Mom’s Cookbook

Unless there is a high probability of complete disaster, I don’t think you can call it real baking. What I just did: REAL.

Without my mom around to fill in the gaps, her cookbook can feel like more of a riddle book. “Here are the things you’ll need. Good luck turning them into something that resembles the above title.”

Fortunately, my mom had a great love for post-its. If we are lucky, we might find a post-it floating around in the loosely bound heap of stained pages, a post-it that contains clues for the journey.

Tonight’s recipe listed the ingredients and told us (in vague and general terms) what to do with the dough.

At first, I was a little bothered by the lack of information to get me to the dough stage. Fortunately, I knew enough about baking to start by mixing the dry ingredients, continue by cutting in the shortening, and conclude with the addition of the wet ingredients.

After I was pretty committed to my determined process, I found a magical post-it that told me to do exactly what I was already doing. The find was actually rather fortunate, though. It mentioned two ingredients that I had COMPLETELY OVERLOOKED. (Grease-spots all over the pages cause the ink from the reverse side to blend in with the ink on the facing side. I wasn’t being careless. The ingredients were hiding… in their clever camouflage. Not to mention, the rapidly-decaying cookbook necessitates delicate handling, making careful inspection rather tricky. OK… maybe I was being a little careless. Can I blame it on the fact that I was fairly emotional?)

The recipe called for 4.5 cups of flour. It’s probably a good idea to have at least 7 cups on hand if being able to actually work with the stuff is at all desirable. What kind of recipe requires rolling THE STICKIEST DOUGH IN THE WORLD? Oy.

The whole venture was perpetually on the brink of a total catastrophe. My “cat noises” were at an all-time high. And I ended the evening covered in flour. (I really need to invest in an apron. Or at least choose not to wear black.)

And I missed my mom like crazy the entire time. I wish she could have come in and laughed at me as I wrestled with the obstinate ingredients. (Or… ummm… to teach me how to persuade them to adopt a more cooperative posture.) I wish she was here to partake of the resulting super-yum when the timer went off. I wish she was here to congratulate me on my success.

I just wish she was here.

The Complexities of Simplification

Today has been a miserable day. I know I’ve said this before, but the grieving process really doesn’t make ANY sense to me.

I’ve been occupied with some intense decluttering, simplifying, and letting go in the last few weeks. I guess I should have known how difficult it would be. I probably should have realized that I would be confronted with a million Mom things that were going to be really painful to contemplate releasing.

It’s amazing how difficult it can be to get rid of something that I have in any way associated with my mother.

Today was a big day. And I didn’t even realize it until I was curled up in the fetal position and bawling on the sound booth floor, leaving no one at my screens post.

On one of her last visits to Kansas City, my mom had spent a considerable amount of time hanging these little shelve things in my room. She had sketched out an entire layout for these shelves that were intended to house my Willow Tree figurines. A bunch of my friends (and my boyfriend, who was cooking for us that night) were over so that my mom and friends from Texas could get to know them a bit. We had great difficulty coaxing her to come and join us because she would not walk away from her project. She loved to express her love through giving and serving.

When I moved out of that room into the little basement apartment, I never took those shelves down. I couldn’t do it. So my incomplete wall of stuff decorated a chunk of Des and Jen’s room for the entire time that they lived in the house.

Well, we have a new roommate, now. And I realized that it was a bit ridiculous that pieces of my life are still residing in two bedrooms that I no longer physically occupy in our house. So, I took the shelves down today.

As I was boxing all of the little figurines, I found one that was still in its box. At the top of the box, stuck to the styrofoam, was a note from my mom.

Needless to say, my project for the day experienced a long delay. I couldn’t see a thing anymore, so I just stood there crying.

Fact: I have too much stuff. I value simplicity and the fasted lifestyle. There is a contradiction between my values and my circumstances. I need to let go of some things.

Fact: So many of my things have my mom attached to them. I want to hold on to every little bit of her that I still can.  The most important woman of my life is gone. How can I give up the tiny remnants of her life that surround me? It’s all that I have.

I’m still doing it. I’m not letting go of everything that I perhaps should, but I am letting go of little things here and there. And it is shredding my heart to pieces.

I just want her back in my life. It has been far too long.

Random String of Emotions

I wanted to write a post about the things that are on my mind. I was going to call it “Grateful” because I am full of gratitude right now.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was really intimidating and I was scared. Change of plans: I was going to call it “Grateful & Scared”.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was…

I could keep going like this for a while. We’ll just stop there and sum it up with this: I am feeling A LOT of emotions right now. (I’m feeling. Let’s just pause for a moment to thank the Lord for that one. My heart is alive. So very alive. That wasn’t always true.)

When I said that I would stop there and sum it up, I didn’t mean to stop the entire post. At least I didn’t think that I did.

I started to write about the things that are on my mind.

I realized that this wasn’t stuff to blog about. Not yet.

I highlighted and deleted huge chunks of text.

I stopped and realized that there was nothing left but a play-by-play skeletal description of an event that was never allowed to… happen. Happening is to events as living is to organisms. It seems that there was no event after all.

The post could not bear witness, itself, to the fact that it nearly existed. It could not bear witness because it did not exist. Nonexistent anythings are nothing at all. Something must exist to truly be or do anything.

I judged it as right to leave this. I saw it fitting to leavesome evidence of a thing that nearly existed but was never allowed.

Here this is. And here that isn’t.

Or is it?

The Worst Night of My Life

It has been 22 months since the worst night of my life. No, really… the worst night of my life.

I didn’t realize that it was the worst night of my life. I was just enjoying a night off with some friends. Audra Hartke, Sarah Stroer, Kirk Bryson and I were just sitting around Audra’s table and talking when I checked my phone. I had a message from my dad. Weird, that’s REALLY late for my dad to be calling me. My mom wasn’t doing well and we needed to pray for her. It startled me a little bit, but… surely it will be ok. Will it? I couldn’t get worked up about it… I had to just pray and trust. And so that’s what I did… I couldn’t stop praying or thinking about it. I was admittedly rather distracted from what everyone was talking about. I was more or less present, but it was constantly on my mind.

And then I got the devastating news.

February 12th, 2007, my mom passed away. Completely unexpected. When everything SEEMED to be going relatively well.

Old Habbits

Sometimes I wonder if it will ever become difficult, truly difficult, for me to shut down emotionally. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be so alive that I can’t so easily deaden myself.

More specifically, I wondered tonight.

In our worship team briefing tonight, we talked a bit about solitude and silence. (Popular topic, considering our two months of voluntary 12am-6am silence as a community.) We talked about the way that, in the place of solitude, you encounter your anger and your grief.

Anger and greif… ick. Not tonight. Please, not tonight. I’m too tired for this.

Hello, Change

Our community is ever in a state of flux. Perpetual, significant change is just a norm. The intensity and the facets of the seasons of transition ebb and flow. Sometimes there are simple, gradual changes. Sometimes there are huge changes like death and birth, people leaving the country, people leaving the NightWatch.

We seem to have passed into another one of those high-intensity transitional times again.

First, we have the circumstances of change:

Into the Silence

As I mentioned in my last post, I am meeting this Silent Siege with excitement AND a little trepidation. (And it’s funny how similar excitement and trepidation can be.)

On one hand, I am in the middle of reading this REALLY obnoxious book called “Invitation to Silence and Solitude”. The book is actually quite phenomenal, it just stings a lot. As I am reading the book and seeking to develop these disciplines, I take the corporate invitation to silence as a welcome gift.

On the other hand, I am presently wrestling through some very intense things. Being alone in the silence with nothing but God, the accusations that are arising against Him, my own tossed-about emotions, and the deep wells of pain that I am stumbling upon is actually quite terrifying.

Something in me longs for distraction, anything that I might hide behind. Idle chatter… anything. Yet I know that I need to just press into this and fight it out until I come out fully surrendered and leaning on God. God seems pretty determined to work these things out in me… and I’m feeling rather hedged in at the moment. This Silent Siege being a pretty significant part of that hedging.

On top of that… we have the season of heightened grieving that I have recently found myself in. And, as it so happens, my mom died during the 90 Days of Consecration that I mentioned in my last post. I actually missed the first days of the consecration because I was home visiting my family. It was the last time that I saw my mom.

So… here I am… in a room full of people… in silence… in solitude… alone in my grief. Unsure about the things that are of utmost importance, unsure about God. Encountering pain that I cannot put into words. Crying a lot… in the silence… by myself.

Round 2?

Shortly after my mom died, I remember several people telling me (if I was even remotely OK at the time they saw me) that I was in shock and it was all going to hit me later.

In case there is any question in this matter, this certainly did nothing to encourage me. It did nothing to help me in the grieving process. It just made me really mad. …REALLY mad.

I was feeling A LOT of pain. I was encountering a deeper loss than I had ever known, and I was exercising that newly-learned skill of NOT shutting down emotionally. I was frustrated by the fact that me being able to rest in the Lord’s goodness and faithfulness (and stop crying for just a few minutes together) necessarily meant that I had a whole heap of deeper pain and sorrow lurking around the corner somewhere.

So, I was annoyed and did my best to ignore them, continuing to keep my heart open and meet the Lord in the midst of the most painful loss I had ever experienced.

And then the last week started up… and I realized that I was entering into another intense season of grieving my mother’s death.

Basking in the Light at the End of the Tunnel

The mess of 2007 is gone. I don’t live in it anymore.

Now, when I say the mess of 2007 in this instance, I mean the disaster that my living space became as my emotional chaos began to manifest itself in large-scale physical realities.

When I lost my mom, I couldn’t “keep it together” anymore. In some ways, I think that was actually a good thing for me to finally lose control. I encountered the realities of my weakness. I became utterly dependent upon the Lord and the incredible community that He put me in. I found the freedom to let go… to breathe… to live.

Of course, things did get a little out of hand. And the mess I had made was quite overwhelming as I began to fight my way out of it.

Quite Changed

In my delirious ramblings about knuckle crunchers, I mentioned some potential bad news concerning a friend. Well, the negative report we feared came later that night. I don’t really want to blog about my friend’s painful circumstances, so please forgive me if I am a little vague.

The friend who had initially alerted me to the circumstances was supposed to let me know when he heard something. As it turns out, bad news is hard to pass on. His text message was never sent, so I found out later that night, when he was at my house.

Unfortunately, a bunch of my friends were over at the house when I got the news. Not the greatest timing. I tried to finish eating. I tried to continue to be present and celebrate-y with the people in the room. I tried. But it wasn’t going particularly well.

I felt the look on my face. Do you ever have those moments when you realize that you probably look really angry? That was me. And I was beginning to feel it, too. I had that tense, angry feeling I get every time I am trying to push something down, every time I am trying NOT to feel.