Leap Year Day

I went to the counselor yesterday. Alone.

Brenda went on Monday, was asked to return next Monday. The following Thursday will be the two of us, but yesterday it was just me. Just this new counselor could hear my story.

I took a Xanax on the way. I was anxious and I didn't want to get too emotional about the mess we are in.

It started off easy enough. She let me talk about whatever I wanted. I started with my position on our marriage. My desire to preserve our marriage, if it is possible. My resolve to end it if it becomes clear that it cannot be saved.

When those issues were covered well enough she started the probing questions, and songs from an album I listen to (Turbulent Indigo by Joni Mitchell) when I am feel a little sad started playing in my head.


I spoke about my faith. I spoke about how central it is to my life.

I spoke about my dreams, how I remember them very clearly. I told how my dreams come in four types:

There are the ones that are simply flotsam and jetsam from my life, dreams that are simply working through the events of my life, sorting them out.

I described the ones from my subconscious, the ones that are a part of me trying to tell me about myself.

I shared of the rare dreams I have, especially when I was younger, which I could guide, the ones I knew were dreams while I was having them and could do things voluntarily, make myself fly, walk through walls, do things I simply wanted to try.

And I told her about the very rare ones that are completely different. The ones where God speaks to me.

She asked me to talk about Willy, about the death of the infant in my care at 10:30 a.m. December 15, 1992. I gave her the background about my dreams to explain how I was told to adopt that child.

In a voice that thickened, trembled, I spoke about the dream.

There was darkness and a growing pool of light. In it was an empty treasure chest. The sort you see in pirate movies. I watched it fill with gold. Right to the top it filled with gold coins. And when it was full, paper currency floated down and covered all the gold. The dream ended.

I explained to her that I had prayed the night before for an answer to the question of whether or not we should adopt Willy. There was a teen girl who would give us that child the day he was born. It would be the next morning that we would see a lawyer about it, begin spending money we didn’t have, to make the child soon to be born our own.

I explained to her that some would see that as a simple dream, but there were things about it that made it different.

First, it had a quality about it that was far different than other dreams. There was a focus to it, a sense of importance, that made it a powerful vision, of communication. It was a clear message. And there was a sound, sort of. It was sort of orchestral/choirish sort of sound, but without clear notes, without clear words, almost a sound that could be felt. The darkness surrounding the dream seemed to thrum with presence, almost clear singing, that said LIFE, LOVE, POWER, HOPE, GLORY. And lastly, when I awoke there was a clear interpretation of the dream in my mind.

The emptiness of our lives, the lack of the children we wanted so badly, would be given to us. The treasure we hoped for would fill us up. And as for our concern about paying for it, our worries about all the bills, would not be an issue. It would all be covered.

I explained to her that my faith is a very large part of my life, and that I have had many experiences which, for me, speak to the reality of God, though they would not be evidence for someone else.

I had sidestepped the real discussion about Willy’s death.

She drove straight at it.

“Tell me about Willy’s death.”

My throat tightened, my heart rate went up.

“That was bad,” I said in a choked whisper.

A line came to mind from one of the songs of that album...

...Six hundred thousand doctors
Are putting on rubber gloves
And they're poking
At the miseries made of love...
“Not to Blame”

I answered her. I talked about taking that three and a half month old child in his car seat to cut down a Christmas tree. About laying him on his tummy to give him a chance to push and kick with his arms and legs, a step toward learning to crawl. How I knew that he was mad, he wanted me to rock him in my arms, the way I always let him fall asleep. I worried about having him fall asleep on his stomach because there is supposedly an increased risk of S.I.D.S. in sleeping that way (but I told myself I would turn him as soon as he fell asleep, that first sleep without the rocking of parental arms.). I talked about the diminshing progression of his complaints, his angry crying, and his sobbing, and his whimpering, and his quiet, sad moaning for me, and his silence as he drifted off to sleep, drifted off into eternity.

I spoke of how I waited a few minutes and went to check on him... finding him blue.

I spoke of my panic. Of calling 911. Of thumping on his little chest with my finger tips, of gently blowing into his mouth, of standing at the end of the drive waiting for help to arrive, of seeing the flashing red and blue lights, hearing the siren, completely freaking out because though the ambulance appeared to be flying to my rescue, our rescue, it seemed to just hang in the distance without moving.

I spoke to her about my love for my child and how the following year was an awful year that had my heart beating in my chest like some razor sharp spiky thing tearing me apart. I spoke about seeing him naked on a metal table at the hospital. I spoke about the horror of looking at tiny caskets waiting for people like me to place tiny bodies in. I spoke about clutching my son at the funeral home, smudging the makeup that made him appear warm, alive. I spoke about landing on my chest in the dirt, in my good clothes, so I could reach far down into that hole in the earth to put that simple box with my treasure where he would rest until judgment day.

Another part of another song from that same album came to mind...

...What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread
and everything I fear come true?...
“Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song)”

After that painful exposition of the most dreadful moments of my life we went on to the most recent and the more distant moments of my life that have damaged, yet strengthened me. The dangers my father placed me in. The unfaithfulness of those I trust.

I shared how imperfect I am. How miserable the world can be, and how unfair... but how I love it and those in it.

Another song from that album came to mind... about young girls working hard in laundries in convents because they were “wayward” girls, and how their suffering was compounded by those who should have loved them, showed them mercy, helped them from the hurts they had suffered from men...


...I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries...

...These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Concealed behind their rosaries

Then they'd know,
and they'd drop the stones
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries...
“The Magdalene Laundries”


So, I spilled out the things which hurt, as well as the hopes for my future. I spoke of my strengths and gifts. I talked about my weaknesses and failures, as well as my determination to divorce this woman I love if one of two things occur:

1. She continues contact with this other man.
2. Or I become convinced that there is no saving our marriage.

Our time came to an end.

I drove home.

I picked up a bouquet of tulips, and a card for Brenda. Tomorrow I will have known Brenda 28 years. I met her on Leap Year Day 1980.

So... I go back to work... anxious about my life though my Lord tells me not to be. I think about the life we have had, nearly three decades. I think about how loyal I am to those I love. That I love my children and regardless of what they may do, regardless of what kind of burden they may be in the future. That I want to restore my wife, to build her up, to help her love herself, help her to love those who love her.

I have many flaws. I have many weaknesses. But...

I am not the man my wife complains about, the one of a quarter century ago.

I am not responsible for her happiness. I am not responsible for her actions or her thoughts or her self esteem. I want to fix those things, but they are not my responsibilities.

So... it is Leap Year Day... an extra day slipped into every fourth year to keep our poor man-made calendar in step with the God-made lap our little world makes as it races around the sun.

I’ve made 28 of those laps with her. I will run the next one as best I can. Perhaps she will be there still when it makes its circuit once more.

And Now For Something Completely Different

OK. I would say that my previous post was a little manic. (Or was it depressive?) Either way, I figured it would do me good to write something about something completely different.

So... I am going to take a perpendicular tangent to what I’ve been writing on and see where things go (picture me sticking out out my right leg and sharply turning 90 degrees).

There is a cool article, “The End of Cosmology”, in the latest Scientific American about the disappearing evidence for The Big Bang. I was excited to see the blurb on the cover because so many of my Christian friends feel the theory attacks our faith, and the blurb could be interpreted to mean that new discoveries may have the theory in question. But it doesn’t and that is exciting (at least for me) as well.

The article was really about the expansion of the universe. Now, as I’m sure most of you have heard, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (except for the “information” in tangled photon pairs which crops up in quantum mechanics and has me completely, enthusiastically, confused).

However, though nothing travels faster than the speed of light, there is a strange effect of the increasing expansion of the universe. Though everything in the universe is traveling well under light speed, the cumulative effect of all those things moving further apart makes the overall expansion of the entire universe spreading out at speeds well above the speed of light!

Wow!

Imagine that. Locally we have such structures as the Andromeda Galaxy, the Greater and Smaller Magellanic clouds, all moving toward us (due to gravity interactions) everything else, and I mean everything, all the billions of galaxies with their billions of stars, are moving farther away, with the furthest accelerating away at ever increasing speeds. And if one pretends that we are at the center of things (a common homocentric view) the furthest reaches in each direction are receding at speeds that will increasingly speed them away at a perceived speeds greater than the speed of light.

Amazing! As the universe ages beings of the distant future will see fewer and fewer other galaxies until, 100 billion years from now, only our galaxy (well, our galaxy mixed with the local group of galaxies, forming a supergalaxy) will be the only thing in sight. We won’t be able to imagine anything like: “Long, Long Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far away” because we will have long forgotten that there are other galaxies.


I lost you, didn’t I?

OK, let’s change the subject.

How about a theological approach to the concept that there are other dimensions? I’m going to jog around the topic of other physical dimensions (which are obviously there, but where I am headed is even more fun).

Let’s start with this premise: God is omniscient.

Hmmm... all knowing.

Well, in terms of time alone, that would mean that He already knows everything that has and will happen.

We can’t. We can’t see the future. We can’t observe the past.

What if there was another dimension to time, just as we can easily imagine two dimensions of space (like the surface of a sheet of paper). If the time we experience is a point on a line dragging us ever “forward,” then if one could move to the right or left, or in any direction other than along the line, we could visit any time in all of creation!

Perhaps that is what Heaven is. Eternity would instantly exist if one were not bound to the movement of time dragging us ever in the direction of entropy. One could step aside and simply stay in one place, continue forever in a single instant. One could also move in any of the two directions of time and be able to go forward backward, beside it. If that is so, then I would imagine the Crucifixion to be the most viewed, the most experienced event in all of creation, God, in human form, experiencing death, in place for us all. One would be able to simply be at any instant of that event and stay there for an infinite amount of “time”.

Did I lose you? I hope not, because there’s more! If I did lose you, just think of eternity as being something not confined to being dragged forward. One could simply experience what would look like an instant of time frozen forever, or fast forward, or reverse, or skip to a whole other part of the story just as one can do in the “Scene Selection” of a DVD menu.

But... that is still not omniscience. It is the ability to view, to learn, to gather all the information throughout all of creation, but it is not the same as being able to contain it all at once.

To be able to be omniscient one would have to be able to lift off the two dimensions of time and be able to discern it as a whole.

It would be like a cartoon drawing on a sheet of paper being able to suddenly grow a third dimension and step away from the sheet of paper and be able to hold the paper in its hands.

Ah... here we are getting close to omniscience. If there were a third dimension of time then all of creation, from the Big Bang to far beyond the loss of all energy (perhaps trillions of years into a future when all energy drops away and therefore all information is lost) could be held as an “object” by such a being who could know it intimately, being completely outside of all its experience, as well within it.

So... This strange little rabbit trail of thought, or as Einstein might have been kind enough to extend his term... “thought experiment,” would mean the following:

1. We are beings of a single dimension of time.
2. Beings of two dimensions of time would be eternal and able to view all of eternity but would not all at once.
3. Beings of three dimensions of time would be omniscient, being able to view, to know, to see, and to hold all of time as a whole.

You still with me?

Before I close, you should know the following:

1. I’m a strange human being with odd thoughts.
2. Of all the things I think about and think I know, I am almost certainly wrong about nearly all of them.
3. It is a relief to write about something different today.

The Note

We’ve got a diet contest going on at work. We are two weeks into it and I’ve lost 12 pounds.

Lunch has been a rather light meal. Brenda packs a Lean Cuisine, a piece of fruit, a yoghurt, and a juice in each lunch. I eat the yoghurt first thing in the morning, and all but the fruit at 10:30.

There was something extra in my lunch bag this morning:


A nice note.

I had conflicting feelings about it. It was nice. It was kind. It was hopeful. But, I also thought, is she trying to throw me off? Is this an attempt at redirecting my suspicions? Is this just a note to make me feel better and has nothing at all to do with us as a couple? Is she planning something and this is a way to assuage her guilt?

What a load! I hate the fact that I can’t even get a simple note from my wife of 27 years without feeling turmoil in my heart! Am I losing my mind? How can I be so suspicious of my circumstances that she can’t even leave a note that uses the word “love” without my getting all wigged out over it?

I’m tired of this whole thing. I’m tired of writing about it, talking about it, going to counselors about it, attending Al Anon meetings about it, pretending to others that things aren’t coming apart. I’m tired of praying about it. I’m tired of looking at her and wondering, having conversations with her that are like walking through a verbal minefield.

And I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of months with less sleep than I need. I’m tired of holding things together, my relationship with my kids, with my wife, even the walks with the dog seem to be some sort of shared responsibility with her that has implications.

I’m tired of pulling myself together each day and putting so much energy into being what should come natural, being a teacher. I’m tired of working so hard to force my mind to concentrate on my students and praise them when they do good, instruct them when they are confused, and get them back to work when they are off task. This is a job I love. It shouldn’t be this much work. I’m simply too distracted!!!!!

Being hungry is a way of pulling my mind off this mess.

But how much longer can this go on? It has been since early August!!!!!!!!!

I’m going nuts. And today, a simple little note that says I am loved is throwing me into confusion.

Literary Tourette’s

I’m not sure why I come so often to this glowing plastic screen to expound on my life.

Between this and my Job’s Tale blog I would guess I have written hundreds of thousands of words.

I write of the mundane, and of the spiritual. This keyboard has clicked and clacked its way through scientificially-prompted musings to outbursts of emotional angst.

It seems I can’t help but turn to writing to work through my thoughts and feelings.

And when I write I make wild jumps from one topic to another, connecting them in some unlikely fashion like some writerly form of a mental illness:

Today I tackled the messy TRIUNE pile of wood and FAITH debris that has lain in the corner of our back UNFAITHFUL yard. There were still remnants of a dog CARPENTER house and a PRAYER rabbit cage from CHURCH over a dozen MARRIAGE years ago. There were rotting pieces of fire TRUST wood slowly turning into QUANTUM PHYSICS soil around a broken SHEPHERD wheelbarrow.

Brenda had taken the dog SLEEPLESS for a walk and I worked my XANAX way through the pile, sorting TEACHING good boards from SELF ESTEEM broken ones, burnable firewood PRAYER ROOM from rotting ones. I built a composting box in SPECIAL NEEDS the furthest corner FIRE and raked the loose dirt and rotting wood CREATOR into it. She returned in time to MOON HOWLIN’ help me restack it and it HOSEA looks pretty CEMETERY good.

It felt odd working OWL together after DIVORCE the conversation we DIVORCE DIVORCE had this morning. We talked about CRAP splitting up. It was the CROSS same conversation we JESUS have had before UNFAITHFUL with a little more JOB edge to it.

She said that she PRAY was just a bad person. That I was ANGRY a good person. And that good is boring TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS.

Now I’m writing HOLY again trying to make INCARNATION sense of things.

Somewhere along the way GALACTIC SUPERCLUSTERS my little ramblings run out of FATHER steam and I bring the whole thing back to some point I had started at. Like this post INFINITECHRIST here.

I started feeling INSOMNIA depressed yesterday afterCOUNSELINGnoon and had a fitful night. And when I LOVE am confused, inspired, or just thoughtful, MARRIAGE I turn to writing.

Right now I feel little BRENDA hope for our UNFAITHFUL marriage. It makes my chest feel CREATOR tight and my breath SAVIOR short. So I tap away FRIEND at this keyboard, and feel gratitude SIN for those FORGIVE who visit and CRUCIFIED read and DEPRESSION pray. It is an outlet I GOD can’t DIMENSIONS stop doing.

It’s like I have literary Tourette’s or something.

Amortal

I’ve said it before... I’m an idiot.

I am very confused about many things. My relationships have been changing and I’m finding that the world ruled by Newtonian physics can be as strange and random as the world of quantum physics.

I have no idea where I am in my relationship with my wife. There has been some tense moments lately, and there have been times when we laughed, we worked together, we made decisions together.

During one of the tense moments I told her that if I became convinced that our marriage cannot be repaired, I would divorce her. Her eyes widened a little. From anger or surprise, I'm not sure.

Other relationships have been changing as well. I have a friend I work with who does his best to cheer me up, encourage me with the joys of our shared profession.

Several good friends have been keeping in touch, knowing that I am struggling in some way, and drawing near to let me know I am appreciated, cared for. These have been changes which have helped me.

My relationship with my faith, with my God, has also been changing.

Over the last six months there has been a progression in my prayer life:
* Specific requests for help, blessings, to general requests...
* General requests for wisdom, perseverance, strength, patience...
* To numb quiet... just walking, thinking...
* To a sort of seeking friendship, searching for the Carpenter who would be my friend as well as my God.

Last night there was an eclipse of the moon. The bright full moon darkened, the edges of the Earth’s shadow glowing red from the ring of sunsets and sunrises shining from our world onto that one.



I watched the darkening moon sitting in my van, the engine running, the lights out. My wife’s car was parked on the other side of the lot in front of the drug store where she was picking up a prescription for her mother. (As Imentioned before, I'm an idiot.)

A shadow had crossed my heart. The eclipse of what is good in my heart was shadowed by the specter of something else, someone else, reddened on its edges by the embers of anger and jealousy.

She pulled out of the parking lot, turning southwest toward the area where she said her AA meeting was, not southeast to where I know he lives.

I turned on my lights and followed anyway. (Idiot.)

I let her stay about a half mile ahead of me, the running lights on the left side a little dimmer than the right because I had removed one of them before she left.

She went where she said she would.

I felt like an ass.

She went into her meeting, sitting beside a couple of women, showing them the sweater she is knitting, laughing.

I went to her car, fixed the taillight. Slunk off to the van, drove home, watching the darkened moon drift over my small town, my home.

I brought the boys out to look at it, I took a fuzzy picture of it with my digital camera.

Crawled into bed.

I thought about my weaknesses. About my failures.

I thought about the mystery of being a mortal with aspirations for immortality.

I thought about what it means to be born in a body that ages and will eventually decay, and the mind it carries, the one that can think such bizarre thoughts and contemplate such saddening ideas that it pulls my spirit down to dark places. I thought about my spirit which lives beyond the confines of this animated 200 pounds of flesh, the spirit which will carry that mind into eternity and joy.

I thought about the reverse. About the all powerful, the immortal, slipping into this world into the tiny helpless flesh of an infant, so He can share in the experience of mortality. I thought about how He will carry the wounds of His mortality throughout eternity. I thought about how the moment when His death intersected the timeline of the universe it altered (alters... time has no meaning in this discussion) fundamental relationships between these four dimensions and the eight or so we can not see. I thought about how He will be an eternally immortal mortal, eons beyond the time we slip from our own mortality into immortality.

I thought about how such concepts do not seem to have proper words in our language.

Christ was, is, both. He was mortal. He lived, He died. Christ was, is, will be, immortal. He is both and neither. Jesus, my friend the Carpenter, my Lord and master, my Shepherd, is amortal. Death simply isn’t within the framework of who He is. It is, and it isn’t and it matters more than any other death, for it makes all death meaningful and meaningless.

I have no clue what I’m talking about... what I’m trying to say.

I just know that my heart is shaken (and stirred) and I’m just rambling...

I'm an idiot.

Roller Coaster

Today was a rough day.

She was more than grumpy.

I did my best to stay cheerful, helpful.


We have been working pretty hard this weekend. We split about two cords of wood (with a friend’s help and a hydraulic splitter for 80% of it). It was a lot of packing wood around the house, stacking it along the fence, cleaning up the yard afterward. I even managed to get around to washing her car.

Her resentment grew.

There were moments when things were good... we seemed happy, happy to be working together, sweating and struggling in splitting and chopping and moving what was once a large tree in our yard.

Evening came, she was in the bedroom reading abook. I went in to check on her.

“I’m sorry I was so grumpy today.”

That surprised me. A change of mood.

“It’s OK. Let it go.”

“I want you to stop being nice. I want you to be a butt. Then I won’t feel bad about what I have done. I want you to go back to not showing you cared like you did years ago.”

“You have to let that stuff go. You have to forgive me and forgive yourself. It’s no good for me. It’s no good for you. It isn’t fair to either of us for you to keep living in the past and not in the now. If I can forgive you, you can forgive me.”

“No,” she said, “I can’t.”

“You have to. If we are going to make this work, if we are going to rebuild our marriage, we have to move on.”

“I don’t think I can. I think this is who I am.”

“No it’s not. You can be anything you want. You can do what you want. You don’t have to stay; we don’t have to be married.”

I felt her sulk rise.

“You know that’s not true,” she growled. “If we divorced, Isaac would fall apart and there’s no telling how Jeremiah will act out.”

“Yes, we can divorce. If I become convinced that we cannot save our marriage, I will divorce you. The only reason I haven’t yet is because I love you, I want to help you, and I think we can rebuild our marriage. If I stop believing that, it’s over. You may think that you have to stay because of the kids, but I don’t. That is your motivation for being here. Don’t think that it is mine. You don’t believe I can handle raising these boys on my own. I believe I can.”

So... the roller coaster rolls on. Up and down, around in tight curves.

I will do what God calls me to do. If there isn’t a future for us, then that will be as it will be. But if we can work on our marriage, I will continue to be patient.

Called

This country is in a struggle over many things. We struggle with our wealth, our consumerism. We struggle with our pride, seeking to gain an advantage in political, economic, and clandestine cat and mouse games with other political powers. And we struggle with our conscience.

We are quietly ashamed over our war in southeast asia forty years ago. We don’t care for the way we entered, and especially the way we left. We treated our soldiers shamefully when they returned, and in general we simply wish we had done something different during that decade.

Today we make exagerated efforts to distinguish our feelings between the warriors in the field and the politicians who wage it. We take great pains to make certain that we tell ourselves, and the world, that we “support our troops,” no matter how we feel about the war itself. (Though I think if we really want to support our troops we would be willing to pony up a little more money to help their families, increase their death benefits, and fix the V.A. hospitals, but I’m getting off topic).

Now I’m not setting up any sort of argument to take one side or the other on our current war in the middle east. But it has gotten me thinking.

There have been wars we supported far more. In particular there was the war sixty years ago. World War II.

Our country debates over the right thing to do in Afghanistan and Iraq, but once we entered World War II we supported not only the troops but the war effort in general in far more substantial ways than we do today.

People saved foil, and tin and string. People rationed sugar and rubber and meat. People did all they could because they felt called to do it. They felt that it was what they had to do, to sacrifice, to give up a little here and there, or even a lot here and there, to provide the materials needed to fight that tremendous war on two sides of the planet.

Perhaps it is because we felt in that war we were fighting a tangible evil (today we are less certain about who, what, and where the evil may be). Regardless, people believed they heard a call, a cry for them to do something.

It isn’t all that often people feel called to do something, to sacrifice something. At least not in this country.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how difficult my current situation is. He said something that really caught my attention.

“You are right about your wife. She is ill and needs your help. God is calling you to stay steady, to hang in there when it is a difficult thing for you to do. You haven’t any choice. You have to do as He asks.”

I believe he is right. There is another voice saying: “Hang in there, Will. Hang in there.”

I am being called to remain steady as a husband, as a man, as a follower of the Carpenter. I really do not like this situation, sometimes I feel like it is driving me insane.

But those words were encouraging. They helped me to see that it is sometimes OK to sacrifice a little.

Perhaps it is easier to believe in something, to stand up for something, whether it is tyranny or faith, when we are called to make tough choices.

Valentine's Day

Brenda surprised me yesterday, asking if we should go to the counselor (it is our first session with the new one) on Thursday or go out to dinner since it is Valentine’s Day.

I told her that I wanted to help her, I wanted to stand by her, I want to work on our marriage. If she wanted to go out for dinner or go to counseling, whatever was best for us, I would be glad to do. Today I stopped on the way home to get a Valentine’s Day card for her.

Wasn’t easy...

“For the most wonderful woman in the world...”

“Our love will last forever...”

“When I think of all the happy memories...”

“When we kiss I feel...”

Card after card I couldn’t find one that didn’t seem to be mocking our situation.

I spent the longest time looking.

I finally found a simple one. On the front it said: “I love you” and on the inside it simply said: “forever”. I bought it.

She was in a terrible mood when I got home.

We tried to smooth things out before bed, but it didn’t work.

So... I’ve taken a sleeping pill to make me drowsy and a Xanax to reduce my anxiety. I'm typing this on my laptop in the living room. I'll be sleeping here tonight.

This year...

Valentine’s Day sucks.

It Isn’t Humility

I’ve been rather unhappy the last couple of days. So much so that I couldn’t bear to post my feelings even here, this blog where I am so transparent.

I had to vent, show my frustration, stare a little at an uncertain future, and even this blog is still a touch too public for that.

So I crept into a little corner I know in the internet, one known to only three others, and vomited up the poison inside.

What I can share here though is why I was feeling that way. I am becoming convinced that my marriage will not survive.

I took an assessment of who I am, what I am, and looked hard at my wife’s heart to learn what I could.

This is what I learned: Though I have many gifts and blessings my wife does not love me any more.

Haven’t I anything she might admire or want?

I am creative. I paint and draw and write and imagine. But being creative is not enough to win her heart.

I am intelligent. I love to learn and gather tidbits of knowledge like some weird cerebral squirrel storing walnut-shaped ideas and facts in a hollow log.

I am curious. I go beyond learning and search out strange connections within this Rube Goldberg world view I have.

I have a large heart. I get choked up by beauty and suffering and joys and all sorts of things which point to a layer that covers all that is real.

I have a good job. I am a professional, I am respected for what I do, and I love doing it.

Yeah. It is about self esteem. And clinically I understand why I feel like this. But following Polonious' dictum "To thine own self be true" does not change the fact that I feel she sees me as something slimy crawling out from a rotted cedar lying along some path in our Oregon woods.

And then I hear a soft whisper... deep in my heart, ever so quiet... and it says:

“I love you.

“I love you enough that even if I didn’t save anyone else, I would have let those men nail me to that piece of wood if it meant saving only you.

“Hang on, Will. Hang on.”

We sang a song this morning that sparked ideas so strongly that in the midst of the song I wrote down a few thoughts in my Moleskine:

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer

You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won't grow weary
You're the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer

You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won't grow weary
You're the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer

You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint

Oh...

So much of that song resonates in my heart...

About how I will receive strength.
How He is so much larger than any of my problems.
How He is the Defender of the Weak.

That last line... It made me think of the legend of Camelot. How King Arthur wanted to create a government where strength did not dominate the weak, but defended what was right, what was true. I thought how Camelot, the whole idea of chivalry, is the faintest echo, the dimmest reflection of what my God is.

No matter that I have been tested and am tired, that I am obsessed with my failures, my weaknesses. He is bigger.

I feel I am less now than I have ever been.

That isn’t humility.

It is just a place of hurt and rejection and darkness. It is where I am, but I know, I really know, that someday I will walk out of this darkness.

The reason I know this?

Because He says so.

If I am really such a disgusting piece of trash as I feel I am, then He would not be willing to do so much for me.

Feeling low is not being humble.

I think humility is something very different.

I think humility is about knowing who one is, knowing all one’s strengths and virtues and gifts and blessings, and then putting them completely at the service of others without a thought of or for oneself.

That is what He did.

He who spoke the universe into being, Who lives beyond time and space, is Goodness in ways that cannot be imagined by someone like me, stripped Himself of the power of speech which created the universe, confined Himself into a time, into a place, and exposed Himself to the most vile evils in existence.

Perhaps one day I will learn humility.

I’m not there yet. For if I were, I wouldn’t be so wrapped up in my own pain.

Did You Hear That?

On my usual predawn walk this morning I listened for “my” owl. The one who called out when I was asking God to let me know He heard my prayers. I didn’t hear him.

There has been a lot of activity around there this past year. Across the street from that cemetery a huge concrete tilt-up now blocks the view of fields to the south that stretch to the edge of the Molalla River. Every morning, even at that hour, construction crews are shutting down the night shift and starting up the day one.

To the west, past the metal recycler and the railroad tracks, the new bus barn welcoming drivers who are firing up the diesel engines of First Student Buses. The yellow behemoths are rattling and coughing, their back up signals are ringing in the dense air, as they head out to the further reaches of the school district.

The grove of trees where that owl stayed have been cut back, perhaps 25% of it gone, to accommodate a road widening that will feed the industrial area springing up like a fast growing ivy. In place of those missing trees is a muddy wide spot along the road, not ready for the cars that have suddenly discovered this more direct path to Township Road and the highway five miles away that runs through the town of Molalla. Their tires hiss, the thick mud splash as they negotiate broken pavement and large puddles.

In the distance I hear an emergency vehicle, an ambulance I think, rolling out of the fire station a mile away, rushing to the aid of someone who is waiting anxiously.

A freight train is running on the tracks which bisect our community. Those tracks are the reason this town grew, starting a hundred or so years ago. But now the freight and passenger trains seem to run ever more frequently as the city of Portland to our north demands more commerce.

This cemetery, where I set Willy’s small coffin in the ground 15 years ago, is no longer the quiet refuge it was. There is no sign of the owl.

I made a couple of laps in the dark, talking to the Carpenter. I told him about how I’m feeling about my home, my marriage. I lay my anxiety at His feet, and do my best to push the irritation I feel at the various noises out of my head, I think between the conversational words I toss Heavenward that I need to find a more secluded place now.

The noises blend together, the waking mumblings of a town that has doubled in size since I moved here 17 years ago.

As I neared my van on my last lap in that too noisy darkness my heart calmed down a little and I heard something else. It wasn’t entering through my ears, or my noisy mind. It was from my heart.

“I love you. I am here.”

Pushing all noise aside, I’m still hearing the Carpenter.

Punctuation

I don’t remember when the idea first came to me, but I have often thought, as I return to my home, that if houses had punctuation it would be helpful.

I picture a great big exclamation point floating in the air over my home. A sort of “DANG!”

It would be helpful for emergency response, wouldn’t it? The ambulance would be racing down the street and spot the 12 foot exclamation point above the roof and know exactly where to pull up.

Imagine the other sorts of punctuation that could be used. A great big question mark for those who are wrestling with tough problems. A comma for those who are taking a breath and getting ready to finish a thought. For those who can’t quite bring themselves to finish what is going on their lives, ellipses...

I imagine politicians and CEOs would have an emphatic period: “That’s the way it is and I have nothing further to say.”

Perhaps there could be other signals... not sure how we could express the emphasis we might want with italics or bold fonts. perhaps the house would appear a little slanty or the outline might get thick and dark.

And fonts! From script to helvetica, typewriter to copperplate, it would be really handy to see on the outside what is going on within. Elderly spinsters would have flowery cursive with little flairs at the end of each word. Blue collar homes would print. And think what it would be like if every home had floating above it one word...

I try to be pretty careful with word choice and punctuation. I have my own little excessively strict rules for the use of commas. I am pretty free with whatever tricks I can use to get my mood, thoughts, nuances across in my writing.

But, like punctuation floating in the sky over my community, really expressing myself, even with careful word choice, isn’t so simple.

Words are symbols. They don’t replicate reality, they only convey an approximation based on a person’s interpretation of that reality.

I have a lot of emotions churning within me. Not only do I fail in communicating them clearly, I fail to even understand them myself.

There is one in particular I have been giving a lot of thought: anxiety.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
--Philippians 4:6

Well. God seems pretty clear about that feeling:

“Don’t!”

I wish I could turn it off. I need to just trust Him.

I do, mostly.

But not enough.

I’ll keep trying.

Trust

I became suspicious today. It was baseless. I thought I had evidence that she was in contact with this other man. She may be, but I was wrong about what I thought I had.

I had an hour and a half until the end of my work day.
I had an hour and a half to do my best with my students.
I had an hour and a half to wonder where my wife was.
I had an hour and a half to think, to stew.

My heart rate increased. My thoughts became repetitive. I was anxious.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
--Philippians 4:6

No matter the source of my anxiety, this is not an emotion from God, a feeling He wants me to have.

It seems clear that feelings that are negative, emotions which are destructive, are not things God wants for us.

I rushed home. Checked on my suspicions. Found them without merit. Took a Xanax. Went for a walk. Prayed to my friend, the Carpenter.

The question is, how do I trust her? How do I work against my suspicions? My own mind?

I try to discipline my thoughts. I try to avoid checking on her.

Where is my marriage today? Where is it going?

These aren’t good thoughts. These aren’t thoughts which draw me closer to God. These aren’t thoughts that help me to see a clear path, a way the Carpenter would have me walk.

My wife and I are pretending. Pretending that we have a marriage. We are keeping the household running.

Every Wednesday we go to counseling. Every Wednesday the tension rises, and then subsides.

I think Brenda tires of the counseling. Understandably. She goes in for substance abuse counseling for three hours three times a week, does seven AA meetings a week, and goes to counseling with me once a week.

I want a fast, easy fix. I want her to heal.

She was my best friend.

I want to trust.

Family

It seems odd to me that I have poured so much personal stuff into this blog. I have written things here, told things to strangers, that I would not tell many I know and love.

I can think of two reasons.

First, I find that when I write I process things better. I can work out my thoughts, connect events to each other, integrate them into what I think about larger issues, what I think about those events and how they relate to other parts of my life. In writing I have the opportunity to think it through, and keep those thoughts in a record, a running journal of my experiences.

That is good enough for writing in general, but why have I posted them on a blog? I could easily have put them on a digital journal that wasn’t so public, another online location I could reach from anywhere.

So, the second reason for writing all this stuff is what I get out of it. I get family.

Brenda told her family about what has happened. She sort of had to because the day she left was the day she was going to have family over for Thanksgiving dinner. We had to cancel. In revealing our marital difficulties to her family I feel very awkward, around them that is. We went to see many of them during Christmas. I didn’t particularly care for having them know my wife was unfaithful and that I was just sucking it up, not tossing her from my home in indignation.

I told just a very few friends. My Moon howlin’ buddies...

...and you.

I wish I could talk to my family about it, to get their prayers, their support. My mom prays constantly and it would be good for her to pray for me. My father, well, I don’t know what to think about telling him about this, but either way, I don’t feel telling him is an option. Brothers and sisters, almost everyone who means a lot to me, do not know that I have been hurting, struggling.

I can’t tell my family about this. If she is to have a chance in reintegrating herself in my life, she needs to be able to have this a secret from them. Her shame and guilt would be an obstacle.

So, I hide my embarrassment and grief from most of my church family, and from all of my blood family.

Here I can share with folks who will never run into my wife, never have an opportunity to embarrass her. Here such folks can lift me up in prayers, can encourage and even offer a little advice (which I always feel free to take or disregard but am honored to see appear).

Here I can share with my other family, the Church, without concern of embarrassment for myself or my wife. Here I can say what is on my heart, and not worry how I am judged. Here I can be myself.

Here the internet, this birth of the Information Age, exhibits one of its positive effects. Though it can do harm, though it has its dangers, at least in this small corner of the World Wide Web, the internet brings fellow Christians, Christ Followers, from all over the globe, to be a part of my Church family.

I want to thank all of you for this privilege I have to have you visit me here. Hong Kong to Sweden, Virginia Beach to India, New Zealand to Canada, I have you to confide in when those who are closest to me haven’t a clue.

Thank you.

"I Know My Rights"

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
--Preamble of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

I had a thought the other day which took me aback in its simplicity and its staggering implications:

I do not have the right to be happy.

In longing to fix my marriage I have thought much about what kind of life I want us to have. I’ve thought how I want a partner to share my life, good and bad, illness and health, the usual things we believe are a part of a marriage. I want it. I hope for it. I’m not sure if it will happen. In short, I want to be happy.

But I don’t have the right to it.

Americans are full of rights. I hate that phrase, the title of this post: "I know my rights." We say it so often, almost as a threat to anyone who crowds us too much. We glory in our rights.

We have the right to remain silent. We have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If we cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for us.

We have the Bill of Rights, a long list of freedoms and securities, and we always keep them in mind.

As Americans we feel the right to buy, to take, anything we need, anything we want.

When the Soviet Union fell and the Cold War ended I thought we would stop pouring so much money into the military, I thought we would finally turn our attention to education, reducing debt, science.

But, as a nation, we are as full of "our rights" as we are as individuals.

OK, OK, I won’t go down the path about U.S. consumption, corporate greed, and carbon emissions. I’m really thinking more personal anyway.

I fully accept that I have not been all that I should have been in my life. I recognize I was slow to my career, to caring for my family as I should, for helping my wife to feel special, cared for, loved.

And I accept that I am of the race which turned its back on God seeking "freedom", freedom from... love.

I know God wants me to be happy. I also know I have no right to it. Not with what I have done as an individual, what we have done as a race.

So, it occurred to me yesterday: I have no right to happiness.

Even our Declaration of Independence at the top of this post says nothing about having the right to happiness, only the pursuit of it. And that is a right granted me by the fact I was fortunate enough to be born in a land where that was given to me. Many in the world have so much less.

So, I recognize I really haven’t the right to happiness.

What I have is grace. I have the forgiveness of the Creator.

What I have is love. I have the sacrifice of my Lord Jesus.

What I have is hope. I have the presence of the Holy Spirit with me.

No rights. None.

There is a word about happiness given to the man who pleases Him (Ecclesiastes 2:26). Perhaps I will get that.

I understand Job’s feelings of hopelessness...

"My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle,
and they come to an end without hope.

Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath;
my eyes will never see happiness again...”
--Job 7:6-7

But, I think I am going to be OK. I have been talking to Jesus lately, just like He was a good friend. I’m not asking for stuff, not bargaining or even praising, just talking.

And something has happened. I felt something in my heart. I felt that the guy who smoothed pieces of wood on the shores of Galilee is happy to have me get to know Him as a friend.

Something has happened. The image of Him smoothing pieces of wood settled in my heart. And during a brief time in the Prayer Room yesterday I sketched Him doing just that, smoothing a piece of wood, a large timber of wood notched into a cross beam.

My art has returned.

I’m not really happy or anything. I’m not even expectant of the future, for I have no idea what to expect. I’m not demanding my rights, for I feel that after what I have done as a man, and what we have done as a race, we can’t expect too much.

But I’m praying to my Big Brother, my best friend, and it feels pretty good just to do that.