Paying Attention (22): celebrating monotonous monogamy

In this season that my time is called for in places other than writing new posts, I've been following an idea my good Father gave me to  ponder and notice again the words I've already written once.  I've discovered this practice allows me to keep praying the beads of memory in this sacramental life.

On Monday Brian and I celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary.  Unbelievable. I am the first person to understand the unearned favor and fragile nature of this gift . 
In honor of long-love, here's a little compilation of posts I've written on the subject.

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in honor of monotonous matrimony (originally posted 06/02/2010)

June 5, 1970 was the day my parents made vows.  That's forty years of obedience in the same direction.  As the oldest child -- and precociously perceptive at that -- I noted each dip in the ebb and flow of long love. The romantic hilarity and teeth-gritting shouldering on the vows demanded.  As an adult, I've walked with Brian nearly twenty years in their footsteps.In the same way they've followed in the 64-year-old worn-down path my grandparents are travelling.

Sometimes the love is fierce as hate and sometimes it is supple as a half-awake midnight caress. It is hard-fought and exhausting in its familiarity.  It is insistent to remember one face, one form, one essence only, and no other.  It is cisterns and wells of living water and tromps through vineyards. Pomegranates and gazelles and all that.  My beloved is mine and I am his.  

Glorious monotony.

My grandmother said, "My back doesn't bend anymore!"  

My grandfather said, "Mine does!"

when did you first notice the one you love? (originally posted 10/16/2013)

A little video from the time I was talking with my grandparents on their 67th anniversary and being really nosey about their love and marriage business. 

-- Three Generations of monotonous monogamy --

(and honeymoon babies) 

Paying Attention (21): remembering Margaret's mom

In this season that my time is called for in places other than writing new posts, I've been following an idea my good Father gave me to  ponder and notice again the words I've already written once.  I've discovered this practice allows me to keep praying the beads of memory in this sacramental life.

In the past few years, the first week of November has become a memorial week, appropriately ushered in by All Saints Day.  One year ago during this week we said good-bye to our dear friend Trey.  Five years ago this week I watched my friend Margaret say good-bye to her mother.  I am grateful for the lessons I've learned watching dear ones grieve.  Today's post is what I learned watching Margaret and her father say good-bye to Peggy.

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on grieving again (originally posted November 14, 2009)

I'm thinking about grief again.  In fact, the subject keeps coming up everywhere I turn. Several of my friends are mourning the loss of a loved one, some are mourning the loss of relationship and a few are mourning the loss of certain childhood privileges - for example unconditional love from a parent or ever hearing the words I love you from any trusted adult in their growing up years.

Our nation grieved the loss of thirteen soldiers last week.  We lose soldiers all the time, but we sit up and take notice when they are lost on our own soil at the hands of one of our own countrymen.  This waste of life haunts us and we try to figure out how to lament nobly and adequately without upsetting our entire emotional landscape.

My friend Margaret lost her mom this week.  For over six years since her mom's diagnosis of ovarian cancer she has tried to imagine what these days would be like -- when would they happen, how would she respond, what would moving forward without her mom cost her family?  I wonder if she'll really ever be able to answer those questions?

A week ago -- on a Friday morning -- we visited Margaret's parents, Toby and Peggy.  We arrived at their home and tried to enter the reality of their long goodbye.  We walked around their house and behaved as if we'd been invited over for a spaghetti supper -- noticing pictures on the wall, wandering around the space, making small talk.  To me the whole house seemed lopsided, almost dizzying in its architectural imbalance.  None of the weight of lovely furniture, books, china, or beloved piano could balance the floors that seemed to literally slope down the hall toward Peggy's bedroom.  For many long months the entire center of their universe was located in that bedroom, their energies absorbed in the tasks of comfort and homely care, love and unexercised grief.  It's as if the gravity of their weighty love drew us in.  We walked the long hallway into Peggy's room and encircled her with hymn-singing, small talk, Scripture-reading, prayer, laughter. 

We are rusty in our hymns, the four of us friends.  But we worked through The Church's One Foundation, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, and others, trying to read the old black notes moving up and down between sharps, flats and naturals on the page.  We laughed to ourselves that we'd be in a position to sing these great old songs to the man and wife who'd mastered them their whole lives.  Peggy was certainly humble to receive our gift with no look of horror at our missed notes in her lovely, large blue eyes.  I noticed her eyes most when they were fixed on Toby while he spoon-fed her ice chips.  I'm not sure I've ever seen such naked trust in an adult face before. 

The whole love between this husband and wife -- its gritty, imperfect reality -- was far better than any movie story of love I've ever seen.  I'm thankful I got to tell Peggy how much I'd learned from her dying.  How much I learned about the value of long years with my husband.  About the charity that suffers through horrors as well as delights.  The charity that causes one spouse to sleep in a recliner chair next to his wife's bedside for night after long night.  I also learned -- again-- the violence of death.  The sturdiness of our insistence on living is one miserable bugger to someone who is suffering and ready to go to her true home.  Everything is ready, everyone is ready but that body that insists on trying to cope with suffering and go on living.  Eventually, death comes and does it grim work tearing families apart.  I learn each time to embrace the glory of Christ's resurrection more. 

I'm thankful for last Friday morning with Peggy and Toby and Margaret and Lori and Andrea and two-year-old Katie.  Eventually we swum back out of the gravity of that room and walked back up the hall toward the piano.  We sang more.  I'm thankful for my new friend Brian Moss who gave us his sheet music to the Psalms that have been sustaining Margaret all these long days.  We were asked again later that week to sing another Brian Moss song at Peggy's funeral.  Between that and an old Don Wyrtzen anthem that Toby requested, once again, we novices felt humbled to sing for this musical family.  And we slid back and forth between the extraordinary extremes of grieving and giggling at the absurdity of it. 

Margaret, I'm saving up some funny stories for you.  It's occurred to us that your mom might have been able to laugh along with our fumbling, stumbling attempts to sing for her family this week.  I know the day will come for you to laugh, too. 

In the meantime, tears.

A Chronology of Paying Attention (18): winning the Brian Murphy lottery

In this chronological remembrance, we're in the newlywed years.  Lord, have mercy (and thankfully He did!)  Today I'm re-sharing a poem I wrote for my husband's 43rd birthday last year. ...............................

43 years

A poem* for my husband on his birthday

Ninety-two, ninety-three, I most remember   

As the winter a blizzard shut us in and we are   

Broke from a hard two years as newly wed  

Where the meager provision of being   

Student, employee, father for our first born

Son and now another one on the way, we've

Neither a degree nor cash. Dreams die in   

Fatigue and bank accounts give way as you and your    

Muscle and sweat and hope fall in to make   

A loss. We lived in two bedrooms down the   

Hallway from kind friends in their nice  

Neighborhood. Or that has all really   

Happened and we go to Johnson City where,   

Thanks to Rick Jindra and Steve Conroy,   

You get a job cleaning cars at Dependable   

Auto Sales. It’s all a backwards dream, a slog

To get a life and home before the next

Arrival of another son, your dogged days 

Of honor. A church acquaintance  

Has encouraged us that giving when we   

Don't think we have anything to give keeps the   

Scarcity of our mindset overwhelmed by

The bounty. I love the mentors, at least I   

Think I do, in their wisdom, their attempt   

To find ways for us to find a living from the WIC   

Office. Otherwise the early years seem   

Like a country music ballad. A stunned   

Twenty-something man runs from school to work   

And home up three floors of the apartment house on Frederick Street,

Chasing a toddler with the second-born in hot

Pursuit where otherwise you sat up late writing  

Required lines, planning for your next degree  

And child, a daughter. We were waiting to get our   

First salary and listening to the Yankees win the pennant

On the radio. You worked, you dreamed, you wrote the   

Fifty-two pages of your thesis, the new baby  

Arriving near the end. I slept on the couch and  

healed and nursed and cried while you stayed up

Thirty-six hours straight, determined. Then that   

Summer there is the day of the great Teaching Job   

Offer, we move to Conklin -- Richard T. Stank

Middle School, beloved George Schuster  

Down the hall. You read “Goodnight   

Moon” to your children and Teddy Roosevelt

To your students, and Rick Patino for the team.   

Then it’s winter again. My water breaks   

And we head back to Lourde's Hospital   

And we welcome another daughter, and   

Sometime just about then you must have almost   

Seen yourself as others see or saw you,   

people like Dr. Jagger and Scott Gravelding, but could not quite   

Accept either their affirmation

Or their equally anointed naming. Uncertain,   

Afraid, you kept at it. A few years later
Crisis and pain and forgiveness fall in to make   
A calling. You lived into yourself, a man named.   

You are still the father, student, teacher, much the same,
but now also mentor, pastor, friend.
Now you are happier, I think, and older.
Those of us lucky enough to know you say
That we have won the Brian Murphy lottery.

*ADAPTED FROM "YESTERDAYS", 

A POEM BY ROBERT CREELEY

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In this season that I do not have time to write, this is the idea God gave me:  For me to ponder and notice again the words I've already written once, to keep praying the beads of memory to discover this sacramental life.

Won't you join me?  

I'd welcome your company along the way.

A Chronology of Paying Attention (17): the time we got mac & cheese for a wedding gift

Apparently I've not written much about my high school years in this blog. I seem to be skipping from middle school era to marriage and motherhood.  Let's be honest -- that era was pretty short.  Today I'm re-sharing a post I wrote as a follow up to to the short essay I wrote for Think Christian in response to Chipotle's viral ad.

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source

Twenty-two years ago -- and only a few months after our wedding day -- my husband and I knocked on the door of a church acquaintance’s apartment.  She’d invited us to join her and her three sons for dinner.  It was her wedding gift to us.  We were touched.  

We’d never been to her home before but we knew a good bit of her story.  Her on-again, off-again husband lived in prison.  Each time he got out he promised to sober up, quit the drugs and be her man.  Each time he left her jobless, pregnant and broke.  

Since her quiet invitation following service one Sunday I’d tried to imagine what dinner in her home would look, feel and taste like.  She weighed probably less than 100 pounds herself and I wondered what sort of food she had to offer.

We arrived to her hot kitchen, children and their toys cluttered bare floors.  She stood over a pot on the stove, stirring bubbling water.  On the counter a blue and gold box, cardboard lid ripped open, stood our entree:  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  

Frankly, I was relieved.  We knew this food.  It gave us something in common. Turned out the entree was the entire meal, we sat where we could find a seat, television blaring and enjoyed creamy noodles and awkward conversation.

It's one of the best gifts I've ever received.

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In this season that I do not have time to write, this is the idea God gave me:  For me to ponder and notice again the words I've already written once, to keep praying the beads of memory to discover this sacramental life.

Won't you join me?  

I'd welcome your company along the way.

the prayer that's taken me 2 1/2 years to finish (and God's answer for now)

I think I've figured out a way to keep getting words on the white page here at my blog even though the time/space I use for writing in my blog has been erased with full-time work.  That's a story worth telling at some point, but for now I'll share the highlights.  

There is a time, friends, when we bend our knee and we submit to the things that are not our most fulfilling passions.  We do this because we live in a world bigger than ourselves. Brian and I do this because we laughed when all the nay-sayers told us four kids was too many, and now kind of understand what they meant.  Four babies in hand-me-down footie pajamas eating breakfast cheerios is not terribly expensive.  Four near-adults with plans to make something of themselves in this world are damned expensive. Especially living in a large city while one of the parents is back in school himself. And we don't feel obligated to make every dream come true, but we hope to help them launch in a way that blesses them and the families they'll build on their own some day.

The process to me saying "yes" to full-time work is not a process I have much control over.  The only part -- really -- is the submitting part.  The part I control is the part where I say: "God, I think it'd be noble and a good thing for me to be the kind of woman like millions of other women who have no choice but to work and still act like they are not victims of a cruel world.  I really want to pout some more about all the reasons this was never my plan.  But I'm choosing not to pout -- cry a good bit, yes -- but not pout.  Also, I'd like to be the kind of woman who is motivated by love.  So I say yes, Lord." 

Those last five sentences?  Those sentences took me two and a half years to say - one word at a time.  Along the way I have been formed by the process of being an over-forty, slightly frumpy, non-degreed job seeker in a city that lauds young, hip, and degreed out the wazoo.  

This, friends, has been humbling. Thankfully, this city also lauds the non-traditional.  I pursued that route for a bit and added the following positions to my resume:  cupcake-delivery girl, social media ghost writer, bed & breakfast housekeeper and innovative errand-runner. There were the more traditional lowly positions of cleaning rich people's houses, buying rich people's groceries, doing rich people's laundry and answering phone calls from rich people who thought the whole damn world was against them because their deluxe appliances in their outdoor kitchen were not chipping their ice cubes with symmetrical precision.

The best list is the list of job offers I turned down: roving balloon artist, weekend party clown, horse stall cleaner.

Best part of the story, though, are the good and kind people who sent me referrals and temporary jobs and writing gigs and -- even -- welcomed me to work inside their homes, alongside them at their work every day. And the good and kind people who prayed their hearts out for us to make ends meet in this financially-backward turn our lives have taken.  

And that's how I found my current job.  I still don't know if it's going to be a permanent offer, but it is more that we'd hoped for to meet our needs.  It's more than we counted on for stretching me beyond my abilities.  

Along the way God has clearly met our needs -- sometimes in bits and pieces and other times like opened floodgates of gift.  I wouldn't even want to try to prove it, but I've learned it to be true over the course of our twenty-three years of marriage.  Submission of my heart makes room for God to bless us in the most surprising ways. When I finally got to the part of my prayer to God:  "Yes. I'll say yes because I love you and I love these people you've given me." 

So while I'm giving up time to write stories, our Father is writing the most amazing tales in and with our lives.  He's weaving us together with the dearest cast of characters.  They are funny and smart and wounded and generous.  All I can hope for at this point is that while I'm giving the majority of my time and energy to a place that barely knows me, God and his people will not stop knowing me.  And that -- like the Mother who gave the biggest yes -- I'll keep pondering up all these things in my heart.

..... In the meantime ....

I attended a writer's conference at Houston Baptist University the first weekend in February.  I attended breakouts about writing memoir and fought a lie that God was teasing me.  That putting me on a college campus reminded me that -- for the love of a man and the love of our children and various bits of lack of foresight on our parts -- I'd missed forever my chance to earn my very own degree.  And that for all the same reasons I'm also missing my chance to become the writer I truly long to become.  I fought with tears and anger and sulkiness.  I let ideas linger in my head a bit too long that would stop the forward motion of my obedience to the Christ who made Himself of no reputation.  

And in the middle of that struggle, God gave me a little candle of an idea that would keep a little light flickering on my hope while I follow Him.  He reminded me that I have written thousands and thousands of words in this space.  This blog I started with one word turned into thousands of words I've been writing for almost EIGHT YEARS  -- 935 posts with dozens more half-finished in my draft folder.  And while most of them were hardly worth saying once, a few of those thousand posts bear repeating. 

Would you be willing to listen again?  To pay attention with me to the visible and daily movements of an invisible Grace?  Would it help if I gave it a title and a cute photo?

Yes, friends, those little brown legs belong to me. 
And the boot-wearing cousin is my best friend during those running, chasing, growing-up years.  

This is the idea God gave me:  For me to ponder and notice again the words I've already written once, to keep praying the beads of memory to discover this sacramental life.

Won't you join me?  

I'd welcome your company along the way.

And now, back to work...