Moving out of Apartment Mode

We have been blessed.  We are in our new home!  But no, you can't see pictures yet because we haven't actually finished painting.  We got a huge helping hand from our church that has a special crew of people who come together to help people move.  They helped us finish most of the painting, and they threw all of our partially packed belongings into a trailer and then unloaded them on the on our blessed premises.  Blessing of all blessings, they helped us clean the apartment as we vacated it.  Of all the things I dreaded in moving, more cleaning was highest on the list.

So now we are moved in.  The kitchen, utility room, and bathroom haven't been fully scrubbed, but they are fully functional.  The diningroom and all the trim remain to be painted, and there's a nagging smell in the garage that I would like to find and eliminate before Christmas.  We're trying to replace an out-of-date fireplace insert (540 lbs of metal).  But we are home, and now begins the transition to being home owners and house dwellers again. 

The feeling of being house dwellers manifests itself in different places.  I appreciate the ease of opening the back door and letting the dog out to do his business.  He, I daresay, resents that I no longer have to walk him four times a day, but we're working through that.  And this morning, as I was making breakfast, I thought I'd like to run the dishwasher.  "Oh," said my apartment-trained mind.  "It's not eight o'clock yet."  Then my brain caught up with the rest of me and said, "Who cares? There's no one on the other side of the wall to be disturbed."  That thought was so refreshing that I went to the laundry room and started a load of wash too. 

The first time we bought a house, I was a little skeptical of Seth's need to call his four walls his own.  Now, I get it.  There's a certain blissful freedom in realizing that my daily noises disturb no one.

Of course, with freedom comes responsibility.  Now that the dog can go out whenever is convenient, I also have to go out there and pick up after him.  Personal garbage cans mean remembering to put the trash out.  And that great big beautiful birch tree in the front yard is about to drop a ton of leaves that we will have the joy of raking up of the ground and a little less pleasure digging out of the gutter (actually, my husband has allocated that job to himself.  I might try to salvage some of the saplings growing up there.  I could sell them on ebay.)  And every little thing that goes wrong is our responsibility to fix. 

That reminds me.  Don't let me get through this week without buying some DeCon, two packs of coat hooks, and a new doorknob for the utility door.  And there's mold in the bedroom, again. 

Waiting stinks, but hope smells like vinegar and cedar chips.

There's good news and there's bad news.  Then there's no news is good news, but we are in the interesting position of acting on no news in the anticipation of good news because any news would probably be bad news right now. 

In short, we are in the process of cleaning up a short sale that we hope will be ours by the beginning of November.  The bank has indicated that it is willing to move forward, but nothing is final yet.  We have an apartment until the middle of October.  So we've been hiring dumpsters, bombing fleas,  sorting garbage, killing mold, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning on the understanding that once a bank has gone this far, it will not withdraw, and the simultaneous understanding that our pre-approval letter is good and will follow through when the ball is in our court. 

Man, am I beat.  I have never seen a mess like this.  We filled two twenty yard dumpsters from the material left behind in  a three bedroom house, its garage, and backyard. There were ten people living at this house.  The neighbors say that the previous tenants never washed their clothes.  They just went to church charity shops and picked up more.  Then they bagged the leftovers and tossed them in the garage.  Amid the wreckage we've found fish tanks, stuffed animals, VHS tapes, quarters, a kayak paddle, a keyboard, all kinds of crazy food,  cushy kiddy chairs, a fridge that could have walked away on its own in a few weeks, insulin bottles, and clothes, clothes, clothes. 

They must have lived without power or water toward the end.  The house itself is filthy.  Mattresses were stuck to the floors.  We put the kayak paddle to work scraping gunk off the walls.  I spent Saturday scrubbing down two of the bedrooms while Seth and a neighbor hauled junk in the rain (and cleaned out the fridge.  Thank you, Love.  I don't think I could have tackled that.), and today, I'm going out to soak the floors with vinegar and cover them with cedar chips to get rid of the cat smell.   The mold is gone.  The scum is gone.  There's one stubborn gummy worm that refuses to come up for anything short of a razor blade.  I'll have to tackle that tomorrow.  I didn't get anywhere near the windows, which are probably original to the house (single pane, wooden frames).  It's not just that I ran out of time.  The spiders wouldn't let me get close. 

Cleaning up this house has been a real exercise in Christian faith because we still don't know that we're going to get it.  We have the reassurance of the realtor.  He says he's never seen a deal go this far without going through.  And there have been sundry little assurances not related to the process.  A coworker has some good used appliances to sell cheap.  A lady at my Bible study said her parents moved into their house before closing fifty years ago and lived there for thirty years. Help shows up at the right moment.  My one ESL student tells me that many of her classmates are looking for a good tutor, and they all go to school three blocks from our prospective house.  Wonders like this are all reassuring enough to keep my eyes on the goal.   

But there have been little discouragements too. We discovered a lien on all the utilities, which keeps us from turning on the power until we have a contract with a signature on it.  The closing costs are about $3000 more out of pocket than we had anticipated.   We had to pay for a second load of garbage to be removed, which puts us a little beyond our budget already, and we haven't even bought paint.  And it all just stays so dirty.   There's nothing to stop the bank from turning around and pulling a Jim Butler* on us and asking for more money.  We've put a lot of sweat equity into a place that's still their house. 

We have an end goal.  We have good reason to believe we will achieve it.  However, the daily certainty of having a deed with our name on it doesn't exist yet.  I'm going to breathe a huge sigh of relief when we come to a point of ownership/residence, but until then, we keep working and cleaning, bringing our house closer to our vision of a home, and hoping. 

Part of the reason that I can't just sail through this period with sanguine hope is that my happy ending instinct took a serious ding when we lost Baby Blessed. 

Is my baby in a better place?  Absolutely. 

Is my salvation secure?  Definitely. 

Will all these tears be wiped away?  By God's own hand.  I have it in writing. 

Are we guaranteed peace and prosperity?  Not a bit. 

Will we have everything we work and hope for in this life?  That depends.  Does it match up with God's will?  And by will, I don't just mean his stated commandments.  I mean the plan for our personal developments into the progress of His kingdom. 

The first part of the answer to that great question is "I don't know, and I won't know until it happens."  It is possible to run along on Kingdom work and miss what God intends for us. (Just ask Phil Vischer, or better yet, read his autobiography**.)   Yes, this that I am doing seems good to me, but maybe I'm focusing on the wrong traits to develop, and I certainly can't see what the future is going to require of me.   I can't just say, "It's good for me, so God wants me to have it."  "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart" (NIV Ps. 37:4) has to be balanced with "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world" (NIV John 16: 33), not to mention the whole book of Job. 

The second part of the answer to that great question is "No matter what happens, God is good."   The grand lesson that all this uncertainty is teaching me (I do not thrive on uncertainty) is that happiness comes not from knowing how things will work out but instead from floating on the will of God, living responsibly, and caring more about seeing and knowing Him than about what happens to this house.  "Let goods and kindred go," says Martin Luther.  Under what circumstances would I be prepared to do that?  Maybe God is using this time to put my hopes in perspective.  "Even if/when all this works out as you had dreamed, remember that this is not the be all end all of my plans for you.  I want you to keep moving forward, to build my kingdom, and if it is necessary, I will take it all away again." 

There is good reason to believe that we will achieve this house, so we keep cleaning, budget revising, some packing, and cleaning some more.  But really, what else can I do?   This is our best and only apparent option.  The house I hope to move into is a mess. If I want it to be a home, I need to clean it up.   And if God deems otherwise, I will freak out for a little while, and then we'll pursue plan B (as in "Be still and know that I am God"  NIV Ps.  46:10).   

Update:  We have the bank's paperwork.  That makes us confident enough to buy paint and begin prepping for move in.  God is good. 

*Garland, Hamlin.  "Under the Lion's Paw."  The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5ed, vol.2.  ed. Nina Baym.  645-655.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.  Print. 

**Vischer, Phil.  Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story about Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables.  Thomas Nelson, 2008.  Print or Digital. 

Scriptures from New International Version.   Grand Rapids, MI: The Zondervan Corporation, 2005.  Kindle Edition. 

A reflection on loving ourselves.

Bipolar Annie, someone I follow on Facebook because, like many people who suffer from mental illness, she makes an unflagging effort to encourage the people around her, posted a quotation that made me stop and think. 

 I think I've finally learned the biggest lesson of all. You've got to love yourself first. You've got to be OK on your own before you're OK with someone else. You've got to value yourself and know that you're worth everything. And until you value yourself enough and love yourself enough to know that, you can't really have a healthy relationship.

                                                                                                                                ~Jennifer Lopez

I thought about that for a moment.  The Dour Calvinist in me says that we have a tendency to value ourselves too much, which doesn't always add up to realistic expectations of other people.  But that isn't really what she's talking about here.  She means we shouldn't expect other people to mop up our insecurities.  No matter how hard we try, we can never be someone other than ourselves and be happy, and it isn't fair haul in another person and say, "Make me okay."  However, I would add a caveat: when we learn to love ourselves, we must make sure that the love we have is not merely an acceptance or a self-approval, as I think this quote suggests.  To quote someone whose wisdom I trust a lot more:

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing -- say Pimlico.  If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary.  It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico; in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea.  Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico;  for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.  The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without earthly reason.  If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles;  . . . If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two would be fairer than Florence.  

                                                                     ~G.K. Chestesterton, Orthodoxy

Chesterton was writing about one of the great controversies of his day: the question between people who believed that the world was on the fast track to utopia  and people who thought the world was descending into chaos and should be abandoned by the quickest means possible.  His answer was, "We only have one world.  We have to have a picture of what it can be  and then love it properly and make it worthy of our love."  But can't the same be said of ourselves?    

Suppose we are in a desperate situation: medically, interpersonally, psychologically or what have you.  If we merely disapprove of ourselves, then we will give up and devolve ourselves into oblivion somehow.  If we approve of ourselves, then we will remain as we are. I have enough oppressive flaws to convince me that this would be awful, and I'm sure any person willing to investigate his or her soul would say the same.   But if we have truly learned to love ourselves, to believe that that tremulous little thing inside of our heart of hearts that we call a soul is truly "worth everything," as Ms. Lopez says, then we will kick aside anything  that stands in the way of its blossoming into what it ought to be. 

The danger in being merely OK with ourselves is that we might look at some undesirable trait, some unhealthy habit and say, "This is part of me, and if other people don't like it, oh well.  It stays."  Says Mr. Chesterton a few pages later,

If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself.  But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. 

Let's say that our lives are not cities but gardens.  Our personalities vary in pH and consistency, and our thoughts, feelings, and experiences lay out the beds and plant the seeds.   The plants grow and twine and blossom and seed.  Some of them may actually be essential and healthy and ought to be cultivated.  By contrast, some, like dandelions, are inescapable in this life, but we can work around them and maybe even eat the greens.   Some features of ourselves may be good or essential, but they've grown a little wild, strangling other good and necessary qualities.  Think strawberries or mint.  And some of them may be toxic weeds that should have been pulled post haste, but they are so wound around the rest of our lives that we can't get them out with anything less destructive than a machete.  To truly love ourselves is to discern the difference, pull out the bad ruthlessly, rototill the earth, cultivate the good, and, above all, grow. 

Mr. Chesterton did not have a very charitable opinion of mental illness. He himself was a large, jolly man of forthright mental energy and a comfortable grasp on humility.  To read his writing is to read a vigorous assertion of truth (His philosophy is sounder than his history.).  I am not that vigorous with myself.  I have neither the patience nor the strength  to love myself the way I ought to.  I don't have the wisdom either.  And no other human being has the patience, the wisdom, or the insight into my inner life  to keep my garden growing as it should.  We cannot manage each other's souls.  We have a duty to dig in and get our hands dirty, but we need someone else,  someone who can see the whole picture and the delicate details, who has an appreciation for each plant and how it grows, the layout and chemistry of each garden, someone with infinite time and patience, and most of all infinite and intimate love. 

The biggest lesson of all is not is not that we should love ourselves.  We should, but that is not something that we can do wisely or safely on our own.  The biggest lesson of all is that we have a radical example of how much someone already loves us, and all we have to do is return it.  God loved us when we were unlovable, when we were literally nothing.  He holds us to impossibly high standards, but he forgives our failures without a second thought because he has carried them all himself.  It is God who ensures our worthiness and dignity as people and gives us that equal footing that we need to approach anyone else with grace, compassion, interest, and unselfishness. Until we are OK with God, the roots of the weeds in our soul will just grow back.  He will root out all the weeds and replace them with honeysuckle and raspberry vines.  He will tear down the slums and build golden pinnacles and ivory towers.  

"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."  ~Philippians 1: 6b 

When I am especially discouraged with myself, with my thought patterns or how I've treated people,  I think of the "day of Christ Jesus."  I think about the moment when all the parts of me that frustrate, nay grieve, nay drive me crazy, will be stripped away.  Some of them will be polished and returned to be placed in their proper places, and some of them will be burned to cinders, never to return at all.  I can't quite picture what I will be like then, but I know that I will be the last thing on my mind.  Maybe that's what it is to be OK on one's own.  When everything is strong and clean and vibrant inside, our total focus will be the God who made us that way and the other fantastic creatures that He made in His image.  Those will be truly healthy relationships. 

P.S.  I am finding that St. Theresa of Avila has much  good to say on the beauty and struggle of the soul in  The Interior Castle.  I got my copy from http://christianaudio.com.

Sudden Ends.

What is your only comfort in life and in death?  That I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.  . . . Because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

And we know that in all thing, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  Romans 8:28, 29

 It took me two weeks to put my last blog post together and another three days to get it posted.  While I was crafting the pregnancy announcement,  unbeknownst to us, the baby is my womb was dying. I spent a long night Friday up with cramping, a panicked Saturday morning in the ER, and a confused afternoon facing the fact that my newest little joy was dying inside of me.  In fact, he/she had probably been dead for a couple of weeks. 

 Now, as I read through what I wrote three weeks ago, I feel like my expressions go beyond ironic to cruel.  If God delays answers to remind us  that we do not compel Him to answer, then why does he answer prayers and then take the answers away?  If answering prayer unexpectedly reminds us that God has a sense of humor, what does unexpected loss say?  And if the joy of being pregnant was right for yesterday, why isn't it right for today too?  As I flopped down on the bed after coming home from the hospital, I pounded my fist on the comforter and said damn for the first time in my life.  "Damn.  Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn." 

But Faith chooses these moments to assert its strength.   Even in that moment, a voice in the back of my head said, "Damn what exactly?", and I had to answer "Nothing, Lord.  Nothing at all."     If my eyes were focused on my own disappointment, I might be tempted to despondency, but faith is a really buoyant thing. In moments of real pain, it insists on looking up at the big picture. I find that when my cynical side digs up a stock question for a time like this, my spirit lifts up my mind and reminds me of what I've always known was true. 

At eight weeks of life, was my child even a person?  Absolutely.  Life is not dependent on the presence of a heartbeat anymore than light required the sun.  There are creatures in the universe that don't even have bodies.  Why should my child be less alive for the lack of being whole?  We named our baby Blessed even as she passed (I say she because Boogaloo expressed a desire for a baby sister.  Of course, at eight weeks, we don't know one way or the other.)  I was conscious of Blessed's soul when she was in me, and I am certain she is in Heaven waiting for me.  One more thread to call me home.   

Why would God wait this long to answer my prayers and then take the answer away?  That's not a question that I can answer without seeing the whole picture, but it's also the question that draws up the greatest response from my faith.  It says in the Bible that sometimes the good are taken so that they may be spared trouble, and Blessed are those who die in the Lord.  I was already unnerved by the changing times when Boogaloo was born.  Blessed is one child I won't have to worry about.   In this world in spite of God's miraculous power, we are still subject to the broken and brutal forces.  Life faces assault on every side, including the mindless biological, and in battle, there are casualties.  I wish my child hadn't been one of them, but so does every parent who loses a child. 

Is my baby really in heaven?   Yes.  I know that for sure.

What does unexpected loss say about God's sense of humor?  That God has a sense of priority.  Much as it aches to consider it, the well of joy can only go as deep as sorrow digs it.  We grow when we hurt.  Loss is cognitive dissonance on a spiritual level.  It can breed empathy, establish bonds, and open us to new possibilities.  And as much as He cares for us and treasures our tears, He also uses us to move His kingdom foreward.  We need to trust that all will be recompensed in the life to come. Faith in the world to come should be our great comfort, along with the hope that everything will be made right. 

Why does God answer prayers and then take the answers away?  To remind us that our lives are not paramount.  He is.  And ultimately, He is our only sure happiness and safety. 

If the joy of pregnancy was right for yesterday, why isn't it right for today also?   We won't know that until we get home.    When I cross the threshold of Heaven, and I'm greeted by all the people I hold dear who have gone on before me,  one of those people will be my little Blessed. 

Does it hurt?  It ripped my insides out.  Physically, it was 16 hours of waiting followed by 48 hours of being wrung by an invisible hand.  Emotionally, everytime someone expresses sympathy I well over with tears. I cringe every time Boogaloo says "I'm a big sister" and asks to hear one of her baby books because of course, she doesn't understand yet. We told her that baby went to Heaven to be with Jesus and Nana, but she's still a big sister because baby is alive up there.  To stand at the gate of life and feel its opportunity opening for someone is the essence of hope,  and I rejoiced in it, but that hope got snuffed for this life.  Snuffed hope sucks the joy out of a situation.  But because of the shocking buoyancy of faith, I still have peace.  After all, my baby has simply been raised to another level of existence.     

Miscarriage

My mind is not at home tonight.
It begs your pardon for taking leave,
but it felt the need to wander a bit,
through sunset downs,
and curl up in the shadow of a twilit tree.

Sometimes the Soul is a prickly bedfellow,
so Mind mindfully slips away to allow Soul
its Space to slowly pack away the unused hopes,
Time to put the possibilities back in the attic,
a Chance to rearrange the living room of life to suit
Life.
Now.

Then, when every tiny finger of a dream is packed up,
and the work-a-day worries and mercies are out for use again,
Mind will come in, look around, and smile at Soul,
go up to the attic,
and grieve.

Because hopes are not things to be thrown away.
They should live in boxes in the basements of our lives
while Mind,
Soul,
 and Spirit
bustle and breathe,
groan and believe
that there is a Reason for all things.