Unempty Moments
I can't remember the day or even which convalescent facility we were in. I can't remember what my mom was telling me or what I was wearing.
What I can remember is her underwear. They were big, literally granny panties. Soft cotton. Conservative white and new baby pink. No lace or ruffles.
I can remember how they folded softly in my mom's hands. She caressed them absentmindedly as she spoke.
We were moving my grandmother into a new facility.
We were in the repeat-the-same-question-every-five-minutes stage of her dementia, not yet to the frantic wheelchair racing or the evergreen season of suspicion. She hadn't yet looked desperately into my eyes and asked if I could find her mother.
But still, we were scared, my mom and I. Missing the mother and grandmother we once knew. The woman who remembered her legendary spaghetti and meatballs recipe and walked loops around her apartment complex with friends bearing names like Petey or Marge.
The fear hung silent between us as we unpacked her clothes, a few books, some pictures of toothy grandchildren for her bedside table.
Henri Nouwen talks about patience as one of the cornerstones of the compassionate life; impatience the deterrent that keeps us tapping our feet, checking our watches, and missing the glory of God.
By this point in the story, (like you I venture to presume) I should have been tapping my feet, checking my watch and writing off another summer afternoon as "empty, useless, meaningless."
But I didn't.
The counterpoint to impatience, Nouwen describes another rendering of time when we experience the moment as "full, rich, and pregnant." When "somehow we know that in this moment everything is contained: the beginning, the middle, and the end; the past, the present and the future; the sorrow and the joy; the expectation and the realization; the searching and the finding."
This was one of these moments. Watching my mom delicately fold my grandmother's underwear. In this moment I was gripped by the thought that love need be nothing more than this simple, intimate act.
It became an unempty moment.* A moment I didn't want to get away from. A moment filled with the glory of God.
To this day, this afternoon represents a rupture for me. A rupture that signaled not a fracture, but a deepening. A deepening love for my grandmother. A deepening respect for my mom. And a deepening gratitude for every humdrum moment-turned-miracle I had left with both of them, together in one room, folding underwear, in an unempty moment.
***
*Precious moments was already trademarked.
T.S. Tuesday: To Care or not to Care?
"Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still." ~T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
I am a recovering perfectionist, or so I’d like to think. More often than not, I’m recovering from the ramifications of perfectionism instead of overcoming perfectionism itself. Most of the time, I’m recovering from a bruised ego and a worn out soul.
At the risk of sounding like one those ridiculous job interview farces where the candidate arrogantly clucks out weaknesses that no one in their right mind would call weaknesses, “I try too hard. I care too much,” (eye roll please) the truth is, I try too hard and I care too much. About the wrong things.
I try too hard in the wrong things. I care too much about the wrong things.
How I look in a bathing suit. How many hits I get on my blog. If the guy I met at the party is going to friend me on Facebook.
But it’s deeper routed than that. It’s more than being distracted by the trivial. It’s being driven by the tyrannical. The tyrannical need to perform, to do, to complete, to accomplish.
I have trouble caring and not caring. I have trouble sitting still.
I want meaningful rest and meaningful work. I want to care about the right things and not care about the wrong things.
How do I get there?
I can force myself to sit still, physically. But how do I get my mind to rest?
How do I silence the biting guilt that courses through me, gnawing at me to be more loving, more engaged, more connected?
How do I engage in alone time when I don’t really feel the freedom to be alone? When I’m haunted with the need to be productive?
I’m so reluctant to sit, still and defenseless, with my longing and desire, to not try to fix myself, to let the Holy Spirit do its mysterious recreating in my soul.
A burden lifts when I realize I don’t have to do it, and, in fact, I cannot do it all. I can live in ways that promote health and peace in my life, but it is not up to me to heal or fill my heart. Only God can do that. He’s done it before and I can trust him to do it again. God is love.
And so today I ask you, God, for purpose, meaning, and connection. I want to stop drifting in and out of my days disconnected and unexamined. I want to really feel for and connect with people. I want empathy that moves me to compassion. I want to care about things, people, issues. I want my heart to break for the things that break your heart. I want to be living an intentional, purposeful, love-filled life. I want to share myself with others. I want to receive what others have to share with me. I want to feel joy. I want to be fulfilled. I want to know that I’m not wasting my time. I want to choose love. When the choice comes to zone out or just “get through,” when the choice comes to get irritated by the little things, I want to choose love and connection.
I can’t do this on my own—I’ve tried.
Please grant me rest from striving and doing. Please touch the places in my heart that drive me to achieve, to initiate, to do do do.
Please teach me to care and not to care. Teach me to sit still.