Too Afraid for Joy

On Saturday, I was thrown a lovely, lovely baby shower by the ladies in my family and extended church family. It was beautiful. I was surrounded all day by those who love me and are so very excited for Husband and I, and the collective wisdom and generosity of women who have been sisters, daughters, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, and even great-grandmothers were palpable to me as we talked and laughed.

Feeling very full but tired, I came home late on Saturday with a carload of things to make our lives with the baby easier, which all went into the nursery. Sunday I worked all day, and when Monday afternoon came, I started trying to make a master thank-you list and setting up the nursery. I managed to make the list, but I couldn't bring myself to open anything that we had been given. Cognitively, I know the clothes and blankets need to be washed, the closet organized, the furniture set-up, the curtains hung. And cognitively, I know that everything is going to be fine, in just a few weeks we'll be bringing home a baby girl, who will need all of these things, and we will need them to be ready, not scattered around the nursery in their boxes. Far better to start the process now and keep working at it over a few weeks than to do it after the baby arrives.

But I realized after having to go in there on Monday, that I've been avoiding the nursery since we designated that room the nursery. I haven't set anything up, I haven't been able to cut the tags off of the cute little outfits that have been accumulating from friends, I haven't been able to commit to a paint color. And on Monday, I realized why.

I'm afraid. Actually, I'm really afraid.

I'm afraid about what happens if I set it all up, and our hearts are broken. I'm afraid of trying to return things that we don't need, knowing that everything can be lost in an instant, or over the cruel progression of weeks or months in the NICU. I'm just plain old scared, even though as I write this I'm getting kicked by a healthy daughter, who at thirty-three weeks is not just fine, but feisty. And this fear that's been ruling this pregnancy, at least since we moved and it got real, has been blocking me from getting excited about becoming a mother and meeting her. Even more than that, this fear has sucked the joy out being where we are now. Everyone around me seems to feel joy for us; but while I wait in fear for the other shoe to drop, I can't feel that joy myself.

Brene Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection that the opposite of joy isn't sadness, but fear. Being afraid of losing what we have closes down the ability to be grateful, right now, for what we do have. And the practice of gratitude, Brown points out, is a prerequisite for joy. The presence of fear drives away gratitude, and as such, fear drives away joy.

What I realized, standing in that nursery full of baby socks in packs and cloth diapers still in the plastic, was that unless I do something now, I'm always going to be too afraid for joy. A healthy delivery means I'll be afraid of measles and SIDS. Reaching a year will mean I'll be afraid of her choking on something that fits inside a paper towel roll, and when she's beyond that, I'll still be afraid of leukemia, car accidents, drowning, school shootings, sports-related concussions, and rare side effects of communicable diseases. There will always be something more to fear.

So, tomorrow, I'm taking a tiny baby step and cutting the tags off of everything, seven weeks early. I'll wash what needs to be washed, assemble the mobile and the bouncer seat, rearrange the furniture, and work on being grateful that we are where we are today.

Life Updates

Well, it's been a while. I owe everyone an apology for not properly signing off and letting you know when I'd be back, but honestly, I didn't think it would be that long myself. I'm not one for excuses, but maybe we have a good one:

A wiggly baby girl (that's why the profile pic is so blurry)
Jan. 12, 2015

Of course, Husband is just thrilled and has been absolutely wonderful through everything, with the exception of the sudden proliferation of dad jokes. He says he's practicing. I say it needs to stop.

We're expecting on April Fool's Day, which, appropriately for a clergy person, is Holy Week this year. If you're not familiar, Holy Week is the week leading up to the celebration of Easter, and is hands down my favorite week of the year as we move through Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, the Easter Vigil, and Easter Sunday. It's a time of intense reflection, and joy, and somehow being due that week is the most perfect and most terrible timing possible. I'm blessed to work for a wonderful (and flexible) priest and parish, so we're playing it by ear.

I promise not to turn Vicar of H Street into a mommy blog, although I'm sure becoming a mother will change me, because pregnancy already has. For one, I have new appreciation for anyone who lives with chronic pain, insomnia or nausea, and how hard it must be to actively participate in all the demands of living. I had no idea how much energy it takes to not feel healthy for an extended period of time -- for me, it's been difficult to think, be social, to function, and tend to my important relationships for months now, and I keenly feel those shortcomings. Even being on Facebook took more energy than I had, and honestly, I'm sure I've only experienced an extremely small piece of what many people live with, day in and day out, for years. Now I know just a little better, and hopefully this understanding will make me a better priest. I'm also reminded of how much control is an illusion, how embodied my self is, and how time rushes ahead and then stops still. In all, it's been a very bewildering seven months, and I'm sure my remaining eight to twelve weeks will hold more surprises in store. And then, you know, there'll be a baby, so there's that.

One other thing that I should mention -- because the apartment we were renting on H Street was a baby death trap, we decided it was time to move. Finding a two bedroom apartment suitable for a family and that allows dogs was like looking for a unicorn. And if we did find something, it was far too expensive for a priest and a civil servant. We discovered that buying a house in Ward 7 would be way more affordable than anything that would meet our needs near the H Street corridor, so, we did. More on that later, I'm sure. But for now, I'll still be blogging as the Vicar of H Street.

I'm hoping to blogging through what has been promised as my seventh and eighth month wind -- but I'll keep you all posted this time.

God Doesn't Want You to be Happy

Two Saturdays ago, I was invited to plan and facilitate a retreat -- I love this sort of work, so I gladly accepted. The theme of the retreat was finding a way through the tension that is inherent in being both a young professional (perhaps especially in DC) and a Christian. Anyway, deep in one of our discussions, we were talking about hopes -- and what God hopes for us.  The first thing someone shouted out from the back of the room was that "God wants us to be happy."

And at that moment, I realized that I believe that God does not want us to be happy.

Now, I'm not saying that God wants us to be miserable, or to suffer, or to cause pain -- I believe God redeems misery, suffering, and pain, not causes them -- but I am saying that happiness, our cultural chimera, doesn't seem to be one of God's projects. First of all, there's not a lot of God making people "happy" in Scripture. Show me a prophet, and I'll show you someone who is fundamentally unhappy. God doesn't call Samuel to be the last judge to make him happy, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, certainly had some very bad days. More recently, I wouldn't claim that MLK Jr, Oscar Romero, or Dorothy Day were particularly happy folks, either.

Secularly, I see this played out as well. Doing meaningful work often means doing sacrificial and hard work, which automatically disbars what we think of as "happiness." For instance, when I worked at the Red Cross and disasters would hit, we were working twelve hour days and weekends, were exhausted and were so stressed we were either gaining or losing weight, but the meaningfulness of the work was somehow so much more than "happy." (This description of disaster work also seems to apply to parenting.)

Anyway, provoked by this thought, I did a little digging -- and "happiness" comes from the root word, "hap," which means "luck." So someone who is "hapless" is literally "luckless" and "happenstance" is a mashup of "lucky circumstance." So, happiness is nice, but it's something fleeting that happens randomly -- nothing you can control.

Joy, on the other hand, is a different beast entirely. And those folks I mentioned above? While they weren't necessarily happy, they were joyous. Joy is an inward disposition, rooted in knowing who you are and whose you are, and living in faith and trust. Joy grows if you cultivate it, if you can clear out enough of the gunk stuck to your soul so that joy can flourish. Joy is more than happiness, joy is more than luck. I can't help but think that God wants so much more for us than just "happy."

Happy Fall!

September 21, 2014

Snapped this pic on my way to church on Sunday. Happy first week of fall!

Recreational Recreation

If you are a regular reader of this blog, or know me personally, you know that words are a source of endless fascination for me. The word that I've been playing with since I got home from my very awesome Knowledge Commons DC class at SCRAP DC last night is "recreation."

SCRAP DC is a non-profit organization up in Brookland that takes donations of creative materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill and provides them to artists and other members of the community at very low cost. There are stacks of vintage wrapping paper, unwanted fabric, bags of bottle caps and buttons, piles of old costume jewelry, a metric ton of crayons, and balls and balls of yarn, not to mention some of the more interesting one-off pieces. Walking into the SCRAP store is like walking into an I SPY book: controlled chaos, stuff everywhere, but it's all very interesting to look at, and everything has the potential to be turned into something else. 

Which brings me back to "recreation." Recreation, as a noun, has two basic meanings: the first is that of an activity done for enjoyment, while the second is the act of creating something again. In the act of taking something that would have become part of the landfill and making it into something new, I was fusing the two meanings and participating in recreational recreation. In my case, the act of recreational recreation was making a basket out of vintage wrapping paper and some old fabric ribbon. Others in my class made baskets out of office paper, VHS tape, 8mm film, shopping bags, yarn, old maps, food wrappers, and receipts. 

KCDC's "Basketweaving from Scratch with Scraps" Basket
May 14, 2014 -- Not too shabby for a first try, huh?

Out of a bunch of trash came a bunch of things if not useful, then beautiful. And it was fun. 

I left the evening with my basket in hand, a few new acquaintances that I hope to see again, and thinking about how I could bring more recreational recreation into my life and relationships.

Interrupted by Joy

Late night texts or calls always fill me with dread. Anytime the phone dings after 11:00pm, I'm immediately worried that something terrible or undoable has happened, and I'm being called to be informed with the news. 

I'm not sure why I always think this, because really, I haven't had that many late night disasters in my life. The few that were, were enough, I guess. My new life as priest to a parish of people that I'm starting to love in a way that I can't even begin to articulate, some of whom I worry about regularly, doesn't help my phone anxiety, either. So despite that most of my post-midnight calls are drunk dials, an insomniac friend who knows that I'm usually up reading because I can't sleep either, or my bank telling me my checking account is emptier than it should be, I have to will myself to see who or what it is. Despite the statistical probabilities for everything being just fine, I still reach for the phone with a quickened pulse and a knot in my stomach. 

On Wednesday at midnight, I got a late night text from a friend. "Can you call me? I need to talk to you." I said my favorite prayer (it has two words and it goes like this: "Fuck! Help!") and called her back immediately, fearing the worst. 

But instead of being ambushed by the catastrophe that I was certain was on the other line, my life was interrupted by joy. Yes, of course, I would love it more than anything I know to come to an ultrasound with you in the morning. 

And in the morning, I woke up early, dropped Husband off at work, and I went with her to see her joy. With fingers, and toes, and a heartbeat, and a nose, a beautiful, perfect little nose. And we laughed for delight and amazement, and for all of the goodness that we saw God working in her, and we even cried a little bit. That morning was bliss and blessing. Bliss and blessing I might have missed if I hadn't picked up the phone.