drew and Geoff were up to.  This time he noted I was not myself.  I had lost an enormous amount of weight during a life-threatening illness.  I was deeply depressed and felt more unwanted and unloved than I thought was humanly possible...and still be walking upright. 

Fred didn’t say anything directly at the time, but a few days later my office phone rang.  It was Fred and he wondered if he could bring something up to me.  I was free so I said Yes.  Within a few moments I heard the hallway elevator doors open and before I knew it I had been swept into the arms of the most handsome man I had ever seen.

With one graceful movement he lifted me out of my chair, hugged me tightly and planted one very warm, kind, gentle…and dizzying… kiss on my lips. 

It was Scott. 

It was as if not a moment had passed between us in twenty years.  His eyes were as bright, his smile as warm and easy,  and his “hi, I love you…how the hell are you?” as genuine.  The three of us shared another few minutes before I had to go to a meeting.  They were pivotal in reminding me that I was a valued spiritual being.  They also proved the value of seizing the moment.

Not many weeks after, Scott’s dad called my office to tell me that Scott had been killed in a hang-gliding accident.  I remember being so strangely unmoved by such tragic news.  As I sat there at my desk observing my own almost unsettling spiritual peace, I realized that during the ensuing twenty years when I had never once seen him, he had nonetheless lived with such vitality and substance in my heart.  Absent from my view he continued to imprint my life and my sense of purpose with his example.  His desires to make a difference, to be good, to want to bring healing and peace to the world had become my own. 

Nothing had changed.  No report of his passing could alter the way his example of altruism and selflessness had impacted my life and the kind of person I wanted to be. 

Now, almost another 20 years have gone by and I see him today as he is, and always has been, in my heart… water-skiing, laughing, living in a VW bus, hang-gliding, eating lots of pie, and questioning EVERYTHING wherever he is…and I am grateful for his example. 

Thanks Scott…you made a difference.

“Love”
Brood o'er us with Thy shelt'ring wing,
   'Neath which our spirits blend
Like brother birds, that soar and sing,
   And on the same branch bend.
The arrow that doth wound the dove
Darts not from those who watch and love.

If thou the bending reed wouldst break
   By thought or word unkind,
Pray that his spirit you partake,
   Who loved and healed mankind:
Seek holy thoughts and heavenly strain,
That make men one in love remain.

Learn, too, that wisdom's rod is given
   For faith to kiss, and know;
That greetings glorious from high heaven,
   Whence joys supernal flow,
Come from that Love, divinely near,
Which chastens pride and earth-born fear,

Through God, who gave that word of might
   Which swelled creation's lay:
"Let there be light, and there was light."
   What chased the clouds away?
'Twas Love whose finger traced aloud
A bow of promise on the cloud.

Thou to whose power our hope we give,
   Free us from human strife.
Fed by Thy love divine we live,
   For Love alone is Life;
And life most sweet, as heart to heart
Speaks kindly when we meet and part.
- Mary Baker Eddy

Kate

"Time doesn't make you a mother...love does..."

On Tuesday, I promised to post today another installment in the story of our first adoption (scroll down to read earlier posts), covering the drive to Colorado.  Actually, that will come tomorrow.  Today’s post covers what happened in between…

“O for a faith that will not shrink
Though pressed by every foe;
That will not tremble on the brink
of any earthly woe…”
- William H. Bathurst

The next morning dawned sunny and bright.  It was as if the world itself had moved on from the grayness of my grief long before I had.  It was Sunday and the thought of teaching Sunday School was beyond me.  I hadn't slept well and was waiting by the telephone for the clock to report a time that would make calling the Superintendent  reasonable.  I figured 7:30 would be safe and I rehearsed what I needed to say to convey my need for absence and the last-minute finding of a substitute for my class of 14-year-old boys and girls from all over the Boston metro area.

As I sat there it kept coming to me that I just couldn't impose upon them my face blotchy and swollen from crying and my eyes blood-shot from lack of sleep.  I needed to have it more together before facing those impressionable young men and women.  They had been through this joyous 9-month-long journey toward parenting with me and I just felt that I couldn't let them down at this point by telling them that we had lost the baby.  Didn't they deserve a Sunday School teacher who had actually been successful in applying the healing law of Christian Science and gotten the baby?   As I sat there staring, again, out of the big picture window in the kitchen, it occurred to me that what they most needed was honesty.

"Honesty is spiritual power."
- Mary Baker Eddy

I realized that what had happened with our son's adoption--and it had happened--was our truth.  It wasn't as important for my Sunday School students to see that we "demonstrated" a perfect, harmonious adoption, so much as it was important for them to see us demonstrate grace, forgiveness, humility, integrity...to demonstrate our Christianity....not as a doctrine, creed or dogma, or religion, but as a way of behaving with others and in every aspect of our lives.  Well, that was the end of any thoughts of avoiding Sunday School.  As terrified as I was of showing up without a baby in my arms that Sunday, I was now even more concerned about letting those kids down by not showing up at all...honestly and meekly.

I explained to my husband that I felt I really needed to be in church that Sunday...a conclusion that he had already reached for himself.   Soon we were dressed and making the hour-long trip to Boston for church and Sunday School.  The ride was quiet and I was grateful to see that the car seat had been removed from the van as we passed ice encrusted trees and houses with smoke puffing from their chimneys like the deep breathing of sleeping giants on snow-covered lawns.  When we reached the highway I closed my eyes in prayer and stayed that way for the rest of our drive.  .  I hoped that by the time we reached Boston I would have "an answer of peace", not tears, to their questions.

I went quickly to my table in the bank of windows partitioned off into bays along the curve of the northwest side of the pie-shaped Sunday School building.  I was early and sat with my back to the room looking to the west.  The morning sun was bouncing off of the dome, granite walls, stained glass and clear windows in the building surrounding me in panorama.  I couldn't see the sun...but I was absolutely sure it was out there somewhere by the mark it was leaving on my environment.  I couldn't see our son, but I could feel the marked effect that loving him had left on my heart and how it continued to make me want to be a "mom"...a nurturer..even if just for this hour with this group of 14-year-old boys and girls.  It would have to be enough for that morning.

One by one the students filtered in to our bay towards the end of the room...and one by one they saw my face.  The questions...and the sympathy poured out.   "How could she do that to you?" "You must be devastated." "I am so sorry.."  "Do you want me to go beat her up...really I will.." (this one from my favorite tough guy/sweetheart of a hockey player).  Soon it was time for the opening exercises and the first hymn literally took me out of play.  "Mother's Evening Prayer" with its now hauntingly familiar and poignant:

"Oh make me glad for every scalding tear
For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain;
Wait, and love more for every hate
And fear no ill, since God is good
And loss is gain."
- Mary Baker Eddy

I was singing it and I was hearing it, as I had done since childhood.  But now I was feeling it.  Here was another "sister" standing next to me with her "story" of heartache, telling me that this loss was gain.  God was sending me angels at every turn.  Mary Baker Eddy, herself had had a child taken from her.  This poem turned hymn was her response to that experience...her prayer for her son.   It could be my prayer for my son too.

Once the opening exercises concluded and we turned to one another to begin that Sunday's class I realized that I could either press on as if nothing had happened, or I could let them into the sanctuary of my heart and let them know what I was facing and how I was praying.  Again, the phrase from Science and Health, "Honesty is spiritual power." came with pointed relevance.  Just be honest…how have the spiritual truths that you have been studying and praying with all week been helpful to you. 

I began to share some of the journey my heart had been on and how I was praying, when one of the boys in the class interrupted my train of thought.  I had noticed that he hadn't had much to say that morning...something that was rare for this very social young man.  He had been listening, but really seemed to be in his own world.  When he jumped in quite suddenly with a real sense of inspiration we all grew quiet.  He began..(and I apologize if I don't get this verbatim...it's been 19 years...but I have also thought about it almost weekly ever since, as it was so profound to me) "Okay, you know how I am 14 years old, right?  Well, my brother is 18, and he has lived at home his entire life, but my oldest brother who is 20 went away to boarding school when he was 13 and then he was at camp all summer every year...my mom has hardly ever made him breakfast since he was about 13.  So...my mom has raised me every day for 14 years, my middle brother for 18 years, but my oldest brother for only about 13 years....which of us is more important to her?  Which experience of being our mom makes her a valid mother or a better mother?  She just is our mother no matter where we are or how long we live with her." 

Then he turned to me and asked, "Did you love him completely every day that he was with you?"

"Why, yes." I replied." 

"Then you are a mother.  No one can take that away from you...time doesn't make you a mother, love does!  And I bet you will love him for the rest of your life.  My mom will always be our mother even after we go to college and get married, because she will always love us.  And you will always love him." 

With that it was over.  I was no longer waiting to become a mother.  I was a mother...and by golly I was a good one.  I had loved him completely...it didn't matter how long.  I had loved him enough to listen for what was the most right, most loving thing for him...it didn't matter if it meant it wasn't with me.  I had loved him enough to let him go.

We continued discussing this for the rest of the Sunday School class.  And more changed that morning than the way I looked at myself as a mother...the way I looked at Sunday School and my role in being there was also transformed. I was not a "teacher" coming to impress, inspire, outline, direct or define...I was a "fellow citizen of the household of God" coming to break bread with fellow spiritual thinkers.  All I had to bring with me was my honesty, my love for God, and my sincere desire to grow in grace through study, practice, application, celebration, praise...and tears throughout the week. 

By the time we left our bay-nestled table by the bank of windows along the west wall of the Sunday School, the sun had crested the tall buildings to our east and light poured across the plaza in front of us.  I knew that my hard won peace was fragile...at best...that I still had to return to our home, dismantle the nursery, and we were planning to drive to Colorado and face the same mixture of support and sympathy there.  But for that moment I knew that I had received yet another angel...or two...to walk with me on the next leg of the journey...and it was enough. 

The words to a hymn that had before been only a taunting to the mother I was waiting to be...became my silent lullabye...to myself...on the quiet drive home that afternoon:

"God is known in loving-kindness,
God, the true, eternal good;
Zion, ne'er will he forsake thee,
Trust His Father-Motherhood.

Can a mother leave her children?
Can unchanging love forget?
Though all earthly friends betray thee,
Lo, His arm enfolds thee yet.

Every prayer to Him is answered,
Prayer confiding in His will;
Blessedness and joy are near thee,
Hear His gentle Peace, be still.

Hear His voice above the tempest:
I have not forsaken thee;
In My hand thy name is graven,
I will save both thine and thee.
- Johannes Heermann

A blizzard blew into New England that afternoon and we left for Colorado with snow swirling and every mile in front of us a slow, hard-fought battle to gain traction...both on the road...and in my heart.  A battle had been won.  But the war with self, with feelings of betrayal and abandonment, was not over...in fact it had really just begun...

But that is tomorrow's installment....stay tuned…
K

"...she was in bitterness of soul...and wept sore..."

A dear friend, and faithful reader of this blog, reminded me yesterday that I have not always produced the promised extensions to stories that I touched on in earlier posts.  So rather than wait a few weeks or months to expand on the leg of "the journey" shared in last Thursday’s blog called "Success Within" (scroll down to read), I will extend the story today.  Here goes...

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.”
- Kahlil Gibran

One afternoon, not long after my morning at the blackboard with God, our son's birthmother came down to join me for tea while I was nursing him in the kitchen.  She sat down gingerly at the pine table in front of the picture window where I was cooing to our son and explaining to him that the birds standing on the frozen ledge of ice along the shoreline of our lake were actually warm in the icy air sprinkled with sparkling snow crystals drifting from the eaves of our home.   She listened distractedly and I held my breath while I continued speaking, knowing that the winds were shifting in our home as clearly as I could see the snow flakes changing direction in the invisible dry air beyond the pane of glass in front of us.

She took a sip of her tea, cleared her throat and then began...and once it started, there was no stopping the outpouring of regret, love, heartache, tears, and pain that flowed out of her that morning.  Yes, she loved us...no, she couldn't bear to leave him...yes, she had asked the adoption agency to advocate for the dissolution of our adoption plan.  But she also needed time alone with him before she could decide what she really wanted. I sat as still as stone that morning.  I don't think I cried.  I think I appeared pretty supportive….I was sure trying to be.  But I knew that something inside me was shattering...falling like broken glass into sharp shards of pain that, if I moved in the slightest, would slice and cut and stab the most tender places of hope and fulfillment I had just begun to believe were safe and secure in my Father's care.

We hugged, and I told her I understood.  And the funny thing was...I did.  I understood her love for this baby, because I was feeling it too.  And with that, I handed him to her and she took him to her room and closed the door.  I called my husband at work and shared with him what had happened and he promised to return home as soon as he finished a project he had gone into the studio to work on. 

The birthmother had explained that her counselor from the agency would be coming for her and the baby later that afternoon.  Her mother was flying in from out of state to join them in a "safe harbor home” to have a quiet place to think and come to a decision.  Going somewhere else seemed ludicrous to me.  All of her clothes were there, at our home.  His nursery was set up and all of the things that they would need for his care were already prepared...just for him...this was his home.

My husband arrived home just before the adoption counselor.  In front of the counselor I asked him if he thought they couldn't just stay at our home.  We could go stay with extended family nearby until we heard from them.  The adoption counselor was a bit disoriented by the offer.  But because it made sense for the baby to not move around from place to place in the middle of winter, he consented to this very unorthodox plan...chuckling that everything was unorthodox about our, then, very unconventional open adoption and he wasn't sure any longer what was "appropriate".  But he knew that this particular request was the most loving approach...so he went with it.

We made a few phone calls to arrange for our stay with family members.  We gathered our things together, said our goodbyes, and drove away from our home.  There was complete silence in the minivan in the large presence of our son's little, empty car seat that afternoon.  We were praying….both in our mobile closet.  I don't know what my husband's prayers were, but I do know that mine involved pleading one minute and surrendering the next.  My husband had to go back to his office/studio and I accompanied him there.  I found a dark corner of the green room, quiet on a Sunday afternoon since no radio guests were being interviewed on the weekend, and prayed.   Prayed that the birthmother would know that I would be a good mom regardless of the outcome....prayed to remember myself… that she would.

We spent the next days with family members who gently tiptoed around our very fragile spiritual poise.  My prayers wavered between a calm surrender to God's omnipotence and a frantic begging for His benevolence. 

That was until the phone rang one gray late afternoon.

It was the adoption counselor.  The birthmother had made her decision.  She wanted to rescind her surrender of our son and she planned to leave that evening with her mother for the long drive to her parent’s home in another state.  I asked the counselor to offer her all of his clothing, baby toys, etc.

Then...I lost it.  Period. 

There is no other way to describe that moment.  I lost all poise, vision, hope and balance.  I wept, wailed, beat on pillows...trying to drown out the pain in my heart.  I cannot think of that afternoon in my husband’s aunt’s home without feeling tightness in my throat.  My apologies still go out to all who were present and had to witness that anguish.

Soon we left for the drive back to our house an hour away.  Our van was still filled with a heavy silence and an empty car seat.  The agency's counselor for adoptive families had told us that we did have recourse, that although it would be difficult, we could appeal her decision and buy ourselves some time with him and establish our case more securely as being the better home.    And I have to admit this consideration was poking at my thought, when with absolute clarity...as if spoken by the only Counselor...the Mighty King, the Prince of Peace...the message came.  "Can you imagine yourself, when he is 12 years old, explaining to him that his birthmother had loved him and wanted to parent him, but that you had fought real hard and won?"  The answer was as simple and clear as the question itself..."No".

And that was that.

This didn't make the next hours any easier, but the question of whether to pursue recourse was answered with supreme finality.  We arrived home in the emptiness of a cold, clear winter's night.  The sky above the ocean and our lake was dark and fathomless.  The stars were as brilliant as if laid on a jeweler’s mat of black velvet above us.  I wasn't prepared to see her car still in our driveway as she and her mother finished packing the trunk and back seat with baby clothes, the remnants of her seven-month stay with us, and a new, infant car seat I didn't recognize.

We sat in our van nearby, not wanting to put anyone in an emotionally awkward position, as they buckled Austin into his little seat and into their seatbelts before edging their way out of the driveway and out of our lives.  We remained there in the cold without speaking, long after their taillights disappeared around the bend of the wooded lane on which our home sat.  Finally my husband broke the silence.  He opened his car door, got out, and walked into the house.  It had been a long siege and he was ready for it to be over.  I, on the other hand, couldn't imagine going into a house that was filled with the baby scents of bath soap, powder, and baby oil.  I hugged my parka close to my chest, pulled my hat down over my ears, and tightened my scarf around my neck before pulling on my gloves and getting out of the van.  I headed up the hill through the frozen grass and pine needles that crunched beneath my feet.  I needed a place to grieve.  The nearby Indian burial ground suited my mood perfectly.  I opened the rusted iron gate and found my favorite place at the base of an ancient pine tree where I could settle myself between her strong roots.  I collapsed against her trunk and allowed myself to  weep with abandon.

Looking out over the lake that reflected a billion stars in her icy still surface, I sent up to the heavens a sound as primordial as motherhood itself.  I found myself listening to the howling in the air, and I realized it was not a coyote or a wolf but my own voice that had me riven with terror.  I began to chuckle and I thought to myself, "Thank goodness there is not a living soul for miles around, because if anyone were to hear me they would think I was a drunken woman wandering through the woods."

This realization itself was a Godsent angel message for me.  It woke me up from the grief-induced hypnosis I was under and I began to actually think....and the first thought was:  "Well, didn't Eli, the priest, think that Hannah was drunk (see Bible story, I Samuel 1 ) when she came to the temple praying for a child and was "in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore."  In that moment I felt a kinship with Hannah, her plight...and her victory. That spiritual sisterhood was as real and tangible as if she were standing next to me with baby Samuel in her arms saying, "Look, it was true for me...and it will be for you too...God has heard your prayers as He heard mine...the promise will be fulfilled."

Centuries of time melted and we were sisters...I was looking to her for confirmation that the trust I had placed in God's love was warranted...and she was telling me not to falter.  Her story became my story.  I knew in that moment that my tears, my weeping and wailing like a drunken woman in the dark winter's night, were the prelude to a promise.   I gathered my coat and my wits around me and walked slowly and calmly back to the house.  I knew that "according to the time of life"... just like Hannah, I too would become a mother...but this time to a daughter and that we were being asked by her Father/Mother God to name her after this woman who had comforted and encouraged me in my sorrow.

Staying in our home that night was peaceful, yet heartbreaking.  The nursery seemed like an empty hole in our home that mimiced the one that I felt had been carved out of my heart.  But I held to the promise that this hole was really a nest being carved out for the daughter God was telling me was "on her way".

The next morning we left our home for an unscheduled trip to Colorado to see family and friends who had been prepared to meet and celebrate the birth and adoption of our new son.  We knew that we needed to go there to assure them that we were alright and were going to survive this experience....even though I was still on a roller coaster of emotions.  But more about that trip and the healing that took place during our drive to Colorado in Thursday's blog....I promise!

A little over a year later I would be holding our daughter, Hannah, sitting on a sunny veranda in the middle of an African bushveld farm with a gang of gibbon monkeys in the orange trees nearby throwing half-eaten fruit at the farm manager as he tried to chase them out of the trees so that they wouldn't ruin the whole crop.  I chuckled and turned my face to the bright sun of the southern hemisphere and sang to my daughter verses from the "lullabye" that had held my heart together through those bleak days of winter that seemed so far away from the warmth of Africa in April.

"Mother's Evening Prayer"
Oh make me glad for every scalding tear,
For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain!
Wait, and love more for every hate,
And fear no ill,  -- since God is good,
And loss is gain.

No snare no fowler, pestilence or pain;
No night drops down upon the troubled breast,
When heaven's aftersmile earth's teardrops gain,
And mother finds her home and heavenly rest.
- Mary Baker Eddy

The Bible has a precedent setting story for you that holds hope and comfort...let its prophets and matriarchs speak to your heart...a message of peace and promise.

K

Success within...

Okay, okay....dear God...I get it...again...

Embedded in the blogs of my dear friends and respected colleagues, Laura Matthews and Evan Mehlenbacher, I found reminders this week of where my career goals begin...and end...their shared inspirations take me back to an experience which made a critical impact on my view of what determines success.

In Laura's post "Spirit's Success Story" she shares this observation:

"...I'm thinking today that success
is more of an internal quality than I thought.
It's a state of mind, something we consent to, that we insist upon.
We need to see it as part of our identity, part of our makeup.
It is who we are, not what we do.
What we do is the outcome of the mental state of success within."

This really resonates with me.  There was a time when I had reached most every professional goal I had set for myself, but my greatest personal goal seemed unattainable....that of becoming a mother.  I felt as if I was doomed by a damaged body to live the rest of my life "in want".  The path to motherhood for the woman or couple who do not conceive easily is full of steep climbs and rife with almost insurmountable odds.  Financially it can be well beyond the reach of most couples.  Emotionally it can seem like a dark labyrinth of self-doubt and regret, leaving one feeling like a failure spiritually....confused and abandoned by God.

Anyone who has read past posts on this blog knows that I did become a mother...through the miracle of adoption...and that I have three beautiful daughters.  Others may have also discovered a post or article on either this blog or on my website that describes a pivotal time in my life when I "found God" through the collapse of an adoption plan, the returning of a child that we were adopting to his mother, the rapid onset of grave illness, and feelings of hopelessness...all overcome by prayer.  But I'd like to share a window on one moment during this experience that has been one of the greatest feelings of "success" in my life...and it looked like supreme failure...spiritually...at the time.

It was a bitterly cold winter day in 1988.  The baby we were in the process of adopting had been born earlier that month and we were enjoying sweet moments of bonding with him through cuddling, cooing, lullabies, nursing (I had been preparing for six months prior to his birth so that I could nurse him after his adoption) and just watching him sleep with the same hypnotic fascination that I watch the leaping flames in a fire and am never bored.  His birthmother had not been able to follow through on her post-birth plans as expected and ended up coming to live with us until she could be released from her physician's care.  Our son stayed with us in our master bedroom and she stayed in the bedroom across the way.  We all enjoyed watching him grow and I was thrilled to be able to share with her his happiness with his new family and what I thought was my supreme suitability as a mother to her precious child...hoping this would bring her peace of mind about her choices. 

This was what I told myself day in and day out as he grew into a happy, smiling infant.  But under the surface I knew that things were not as they seemed.  His birthmother was someone who I had grown to know and love dearly during the months leading up to his birth.  We had laughed, cooked, talked, shopped, and dreamed of his future, together while we awaited his arrival.  But now this funny, affable, caring young woman had become silent and tense.  I knew her well enough to see that behind her smile...when she observed us loving him...was a pain so intense that it couldn't be masked.  Her eyes revealed what her heart was screaming at the very moment she was complimenting me on my "naturalness" as his mother.

One morning when the cold wind came across the ocean, through the woods and up from the estuary pond our home sat on just beyond the strand separating us from the sea, I felt a chill in my heart that couldn't be denied.  I had answered the phone in the downstairs kitchen and it was for her.  I called up to her room where she was quietly spending her morning in prayer and reflection.  After she answered I hung up, and I knew.   I had recognized the voice of the birthparent counselor from the adoption agency we had worked with as she developed and articulated an adoption plan for her child during the pregnancy.  I could hear her sobs coming through the receiver as I moved to place it on the cradle of the wall phone in the kitchen.  I knew what those sounds meant without her ever needing to say a word.  I had read it in her eyes for weeks.  She was rethinking her plans and wanted to parent him herself.   I was emotionally frantic. 
 
I felt abandoned by God.  I thought I had done everything right.  Hadn't I prayed, hadn't I quit a job that I loved to be home with her so that she wouldn't feel so isolated and alone during her pregnancy, hadn't I offered her every comfort, support, resource at my disposal to be sure she would see how generous and loving I would be with a child?  Hadn't I given her all of my love, attention, compassion?  And I had failed. 
Success...spiritually...seemed so determined by an outcome.  I would have prayed effectively if...if, what...she walked away from the child without feeling sadness or grief....I got a baby...and she didn't?  All of a sudden it all seemed so odd and confusing.  What did spiritual success look like in this case....what would the "healing" feel like….what were we "demonstrating"?  Getting a baby? ...hmmm...

I turned with my whole heart toward the big picture window that faced towards the lake shore and beyond to the sea.  I felt as raging and roiling as the waves that were crashing, gray and icy, on that cold winter shoreline.  Like the salty spray covering every rock, mollusk and piece of driftwood with a briny dampness, stinging tears chilled the landscape of our home and my heart.

A low fog hung over the lake and shifted with the winds.  Even this modest movement in my viewfinder was a distraction as I grasped for straws of comfort and peace.  So I turned to the large blackboard in the kitchen and focused my gaze on a point high and empty on the steely slate.  "Dear God, " my heart reached out, "if you are Love and you love me, this would be a good time for me to feel it." I felt a little shiver as a soft, patient chuckle echoed through my heart.  "Oh dear daughter," the voice spoke with such calm assurance, "the only way that you will know it is My love that you are feeling, is as you feel it moving through the conditions in your own heart and dissolving them...as your loving becomes like Mine." 

I got it.  As long as I could feel this love only when it met with my conditions, when I got what I wanted, as in... I will love this birthmother only if she surrenders the baby…. I will love the baby only if he becomes my son….I will love myself only if I am deemed good enough to be his parent...and on and on, I had learned nothing about love...not the love that matters...the love being expressed from within my own heart...the Love who only ever calls Him/Herself "I AM."   I realized that I would really know it was divine Love, God's love only when I knew it was divine...unconditional...without conditions.  I had the opportunity through this experience--and especially that moment--to REALLY feel God as Love....and the love that was my "I AM".

I turned away from the blackboard, not at that point comforted, but with a glimpse of what it meant to know God as Love.  And I really wanted that more than I wanted a baby...even though I knew that the exercises I would have to go through to really apply this truth and find it to be an applied, reliable science...would be very, very difficult. 

As I write this I can almost "see" the tape player on the kitchen counter.  I remember that there was a tape of inspirational hymns in it I had been listening to that morning as I had fed and rocked our son.  I slowly walked across the kitchen and pressed the button which would resume its playing.  The words from a loved hymn floated out over my heart's stirred waters like the soft fog gently covering the lake at the foot of our property.  These words became the lullaby I sang to our son and to myself as we moved through the weeks in which his mother finally came to her decision to rescind her surrender and parent him herself:

"Come to the land of peace;
   From shadows come away;
Where all the sounds of weeping cease,
   And storms no more have sway.

Fear hath no dwelling here;
   But pure repose and love
Breathe through the bright, celestial air
   The spirit of the dove.

In this divine abode,
   Change leaves no saddening trace;
Come, trusting heart, come to thy God,
   Thy holy resting place."

- Felicia D. Hemans 

There were many dark hours when I held on with all my heart to the spirit of these words.  The anguish of seeing one's dreams literally drive away in the arms of another woman...another mother... were nothing when weighed against missing out on  the opportunity each moment to really feel the love that is God...as my identity...my "I AM". 

I remember moments of near insanity that night as I felt the emptiness of not having him in my arms through the throbbing in my breast and my heart.  I will write more on what happened the night she left in a future post, but suffice it to say that moment by moment and day by day I reclaimed and redefined that "throbbing" as my heart's pulse...the beating currents of love pouring through my life and out to those whom my thoughts rested upon...including her...and him.

There are so many moments I could continue to share right now about the days that followed and the deep and unshakable peace I discovered...and I will later...but what I learned along the way was that just when I felt most bereft of love's touch, all I had to do was BE that love and I was one with God...who is Love....

My success was never about getting a baby...or getting my way.  It was, as Evan's blog  for January 2nd, "True Victory", shares of a poem by one of my favorite authors, the success of gaining mastery over self:

"I do not ask for any crown
But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within."
~ Louisa May Alcott

Mary Baker Eddy says it in her own way and it is her words that keeps me in my "office" late into the night... well after each patient has been seen, spoken with, visited, emailed, and each treatment has been given:

"Be of good cheer; the warfare with one's self is grand;
it gives one plenty of employment,
and the divine Principle worketh with you --
and obedience crowns persistent effort with everlasting victory."

I am still learning to apply this law of unconditional love in my life...to succeed within...which is what my entire spiritual journey and this travelogue/blog is all about.  Thank you Evan, Laura, birthmother/friend and your now 19 year old son....

More to come.  But for now, Happy Birthday dear Austin....
 
K