Connections, Connections

Today has been an internal, quiet sort of day. I feel awed by the saturated blue sky, by the vivid white clouds and the feel of warm air brushing across my skin. I am entranced by sunlight slipping on and off of leaves and wild grasses as they rustle in the wind. I am trying to listen to the gravel crunching beneath my feet, to the exact sound of SparkleEyes’ voice as she talks to me. I am paying attention to hot cinder smell of the nearby train. I am trying to feel earth beneath me and air around me.

I am trying to breathe in God’s presence, an acknowledgment of the holy lurking, shuddering, hiding, whispering and shouting all around me. As I breathe I am remembering something Richard Rohr said: the consonants used to spell out the holiest name in the Hebrew Bible—a name too holy to be spoken—YHWH—were chosen so that if you do say it, and you pronounce it correctly, you cannot close your lips or let your tongue down and the sound replicates that of breath rushing in and out of the body. The first and last word we ever speak, as we draw breath in as newborns and exhale for the last time as we die, is the name of God. This name tells us that God is all around. God is as available as breath.

And I am trying to live here—in the midst of presence and connection—to myself, to the earth, to the air, to my child, to the people in my life—because often I do not really believe I am connected. Sometimes I do not believe that real connection is possible. I am remembering so many things today.

I am remembering the image that came during an agonized prayer in college. I cried out in pain and utter loneliness and saw myself wrapped within an opaque glass ball, able to see little flickers and shadows about and around me, but unable to hear or touch or really look at them. I felt impenetrable. Totally, totally alone, as if nothing, no one could ever really reach within me so I could feel connected and loved. I had once felt close to God, but that sense had left me and didn’t return for years.

I am remembering my mother’s silence during some of the worst of her mental illness when I was a teenager. I remember a week during which she refused to look at me or acknowledge me. She tilted her head away from me—her face frozen into harsh, silent lines—whenever I walked into the room. I remember going silently to my room, closing the door and collapsing against it in silent sobs. I pressed my hands tight against my chest to make sure that flesh and bones pushed back. I wanted to make sure I was really there, that I wasn’t invisible, insubstantial, unworthy of notice.

I am thinking about Mother Theresa’s letters, which just get more and more heartbreaking, as she descends further and further into a sense of God’s absence and rejection of her, even as she changes lives, changes the world, creates love, beauty—God—around her. I had a hard time sleeping last night after reading about her acceptance of her agony. Her belief that this agony and despair was God’s will, God’s work in her, the price she paid to bring about love and redemption deeply saddens and disturbs me.

And I am remembering the first moment I heard my daughter’s heartbeat on the Doppler. I can’t remember if I cried then or not—probably not (I’m just not that emotionally demonstrative)—but I sobbed later, alone, with relief and joy, still not really believing that I—I who felt so alone, so unlovable, so incapable of sustaining or creating life, goodness, love—that I was growing a healthy, beautiful, good human within me. And I am remembering the many moments throughout the rest of my pregnancy when anxiety, terror, depression, self-loathing took over and convinced me that my child would die within me, destroyed by the toxicity I felt surging around inside me. I simply could not believe that I was capable of that sort of loving, intimate connection. I could not believe that I was really capable of mothering. I had just felt too discarded, ugly, unwanted for too many years to believe it.

And I am remembering really looking at my baby for the first time after she was born. Her perfect, soft, silky beauty—it still brings me to tears. I remember her upside-down cupid-bow lips—ruby, puffy, and soft—her dark, dark eyes, the feel of her perfect, new skin. And I am remembering how awed I was at her, at myself, at the world, and how easily that all slipped away a few months later as I found myself in the throes of post-partum depression. I am also remembering the beautiful, beautiful healing—my discovery of my goodness, my power, my ability to create and nurture life as I have become a mother.

I am struggling to understand how to exist as a faithful person in a world in which God so often seems absent, even negligent. I am struggling to understand how to trust a being who is so unpredictable. How to trust this God who seems to abandon even saints who spend their lives in the pursuit of the holy, this God who allows the smallest and most innocent to be discarded and tortured and abused. And I don’t get it. It’s too big. God is too damn mysterious and unpredictable. So I am starting small. I often don’t know how to reconnect to God, but I can begin by noticing how I resist and am afraid of the connections so obviously around me. I am practicing the presence of God by practicing the presence of my world. I am noticing the earth I stand on, the air I breathe, the body I live in, the sounds and scents around me. I am committing to openness. I am committing to opening to the people around me: looking tenderly at my husband, drinking in long, deep draughts of him as I stare at those lovely crystal blue eyes, caressing him with sweet, gentle words and letting him do the same to me, lying in his arms and grabbing him tight when we lie in bed falling asleep. I am trying to remember to call, to email, to seek to connect with friends in my life even when it seems like too much work.

And I am letting myself enjoy my baby, breathe her in deeply, love the feel of her skin and the sound of her lovely, little soprano voice. I am letting myself be soft, vulnerable, even as I am so afraid. I have often been afraid since the moment she was conceived that I might lose her. Often I feel like connections exist only to be robbed away, stolen just as they are really clothing and feeding and nurturing us. It is sometimes much easier to resist so as not to risk that loss. But I can’t resist my child, I won’t resist her—ever. And so I must learn to live alongside my fear, my terror. I must learn to let my joy and love be born, knowing that embracing my world like this makes me entirely vulnerable.

And so I am opening myself further. I am letting myself cry in fear and in joy when SparkleEyes throws her arms around me and yells in ecstasy, “Mama’s here!”