an awakening...

Oh, am I in trouble!

My left ring finger started hurting yesterday.  How I wish my rememberer worked better.  Were that the case, I would have spent today in bed, not moving an inch.  But, alas, I did not remember that when a finger on my left hand pains me it is because I am growing too tired. 

I have been working and working and working on the house since I lost my job.  And then started out this past week sleep deprived for those neurological tests.  I should have spent Thursday sleeping, but alas it was more selling-the-house work. 

Today was extraordinary in that my brother came for a second all-day yard fest: mowing, edging, raking, sweeping, pruning, cleaning, re-setting the rocks that border the flowerbeds, and re-arranging both decks.  The difference in the yard last week was truly amazing to me.  This week, I am astounded.  It is the same and yet is so neat and clean and well...balanced and larger somehow.  Truly the "curb" appeal, fore and aft, has greatly improved.

I do believe that all the work on the closets was worth it, for they are all no longer crammed in appearance.  Inside, the entire house is much, much cleaner, though it could still use help.  It is also neat and balanced and larger somehow.  Hopefully, it will all be worth it.

The problem is, I have reached the point of no return.  My right knee has begun to fail, causing me to cry out even as I try to endure the pain in silence.  That great barometer of my fatigue has gone from mere warning to breaking in protest.  Out came the knee brace, but truly I probably need to sleep at least until the open house slated for next Sunday.

I suppose it is a good thing that I lost my job, eh?

To be honest, I am disappointed in myself.  I should remember these things. I should be able to take better care of myself. I should be better at pacing and setting boundaries...except...except...there really isn't anyone else to ready the house and readying the house is what is needed to sell it.  And my rememberer is clearly broken. 

With my brother willing to help both days, I had to leverage that assistance.  Without his help, and that of Sunshine, I never would have regained control of my yard, which most certainly has been ignored for the past three seasons, if not the past two years.  Being ill all last summer did not bode well for mowing and such.  With all that happened this summer and fall, tending the yard merely fell by the wayside.  As did keeping the house clean.

I do not know when to stop.  I push and push and push myself...mostly because there does not seem to be another choice.  Yet...often when I do make good decisions, when I set boundaries and say I shall not do something or I need to sleep longer I am criticized, oft told I could if I wanted to or something similar.  If I wanted...what I want is to be able to function like a normal person, to not have pain in my legs when I stand for any amount of time or walk about for more than an hour or so, to remember simple things, to be able to write by hand, to always know when and where I am, to see clearly, to not shake, to not faint, to not grow so blooming cold...to not...to not...the list is long.

There are, I believe, only two Sugarland songs for which I do not care:  Mean Girls and Take Me As I Am.  Both have melodies I find irritating and the lyrics have no real pull.  Except the title of the latter one.  Oh, how I wish people would take me as I am and most certainly not as they perceive me to be.  I wish, with my whole being, I did not feel the pressure to mask my symptoms and struggles as much as I do.

That is what I love best about Bettina.  Well, second best.  I mean, I love that she loves me.  I marvel that she loves me.  I am, actually, in disbelief that she loves me.  She loves me as I am.  She also takes me as I am.  She is as mindful of my struggles as I could want a person to be, watching out for things that are a problem for me, such as bending over, turning around in the car, and walking up stairs too often.  She helps me in so very many tiny ways and she is always, always, always willing to do something for me, to save the step, to save the energy.  And yet, all the while, she never makes me feel as if I am a bother or am being lazy or am actually anything other than normal.  My life is our normal.

I can tell her that I am too hot and she will leap into action. She does not question me or doubt me or tell me that she doesn't feel hot.  None of those things, if they cross her mind, cross her lips.  She just helps me get cool or find a place where wet noodle status will not be a danger to me.  She has seen me wilt like a plucked flower in the August sun.  She knows my fears and frustrations when wet noodletude arises.  So, she is there, helping me if she can or waiting for things to pass if she cannot.

The best thing is that she does so sort of folding me into her life.  When I am at her home, if I am ensconced on the couch, she goes about her duties and hollers at me or sets up a DVD or something for me.  She trusts that I do not expect her to interact with me (though I am quite greedy about playing games with her even though she oft humiliates me with her brilliant play).  So, when she can, she will bring the chore to where I am, such as folding laundry or peeling apples.  Again, I am not a bother, just part of the ebb and flow of her existence.  I love that.  I truly do.

It is that quality, in at least some measure, that I recognize in Sunshine.  Oh, did she bear such grief her first few Sundays.  Yet she never crumpled beneath the burden.  God has blessed her with this amazing ability to simply take in what she hears and then lay it at the foot of the cross.  The Holy Spirit has guided her, on any number of occasions, to care for me in very small ways that are not necessarily time consuming but have great mileage on my heart.  A favorite is that she heard me talk about bread pretzel bites that I had just once at a movie theatre and still dream about since they were served with nacho cheese.  The next time she was at her volunteer place and was actually coming back to my house rather than going on home, she spotted a pretzel place and picked up one for me.  Oh, how my heart sang and wept at such thought.

Like, well, Manna's quickie emails.  Little snippets of her day that she shares.  Little snippets she sends to let me know that she is thinking of me.  Such a heady thing, a wondrous thing to be thought of and loved and cared for and to have people let you know in small ways because they understand that knowing is important and needed and...healing.

Something, too, that I know about Bettina and Sunshine is that, with me at least, they look more toward the future rather than the past.  They do not assume one thing based on what I have done, but rather expect for good rather than bad, rather than the mistake.  They see where change has come and celebrate that, help me see that, rather than where failures still run hip deep.

I had a secret that I kept, out of great fear, from Bettina.  Events in August brought that into the light.  She responded with more mercy than I ever thought possible.  I do not believe that I have ever felt more loved, more safe, than in that moment when she first responded to the fear I voiced as to why I did not tell her.  It was as if Christ Himself, not my dear friend, was giving voice to those words.  It was the beginning of freedom that has worked itself into the darkness and despair unbeknownst to me at first.  A washing away that only comes from absolute forgiveness. 

When I despaired over the condition of the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer because it certainly sounded like law to me, Brother Goose went round and round to help me understand.  I could finally make sense of his words, but I did not really believe them, take them into my heart.  They were still a mystery to me.  The sign of our being forgiven is that we can forgive others.  Yet I know that she could not have given me that forgiveness for the lie of omission and the distrust in her love and the gift of her friendship that was my silence unless she had been forgiven herself.  Oh, do I understand that now!

At her words, too, began the process of finally trusting in her friendship, in her love.  Less than two months later came a time of such trial born of a lie from someone else that tested that trust in a horrible way.  Yet she did not, at least with me, flinch at my fear and doubts and the wall I threw up in haste.  She waited and then came running when I cried out for help.  And sat and talked and listened to hard things and took me out to do that which few others would even understand.  She wrapped me up in as much love as possible and then walked away to get back to her family, trusting that the future would be as God would have it.

I sometimes wish I could ask her things as if I were another person, not me, not Myrtle.  First and foremost, I would ask her what is the hardest part about loving me, for I would do most anything to make that cross easier for her to bear.  It is a cross.  I know it.  I would think that the hardest part of our fifteen year friendship is that I doubt that she will continue to love, will continue to want me in her life.  To be fair, that is the kind of relationship outcome I learned as a child.  And, to be fair, I cannot actually remember the bulk of those fifteen years because of my blasted brain cells.  Yet I know those 15 years have passed as a fact even if not as a memory that I can re-live.  I should trust that. 

I have changed.  The wailing has ceased.  The weeping, for loss and grief, will ease when it eases.  Doubts and fears and terrors and worries still exist.  Yet I also understand that which I hoped would be possible is not  and most likely will never be and I have laid that hope down.  In the laying down has come balance.  And in all those Psalms have come peace.

In no small part, I have also changed because I am more at ease with her friendship than I have ever been...more joyful, actually.  What an amazing gift God has given me born from a terrible, terrible cross!  Such is faith.  Such is the life He has for us.

So, this night, is in part peaceful because of Sunshine's companionship and her selfless collating and folding of the 100 copies of the Dare to Read:  The Book of Concord booklets that have been sitting in a box for a couple of months, is an easier night to bear. 

It is also an easier night because I know, when Bettina and I talk next, I can bewail and bemoan the absolute misery I am in due to pain and the bone deep fatigue.  She will listen, love me, and pray for me.  She will, as she is wont to do, search for some little way I can do something easier, some bit of organization or some process, or some remembering help, and she will tell me to take better care of her best friend.  But she will also accept me as I am.  She will let me voice my pain and not take it as complaint.  She will let me voice my fears and not take it as criticism.  She will let me voice my heart and merely take it as wanting not to be alone in those things.

She will love me in such a way as I can understand--juggling the needs of her family with our friendship as best she can--patiently and selflessly, reflecting the love and mercy of Christ to me, because she is forgiven and she is loved by the Good Shepherd who is also the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

As silly as it sounds, my prayer would be that everyone have a Bettina in their lives.  I pray that everyone would have a Sunshine to shower mercy and a Manna to reach out and touch and a Brother Goose to ask questions that they might learn that which is missing in their life, in their heart.

We have entered Advent today, that ineffably joyous time of reflecting on the many ways Christ comes to us.  Today, He came to me in a dear woman who traced the cross on my forehead after I was served the Eucharist so that I might have the tangible reminder I need.  Today, He came to me in a brother who labored long and hard in my yard.  Yesterday, He came to me in a writing student who took from her college holiday break to help me in my yard.  This week, He came to me in an adoptive brother who carved out a smidge of time to pray the Psalter with me for courage to walk through a door.  This month, He came to me in a realtor who has poured out her life in finding me a home to buy, sight unseen, so that I can start a new life.  This summer, He came to me in a woman who offered to scrub my tub and another woman who offered to read the Living Word to me and sing hymns to me.  This spring, He came to me in a man who offered to be my brother, both men who have more on their plates than any three men should have.  Last year, He came to me in the pure doctrine of the Lutheran Confession and in the holy waters of Baptism and in the Eucharist and in the Word of Absolution.  Fifteen years ago, He came to me in a woman who sat in one of my classes, who would end up loving me as He does so that I might taste and see that I am loved.  Thirty-two years ago, He came to me in a single verse of the Living Word that has deepened into an ardent passion and hunger for the Gospel and the promises of God.  Two thousand years ago, He came to me in a broken and bruised body, put to death in abject shame, that I might know forgiveness.

And He is coming, still, in the many crosses in my life. 


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!