Hello to all visitors who have traveled far and wide from V's Place! Welcome to the blog I always well-meaningingly mean to update and explode upon with creativity and inspiration. As visitors of V's Place, you know I am a stepmother of three and, while that was the focus of my guest blog over there, ironically, I can't find the time to devote to all my blogs while I grapple with the steps and mis-steps of stepmotherhood.
Aren't writer-mothers always chock-full of creative ideas yet never full of free time?
So I ask for your grace and still hope that you find pleasure in reading these memory tidbits on this blog. Having my essay published in V's Place has inspired me to write more personal essays and I hope to add more meat to this blog very soon.
In the meantime, Hippocampus Magazine honored me by publishing a personal essay in their debut issue. Won't you check that out?
Thank you for visiting my well-intentioned blog and I hope you return! Egg me on to write more, please! Send me encouraging and insistent comments to get back to work!
"Nothing lasts.
There is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is,
now.
I stood there once, on the green grace, scattering flowers."
~ Mary Oliver, "Flare"
Identity Crisis
I am trying to comfort myself
with Poetry
but not the way I used to create:
opening veins and
letting
pain make its mark.
I want the comfort of Poetry
without dying to it.
How do I live it?
What do I
open if not a vein?
I wrote my whole life -
now I come from a new direction
and must re-learn my routes.
Different roads.
Will I arrive at the same place?
Whose tracks do I follow?
I am Goldilocks:
this page is too soft,
this too hard.
This porridge is too sweet,
this too sour.
Where can I access
what all poets
call forth
and,
in the end,
will it still
be called
Poetry?
*******************************
I have a day off. In olden days (like pre-May, 2010) I would go to cafes on my day off and write poem after poem about whatever horrible pain I was going through. I'd literally write four or five, maybe more, poems in one sitting. And boy, would I feel like a burden had been lifted. Sometimes, a few poems would end up being quite good and I'd submit them to this or that poetry journal.
Last year was a rough one. I did things I never thought I'd do. I became a person I'd never thought I'd become. And in November of 2010, in the midst of family and personal tragedy, I found God.
God raised me out of the muck and mire.
But I hadn't written poetry since May of that year.
I thought about this. Was it a punishment for making very poor choices that hurt people? Did God take my words away?
The more I learned about God, the more I realized that he wouldn't do that to me. What he MIGHT do is lead me away from the sort of poetry I used to write - which was written out of deep depression and despair - and lead me to a different kind of writing.
Yes, that is what I think he did. Because as soon as I let him into my life, I began writing personal essay after personal essay, even getting published in the debut issue of Hippocampus Magazine - an online magazine of memoir/personal essay. It was my second personal essay to ever be published (the first was my first professional publication at the age of 18 in a Canadian journal, "Afterthoughts"). Post-November, 2010, I wrote obsessively in my new faith blog and connected with dozens of Christian mentors. I loved it.
But I felt a sort of mourning for Poetry - I missed it so much. I missed the expression, I missed the releasing I felt, the burden lifted.
However, now I had found a new way of lifting my burdens. I no longer had to "open a vein," as I write in the above poem. I could express myself so much better in essays.
But today I sit at a cafe. It has all the calling that my old poetry-writing-cafe-days had once upon a time. And I miss Poetry desperately.
I brought poets with me: Mary Oliver (because she's able to write about nature and God so beautifully), Mary Karr ("Sinners, Welcome"), and the anthology, "Cries of the Spirit." I thought if I brought poetry that had a spiritual bent to it, I might be able to access my own better. But no dice. All I write is drivel. I don't like what comes out in poetry form these days.
So what do you suggest? I bet you'd say to write every day and read more poetry. And oh, I agree.
But I must say, when? I work full-time, I am a full-time stepmother now and am struggling to juggle that with being a wife and my new-found responsibilities as a child of God.
I can't find the time to sit down long enough to stare at my own navel.
Is that what poetry is to me?
Perhaps the old poetry I wrote. That was staring-at-my-navel-poetry. Granted, some of it was good. The North American Review thought so, as did countless other national and international journals. Various awards thought so. Friends and mentors thought so. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry thought so as I walked on the stage to receive my diploma in 2005.
And that was all for my navel-gazing poetry.
Oh, excuse me. I was a confessionalist.
And now? What am I now????
I don't think I'm a Christian writer. Not yet. And do I want to become that? Perhaps...
but Poetry, oh, Poetry...
I miss you, old friend. Why do I feel like I have to bleed for you to return?
I refuse to go back to my old life. The struggles are still there, but I have a ground beneath me like I've never had before. Was my old poetry written out of desperation to find that ground? And now that I've found the ground, I don't know what to write?
What do I do, friends? Have YOU had a writing identity crisis? Please share. I feel like I've lost a piece of me.
A long overdue post. This will be about memory and this will be about love, past love, love that transcends the "honeymoon" period, a love that grows into "married love."
This will be about a longing to be remembered by people in my life and the realization that I need to focus on my here-and-now, my everyday people, like my husband, Lee, and my stepkids.
About dreams - the nighttime ones that, for me, haunt me from when I wake up until nearly half my day is over because it pulls at my heartstrings and my vulnerabilities, that voice that tells me: they don't remember you. You didn't matter to them.
I need to name them. The men, the boys, the people I dream about who haunt me. I'm sure they don't even think about me anymore. How are they to know that a combination of a dream-affecting antidepressant and my need to be remembered pulls them into my subconscious?
I need to name them so they can leave my head. Leave the neurophysiology of my body.
In last night's dream, it was you, Jason Jay Siegel. So much packed in a short time, that was part of our story. And, in the end, it was my neediness and moods that scared you away. My fear of abandonment which I've always had since youth and which was amplified when my mother died. Jason, I wish you all the happiness in the world. I hope you have found the love of your life and bring her home to L.A. to visit with your family often. I hope you are teaching English somewhere and listening to classical music. We've already said goodbye, nearly four years ago, but I'm saying goodbye to you for myself now. To put that part of my life to rest.
Jake Corbet, so many unanswered things hang in the air like wires connecting one thing to the other, yet there is no connection any longer. I still worry about your health; I hope you have found what you need to have the best quality of life. I hope you have found love, but most of all, I hope you have found love for yourself. Goodbye to you, Jake. I put your memory in my head to rest now.
To go further back, I bring John Kaldis and Joel Ortiz and Andrew Schneider to mind. All great "loves" from elementary school and high school. You'd think as young as I was that I wouldn't have felt such strong feelings, but I was an intense child and teenager. I think they'd laugh if they knew how much their memories have stuck with me. I don't often pass their way during my day, but my dreams pull me to their doorstep so often that I sometimes get angry that I can't just let go.
But that is part of the pharmaceutical problem, you see. And I'd like to, right now, assure my amazing husband that THAT is the main reason these boys and men have been yanked to my dream time. It's the damn Cymbalta that I've been on since 2006, that awful year when Mom died. Who knew that a an antidepressant can affect your dreams SO much? Be so vivid, be so intense and dig down so deep into your subconscious?
So John, new with a son, and Joel, living it up in New Orleans, and Andy, also with a new son... I listen to the sound of the moving-on train. The horn sounds loudly and I've not wanted to listen to it until now. I thought if I just held your memory in my heart, if I just found a way to keep in touch, that I'd be remembered.
But now that I'm married, I've learned that he is the only man I need to think about, dream about. For I get to look into his eyes every day. He thinks about me every day, he remembers me every day. I am remembered. I am cherished. I will never fade from his view.
I shall use the Beatles' "In My Life" to go through this cleansing, this letting go. There are places I'll remember
(Oh, Maine South Theatre Department, you have taken up residence in my dream-world ever since I graduated high school - before Cymbalta started its reign. Mr. Muszynski, you have been the ring master, appearing in my dreams the most often. I can still remember the smell of the stage, your voice calling out directions. As a young teen, I needed the attention you gave, feeling like a cypher at home, walking blindly through the start of severe depression and dangerous habits. This is a place I remember)
All my life though some have changed Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain
(And still, my depression took full force during high school, bringing friends to me in concern, pushing friends away in frustration. I regret that. I regret my neediness and manipulation. I have bad, guilty memories of sitting on the black marble bench and crying, sobbing, scars on my arms, people not knowing what to do. Hiding in the bathrooms and backstage dressing rooms. All that is gone now. I still have depression, but not that same kind. I pray that those who knew me in high school can believe that I am a different, better person today).
All these places had their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life I've loved them all
(There is a time to remember and a time to let go. I recall my friends and "lovers" back then - Matt, Joel, Andy... how I hurt some, how some hurt me. Fast forward many years and there is Christopher who, in 2007, died of diabetes. There is Alex Bledsoe, keeper of three growing years of my life, witness to graduate school and falling down again and again. A relationship that wasn't always healthy, but it taught me a lot. And Stephen Vakil, who tried to understand me and my depths, but that, ultimately ended as well. But in my life... "I've loved them all." I use the word "love" in a different way, however... and I will explain that in fuller detail next).
But of all these friends and lovers There is no one compares with you And these memories lose their meaning When I think of love as something new Though I know I'll never lose affection For people and things that went before I know I'll often stop and think about them In my life I love you more
This stanza belongs to Lee. Lee Auter, the man whose last name I share. There is NO ONE who compares with you, Lee. Even as I dream of others, due to some strange subconscious blip, you are the one I wake up to. The foggy dreams lose their meaning when I brush past the cobwebs and start my day, calling you at 7:30am to check in and say good morning to you at work while I drive my own self to work. I hope you can understand that "I'll never lose affection" for these aforementioned boys and men, and I may pause when I hear their name once in a while, but Lee, "in my life I love YOU more").
Lee, I love you more, I love the children more, I love our life more than every dream I ever dreamed of. Yes, I hold pain and regret and fear. But I am taking it to the cleaners, as they say. I'm letting go. I'm getting off of the Cymbalta, then getting off of all other psychiatric drugs and I will see what stability I have underneath these past 18 years of drug-induced living. I am quite sure that I am a better person.
“There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new life.” – Unknown
Why do I have this insatiable need to share my near-every thought with you? You who are friends, some strangers. What is the psychology that goes into a blog writer? I'll attempt to look at what goes into this blog writer's psychosis/ology.
As a child, I was not heard. Hence, you find me self-injuring at fourteen. Self-injury is all about pent-up emotions spilling over the top. Not able to formulate feeling words or to express feelings. For a burgeoning writer, I did not know how to ask for help in a healthy way.
I started writing in a journal when I was eleven years old. I had dabbled in diaries, you know, the pretty ones with the fields of flowers on the cover and the lock and key. In first and second grade, I dotted my first diary with entries describing my overwhelming love for Gerald and how I did on my report cards.
But it was at the age of eleven, when I first read Anne Frank's journal, and my stepmother gave me a journal, that I decided to keep up with it. It's overwhelming to think on, but I have over 100 books filled with my thoughts and feelings: good and bad. And, sadly, I mostly wrote in the journal when I felt bad.
I've tried to return to these journals and re-read some, but it always leaves me in despair and longing to fix those days.
Fast-forward to 2004. I discover the blog. I'm living with my then-boyfriend, Alex, also a writer, and I start a blog named after my graduate school thesis title: "Romantic Circus Songs." It boggles my mind the stories that are kept on that blog, which ran from 2004 to 2010. Every mood change, so many life changes: break-ups, break-downs, job changes, marriage, stepkids, moving to our first house. It's all there, bare as bare can be.
Why didn't I mind being naked in my writing? I have one valid reason: especially when it comes to depression and things related to it, I was not ashamed and I wanted to share my experience so that others wouldn't feel as alone. Similarly, I wrote poetry that expressed my ennui and sought to befriend the afflicted.
But it was more than that. Soon, I began the habit of first writing a blog rather than going to my personal journal. It alarmed me, but I didn't think much of it. Thus, much of my more in-depth and juicy writing is in my blogs. My personal journal has lost some of its flair and first-time-thoughts.
Some people say that us bloggers are just conceited to think that others would want to read our thoughts and opinions. To that, I point you to the billions of blogs on the internet. More and more web sites are cropping up highlighting blogs as pieces of literature, as writing that has as much merit as a creative nonfiction piece published in a print journal. Why, the High Calling is highlighting my blog, The Dove Chronicles, as an "interesting" blog of note.
I see a future with me and blogging. I grow more confident in my prose-writing skills, which is a huge benchmark because I used to think I could only write in poetry. I feel words and sentences and cohesive thoughts being poured into me and I am so excited.
My church has picked up a column by me for our monthly newsletter. I regularly write blog posts on The Dove Chronicles. I'll be trying to write more on this blog, more memories, more hauntings.
Blogging is a wave of the future, I say. We've gone past conceit and joined the ranks of honest expression and a desire to share our thoughts with others in order to connect. It's all about connection.
And yet... as the writer sits behind the computer and reads replies to her blog post, is that distancing her from real people?
Oh, that's a whole other kettle of fish.
For now, blogging makes me happy.
Will it take the place of face-to-face conversation? I don't know. But my fingers are happy to move; my heart happy to share.
I haven't seen the movie, "The King's Speech," yet, but I hear it's quite extraordinary. Everyone tells me, "oh, you stuttered? You must see this movie." As if I and the King of England were one being, sharing the same experience. I suppose they meant well. They wanted me to feel better about having such an affliction. Or having it when I was younger.
I once wrote an award-winning poem about my stuttering. I wrote it in 1998; it came to me through divine intervention. The poem is good and I was not that good of a poet in 1998. It has become my favorite poem of mine as well as my "signature" piece. So in sixth grade I gave the longest two-minute report on John F. Kennedy ever, stumbling over every consonant
dragging them like fingers across a radiator. And at sixteen I boiled some hot water in my mother's kettle
and dipped my tongue in like a tea bag. I took a breath, opened my mouth and watched the silent bird
escape into the repeating night.
My stuttering story is not my own, it involves my father as well. As a boy, he had a horrific stutter - much worse than mine ever was. His parents sent him to a "disability camp" - remember, this was in the 50s - and while he doesn't recall much about the camp, he remembers one counselor in particular who helped him the most. When he returned from camp, he was cured. When I was ten I asked my father if I could go to that camp but he said it wasn't there anymore.
In the Mediterranean, then? Surely they can cure this in the Mediterranean, I said. Anyone who can say that word surely can't stutter.
Dad always said that I "got it" from him, that it was hereditary. I don't know if it was. Mom said that she was always too busy to listen to me and so, at a young age, I developed a way of bursting out fractured sentences to get the most information to her.
Dad took me to his cousin, a speech therapist. I don't remember much about this, except her porch and a lot of white.
In grade school, I started speech therapy in the 3rd grade. The speech therapist was a good one, albeit a little strict. She left after one year and another one came in her place: a A beautiful long-haired brunette who challenged me in every way. She'd make me call up pizza joints on the telephone and order and then say to cancel the order, just so I could get used to speaking on the telephone. This TERRIFIED me and made me hate her for that day. Other days, she'd sit and listen while I'd droll on in tears about some boy who didn't like me or this or that. She bordered on a regular therapist at that point. I believe I stopped going to see her in 7th or 8th grade.
But I still stuttered.
I remember walking down the long hallway to the end room the first day of high school. I was walking to the speech therapist's office, to meet her for the first time. I had gotten involved with drama and, while, strangely, it affected me little there, I was still stammering and nervous and wanted to be rid of it. It's funny; I remember walking into the room; I remember how small it was, almost like a closet. I remember the woman not being very nice. And I remember deciding I wouldn't go back.
I had hard times with hard consonants. Butter. Can. Even soft consonants like L in Lisa. I couldn't say my name. Lisa was bad enough. Brodsky was enough to stop me cold in my tracks.
I learned how to talk around my stuttering. To avoid certain words and use other words in its place.
I still dread telling people my name, even talking at all. Most don't notice it anymore; I've gotten good at hiding it: the guttural swallowing I do just before I spit out the damaged sound,
the contorting I do in my throat, where no one can see...
I was in a box. I would've liked it to be soundproof so I wouldn't have to hear myself talk. And so I wouldn't have to hear the grade school taunts at my s-s-stuttering. I cried, I wailed, I holed myself up in my room.
I also talked very fast. Mom, again, attributed this to my wanting to get so much out so fast. She felt guilty.
Dad just got angry. I remember being over at his and my stepmother's house and saying almost anything and Dad would heave a sharp sigh and snap, "say it again but slower, Lisa. You've got to slow down!"
I felt helpless. I couldn't do anything right.
So...soon...I didn't do much talking at all. Oh, I had thousands of lines up on the stage and only ONCE did I have to ask the director to alter a line so I could say it better (that was when I was 15 and in "You Can't Take it With You"). He obliged.
Oddly, it got better as I grew older. I always had to struggle to introduce myself, to say certain words, but I found myself growing out of that box inch by inch. Little by little, I trusted my voice again.
I sang in high school and college choir and do you know that it is a proven fact that people with speech impediments do not stutter or stammer while they sing? It's true! Oh, how I sang.
So now it is today. The person I talk to the most is my husband and he says he doesn't notice my stuttering a lot, only once in a while and it's minor, at that. Perhaps I have grown into myself more, acquired more confidence. I can speak to a room of people now (not on stage). I can say my name.
That is the most important thing that I felt stripped of: my name.
my childhood name: Lisa Brodsky. My 20-something name: Lisa Marie Brodsky. My married name: Lisa Auter.
wishing I could be somewhere in the Mediterranean with a myriad of birds perched on my arms, saying
"My name is Lisa. My name is Lisa. My name is Lisa" like a spoken song.
(all italicized text is from the poem, "Birds in the Mediterranean Speak Like Syrup" first published in "The North American Review" in 2001, copyright 2011 Lisa Marie Brodsky).
Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of grand poetess, Anne Sexton, has a new book out. For those of you who live underground, Anne Sexton was a phenomenal poet who wrote "confessional" poems that had a great impact on me as a young poet - and even today. I found a woman who was writing her demons out and I certainly had demons. She was turning something as ugly as depression and suicidal feelings into poems - works of great beauty. I wanted to do that. Sylvia Plath is another confessional poet who killed herself, as Sexton eventually did.
But back to Linda Gray Sexton and her new book, "Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide." She has a message board on her beautiful website and that excited me to no end. She wanted to talk about her new book and the writing process. She had just posted an introduction a few weeks ago and there was no one on the message board yet. I wrote to her with trembling fingers. Here was this wonderful poet and writer in her own right, opening the door on what most families of famous poets would keep closed.
Don't get me wrong; I don't want to pick Linda's brain on her mother. I've read the biography on Anne Sexton that Linda, herself, edited. I feel comfortable with how much I "know" her. I am interested, however, in Linda's life - she endured depression and suicidal tendencies as well. Thank God she never succeeded as her mother did.
I thought back to my early life as a writer. I had pictures of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath on my desk in high school. My mother frowned upon this, saying I was raising them to be Goddesses in my mind. Death = good poetry and success. I heartily denied this, but looking at it years later, I do admit that I thought if I was depressed and lived through muck and mire, I would write great poetry.
This way of thinking is not limited to me. Many teenagers, especially, take this thought and run with it. Critics slam confessionalism, saying it is just "therapy" for the poet and of no literary value.
Do you know what I remember? I remember reading Sexton and Plath's poetry books, being pulled in by their honesty, candor, pain, willingness to place their demons on the page and wrestle with them right in front of you. I wanted to do that. I knew I had to do that or I would die.
I wonder how many depressed artists and writers are out there, really? I bet it's in the millions. I don't pretend to know why that is. Doctors have tried to figure it out; books have been written about it; all I know is that during those teen and early college years, I depended on women like Sexton and Plath to show me the way out of my darkness. I learned to turn something hideous into something beautiful. And I was proud of it.
Now that I'm older and my poetry has taken on a different form - still autobiographical, but not born solely out of pain - I see that my roots had to be sprouting from people like Plath and Sexton and other confessionalists who bared themselves on the page.
I know, too, that you don't have to kill yourself to be a worthy, good, successful writer. Did Linda Gray Sexton come to that realization as well? She must have because she is still here to write this book. And for that, I am mighty, mighty glad.
Prelude: This post will be best enjoyed if you read, then listen to each clip (really listening to the lyrics) and then continue on reading until you come to the next musical clip, etc. I put these song clips in here for a reason because this is how I experienced them. I wish you to have a similar soaring experience. ************************************************************************************ I wish to share a night of intense loss and redeeming hope. Quite ironically, or, perhaps divinely, a series of songs by Casting Crowns' album, "Lifesong" is a perfect background for this night, for this drive to Lauren's house.
Let me first tell you of the miracle of my 7-year-old's empathy. She gave me a card that read, "I hope thte you fell batr." I hope you feel better. Wasn't that what Jesus and his disciples were saying (I'm paraphrasing and imagining)? My brother, my sister, I hope that you feel better. Listen to the Word of God.
I took her card with me and started my thirty-minute drive to Lauren's apartment. I turned on Casting Crowns' "Lifesong" and listened to the first track. It made me feel determined and hopeful.
So may the words I say And the things I do Make my lifesong sing Bring a smile to You
It was a drive through dusk, the sun just beginning to grow weary of holding itself up. I could feel its apologies to me for providing the darkness I would later be enveloped in. Track two came on, "Praise You Through this Storm" and I got a pang in my chest. This was a painful song that transformed me into the song's narrator:
I was sure by now, God, that You would have reached down and wiped our tears away, stepped in and saved the day. But once again, I say amen and it's still raining as the thunder rolls I barely hear You whisper through the rain, "I'm with you" and as Your mercy falls I raise my hands and praise the God who gives and takes away.
Chorus: And I'll praise you in this storm and I will lift my hands for You are who You are no matter where I am and every tear I've cried You hold in your hand You never left my side and though my heart is torn I will praise You in this storm
I remember when I stumbled in the wind You heard my cry to You and raised me up again my strength is almost gone how can I carry on if I can't find You and as the thunder rolls I barely hear You whisper through the rain "I'm with you" and as Your mercy falls I raise my hands and praise the God who gives and takes away
Chorus
I lift my eyes onto the hills where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth I lift my eyes onto the hills where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
I sobbed and cried. I felt the loss. I recognized the desperate feeling from when Mom died. I tried to tell myself that Lauren wasn't dying; I would see her again, but my cellular memory knew this pain too well to listen to reason. I let myself cry while trying to safely drive.
Lauren and I met in January of 2001 at a support group. For what, it does not matter. The facilitator introduced us to each other, specifically, because she knew we were both writers. And sure enough, we bonded over writing. Therapy and writing. We both got jobs at an indie psychology bookstore and frequented the nearby Starbucks and Thai restaurant - both places where we gave each other prompts to write about. We'd have tea at the Thai place and tiny cucumber salads which were spicy and sweet.
That November, Lauren and I had grown close enough to decide to move to Madison together. It was in a different state, away from family. We had become each other's family, though - fast and furious - and we loved it. We were two peas in a nicely decorated pod. We went to open mic's together. I would sing a song (we preferred Tori Amos) and she'd do a "sign language dance" to it. Only she could make sign language into a dance. She got into home health care as a job and I worked at the local, hip, indie bookstore - the literary hub of the town.
I found that I leaned on Lauren to be many roles in my life. Sometimes my parent or my impetuous daughter who brought out the fun in me. Other times she'd be my conscious - warning me I was falling in love with someone too fast.
Soon into that time period, she met her husband-to-be. After I let my fingernails release her arm and my jealousy subsided, the three of us became good friends. Then the time came for Lauren and her love to move in together and I moved in with my then-boyfriend. I entered graduate school, Lauren and her man got married. All through that, though, Lauren and I remained the closest of confidants. I broke up with then-boyfriend and she supported me as only a true sister could.
I never knew the meaning of "best friend" until November 6th, 2006, when, at 1:30am, I called her sobbing, telling her Mom had died. She said she was on her way to me - a forty-minute ride, pregnant belly and all.
Learning to live without my mother, it was tempting to project that neediness onto Lauren and seek my mothering out from her, but she had healthy enough boundaries to prevent this. I was needy, though, and she provided me with great love and comfort.
When her daughter, A.B., was born, she called her my niece. I was so proud of that title. Here was this beautiful baby that I would get to watch grow up. I beamed at that knowledge.
A few years passed, Lauren lived with husband and baby in a nearby town. I met and married my beloved husband, inheriting three children, and suddenly, we both had families and less time to hang out on Saturday nights and watch "thirtysomething," for example.
This time of separating from each other, like two egg yokes separating into two distinct yellow blobs (not saying we were blobs) happened almost without me knowing. Lauren began to have trouble with her marriage and yet she was pregnant again. I had my own issues with being a new wife and stepmother. We stayed in touch, but roughly.
I began to feel her loss. She retreated to her own anxiety. She had so much to deal with. A failing marriage and a newborn: A.S. A beautiful baby girl, my second niece. Sadly, Lauren's husband walked out on them. He had turned into an unrecognizable man from when I knew him well.
Poor Lauren spiraled into anxiety and burdens beyond her capabilities. She had a household and her young kids to support, plus hold it together for them while her heart shattered. The decision to move to Texas with her girls was not an unexpected one, but it did punch me in the stomach when I thought about it selfishly. My Lauren, states away when she was always just right there.
I cried and cried, but I think it was over our initial friendship and closeness. The fact was, we had been living our own lives for a few years now. I made myself see the reality: Lauren would be going to a place where family could take care of her and her family. She would go back to school and all that was the best decision for her and her newly arranged family.
Still, now and then, I think selfishly. Lauren is a fixture I just always depended on, like a beautiful chandelier in my dining room that was always lit. I never thought the room would go dim.
The car ride seemed to take forever. Beautiful music played. Casting Crowns' "Prodigal" made me feel especially vulnerable. Read lyrics here and then listen to it. I always thought it interesting that the term "Daddy" would be used for God.
Help me get through the next few minutes... that's just about as far ahead as I can look...
And just as I was crying out to God, as in the song, to "Daddy," I neared Lauren's home. The song, "And Now My Lifesong Sings" came on and I listened to the whole of it before I went inside.
I tried to soak my tears into my sleeve as I remembered the Bible verse from "To Praise You Through this Storm:" I lift my eyes onto the hills where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth Psalm 121: 1-2
I went inside and stayed for around two hours while she finished up packing. Friends came and picked up their cats, Francis and Sophia. Three-year-old A.B. cried with such heartache, "I want my Francis" as he was carried out the door (the process was much more well-planned and nurturing than I am writing here). My heart broke as I held A.S. in my arms. This niece who I wouldn't see grow up day by day or week by week. Soon after, I cried again as I told Lauren that I had to say my goodbye. We went into the hallway and hugged.
"I can't do this," I sobbed into her shoulder, my knees buckling.
"Yes, you can," she whispered and hugged me tight.
We clutched onto each other until I tore away, feeling too intense a pain to fully feel in public. I said I just had to go and left, sputtering tears all the way to my car. Once inside, all I felt was every loss I ever experienced. I yearned for my parents, I yearned for Lauren, for her constant constantness, her familiarity, the language that only she and I spoke. I felt the beginning of a meltdown; pieces of my heart started to scatter, pieces of my sanity began to sink.
I turned on the radio and prayed to God to give me a song. Never doubt your prayers, your raw aching calls. This is what I got:
"He Will Carry Me" by Mark Schultz
I took great comfort in that song. I'd loved it already, but it took on new meaning. I drove to a remote spot down the block and parked. I let go of my pain and felt God's arms encircle me and take me up. The song and His embrace reassured me I would be okay. If I doubted, God (as interventional D.J.) played this next:
"Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns
I drove home listening to any quiet voices in my mind. His echoed the song's: Do not be afraid.
I arrived home much faster, it seemed, than it took to drive in the other direction. My husband was there to hold and comfort me. And I needed him and was grateful he was there for me. But as we prayed that night, I thanked God, especially, for coming to me in song. In the poetry of lyrics.
I knew I would be okay as long as I kept my faith, as long as I knew who the ultimate best friend was: He who calms fears and eases burdens. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light Matthew 11:30
Goodbye for now, Lauren. I love you endlessly and infinitely. I will see you soon. When next I see you, you better have a tan.
