Praying, Crying, Wrestling

It is 3:30 in the morning and I am wide-awake, pulled to the computer to put the words of my heart out in the open. You see it’s been a difficult ministry week, full of death, spiritual intensity and situations that remind me of my precious Hope gone too soon from our family. I feel completely stripped bare, the cup fully empty and living in an emotional disaster area. Why is it that when I am utterly exhausted and just want to sleep that it is the wee-hours of the morning that find my soul and body awake and wrestling with the difficult task of discernment and finding balance.

It probably is not helping that the gray winter of January and February along with the reality that January would have been Hope’s birth month sets my soul to struggle to move lightly some days. I’ve been reading Henry Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer, and while a good book, it’s not exactly light reading, my Lent devotional words have been hunger, fasting and penitence – not exactly light words. I’m taking a class on Henry Lester’s book The Angry Christian, again not exactly easy. In reality I’ve been residing in a fairly deep place. I’m still in awe and wonder that all this has managed to collect in one time and space. I guess when I dive deep, I really dive deep.

Add on top of this, changes at work, and while they are good changes – change is change and after you’ve been someplace as along as I have at my place of work grief also comes with change – even good change. And through it all I am still attending to my high need areas at work, attending to publicity and speaking events for Still a Mother, trying to be a grace filled mom as my 8 year old prepares to start braces (and having been there I know with it will come some painful days) and being a supportive, fully present wife.

And so here I find myself in the early morning,

writing, praying, wrestling

in the midst of what is the emotional disaster area of my soul. For the first time in a long time I found myself in a place where the idea of having to walk into a patient room and do one more patient/family visit put terror in my soul, because I was afraid of being thrown into one more intense situation and completely falling into a quivering pile of mush right in front of them out of the sheer inability to find once again the strength to be fully present to and minister in the mist of the stuff of life. So I hightailed it back to the office to hide, fall apart in my supervisors office and reached out to colleagues to help me on to the path of putting myself back together again.

And so here I sit, in the wee-hours of the morning,

writing, praying, crying and wrestling

in this space with ideas of letting go, creating space to care for myself, and desperately seeking God’s voice. A couple of wise people have suggested a time of stepping back to a more basic, broader assignment and letting go of my high need units for a while, and after 8 almost 9 years of being a critical care chaplain – they may be right. Not letting go forever, because I love my units and it is where my heart is, but only for a time. Time enough to let myself reset and come back with fresh eyes, ears and heart.

And this is the source of my wrestling – I don’t want these areas I have come to care for deeply to feel abandoned, but then again ministering to them out my desolation may very well be a type of abandonment. I’m not making a quick decision, but instead staying here

praying, listening and crying

and letting myself embrace the gift of a couple of days off to discern my own self-care and path forward.

And if I am completely honest, what I am really doing is trying to find the courage to actually put myself first for once, claim what I need and take a step back. And so for just a little bit longer I will stay here –

praying, crying, wrestling

and seeking peace with the decision I know I need to make.

Lent Week 2: Hunger

So I must admit I struggled with this weeks creative lent practice. The word was hunger and the creative words just would not come. The more I tried to force some creative words from my brain and heart the more they would not come and the more I hungered for something creative. I found it a bit ironic, but then again one of the questions was what was I hungering for. Perhaps my struggle answered the question for me. I finally found a creative release on Saturday when I took the following staged picture. Even setting it up was a creative outlet that fed my hunger for creativity.

As I planned and staged the picture I found my thoughts centering in living in a culture of plenty (at least of stuff) and how there are other things that we might hunger for and is our fascination with stuff really just trying to ineffectively feed these hungers, almost like trying to feed a physical hunger with plastic food. 

What thoughts does this picture hold for you?

This week I am supposed to be journeying with the words fasting and penitence. But it’s been a hard week with death, difficult ministry and deep continuing education reading. My soul is tired and overworked and feeling a bit selfish in the fact that facing and living with these words was more than I could handle. A good friend suggested it might be time for a spiritual time out from the deep, intense place I’ve been residing. She is right, so this week I am joining my daughter in some simple coloring mediation. I’ll share with you what this break in the journey produced.

Lent Week 1: Prepare

This past week my creative Lenten journey had me contemplating the word prepare.  Much of my thoughts centered around the process of preparing my soul and also that of the process and preparation in being a guide to my daughter in her first exploration of a set time of contemplation. Part of the journey is for me to embrace the raw result of initial creative flow, perfect result or not.  Journey with me now through the raw, unpolished words of my heart and pictures of my eye.

 

PREPARATION

I prepare to set aside this time,

This time of planting seeds of quiet in my soul.

I prepare to be a partner with my daughter,

Showing her how to set aside time.

Showing her how to plant her own seeds of transformation.

Together we plant seeds of hope,

In preparation for the days to come.

We start with the black of ashes.

Preparing to move each day closer

To the creative color of the new life of Easter.

PLANTING TIME

Unseen planted in my heart,

Just like seeds planted in the spring soil.

I may have an idea of what will burst forth,

But really it is not until the blooms/fruit emerges

That one sees the full beauty.

Right now my soul is being prepared,

Fertilized

Turned into a nourishing ground for

The seeds of transformation to be planted by God.

It is still early,

The tools being gathered and prepared.

Come back next week for the creative journey with the word Hunger.

Creative Journey Towards Transformation

Dry Spell, that’s where I am.

The creative words have vanished.

The deep thoughts have flitted away,

leaving a dry sandy place where

creativity once resided.          

But Sand with a little bit of water and hard work

can become a beautiful work of art.

So I wait for the water to well up,

wetting the dry sands of my creativity.

So that once again words may come.

This was the poem that spilled out of my soul a couple of weeks ago. And it was upon opening up my journal to this poem on Tuesday that I finally found my direction into Lent. I realized that I have allowed busyness of life to suppress my creative spirit. And have been neglectful of the creative space in my life. This thought had been brewing for a couple of days after I found the resource Hungering For Life (which can be found here). This is taking me on a creative exploration of a word each week of Lent.

My daughter also asked to do her own lent practice this year. At eight the idea of giving up something was too intimidating, but she embraced the idea of a contemplative coloring time each morning. We worked together to come up with her own creative “packet” for lent and now start our mornings together in my office, me in my chair – she on floor. I am coming to look forward to that time each morning in my office.

           

In the interest of helping me honor this creative space I am making in my life, my plan is through lent to simply post the results of the previous weeks creative contemplation. Please continue to journey with me through this creative space. I hope that you may find your moments of creative transformation as you journey here with me.

This week I am working with the word prepare: join me here next week to see what came forth.

Playfully Exploring a Journey

Fridays are my Sabbath day.  It’s the day I have to myself with my husband at work and kiddo at school.  It’s the day I can get a few things done around the house, read a book for pleasure, watch a movie.  Basically, its the one day in the week I have the freedom to wander through the day at my own pace. My day always starts with a walk.  It is this walk that scrubs my soul clean of all the weariness of a week of busy and intense ministry as a chaplain in high acuity areas.  I have a favorite path that I take.  It provides an interesting juxtaposition of suburbia, man made nature space and nature grown forest.  My walks almost always involve stopping at least once or twice for a picture of something that catches my eye and contemplative nature.  It is these walks that feed my creative writing.

Lately though my Fridays have been shared with my daughter as she has had numerous Fridays off from school the last month or so. I love her dearly and love spending time with her, but I have also come to cherish my Sabbath Friday. So I have really had to work to create my Sabbath space and to think outside the box of how that Sabbath time might look.

On our most recent Friday together I decided I was not giving up my morning walk again.  We put on several layers and headed out once it was fully light. I let her choose how many miles she wanted to walk (she choose 4) and we took my usual path.  It was a completely different experience, what is usually a 45 minute walk ended up being a hour and a half explore of nature and play and serenity. 

We marveled at a nest made of leaves and yes, plastic bags (giving a whole new level of meaning to the phrase reduce, reuse, recycle.) I witnessed plain sticks transform into golf clubs, long fingers to tap me with, and more.  A tiny pinecone had to be carried to just the right big pinecone so the “baby” pinecone could have a family.

We laughed at the frog hat that was set so carefully on                                                     a rock and left there for others to find. We stopped                                                          and (safely) broke ice at the edge of a stream. 

I listened to her try to imitate the birdcalls and we watched in silent awe a group of white tailed deer

cross our path. My walk became holy play as I 

watched my daughter connect to God’s creation in 

a completely free and playful way.

In the quieter moments of our walk I found myself turning over in my mind the question of what my Lenten Journey is going to look like.  With Ash Wednesday just days away, I still don’t really know what direction my path is taking. I’ve been living with this question for several days with no good direction.  And as a person who likes to plan ahead this lack of plan or direction is really beginning to bother me.  That was until I watched my daughter take her time playing through our walk spending time with whatever caught her attention.  And realized how what she was engaging in was holy play and with each “Mommy look” she brought me into her holy, contemplative play that had no agenda. And it was in this agenda-less space that I became comfortable continuing to contemplate the question I wrote in my journal a few days ago, “What is the journey I need to be taking this Lent?” So with an open and playful heart I am on the journey ready to see where the question takes me. Because this most recent walk with my daughter taught me that some things, just cannot be rushed and must instead be playfully explored.