On Turning 40
It’s my birthday today, and I’m taking the day off of work, a day of reflection and retreat. The only thing I have scheduled is a massage this afternoon, my first in more than ten years. I have been looking forward to the day all weekend—but it started out, somewhat predictably, in not exactly the way I had hoped.
Over the weekend, S and I had some good talks about how she needed to take more responsibility around the house, to take better care of herself, her animals, and her environment. I have realized that over the last year I’ve been depressed, and that many of my expectations of her, for that reason and others, went out the window. We have talked about how I want to turn that around this year, to find a way to keep our place neat and clean, to use our time wisely, to live more healthfully. To her credit, she was on board with these new year’s resolutions, overall, and she helped me give the house a thorough cleaning over the weekend and did all her chores last night.
Mornings have also been rough in the last year. S has a lot of trouble getting up, and I have to hover over her through every step of her morning ritual. When I’m regulated—when I’ve taken the time before she gets up to do devotions and to get even 10 minutes of yoga in—I can get through this even if she’s being resistant.
But, on most days, just getting through the morning without losing it is challenging. We talked about how to make the morning routine go more smoothly, and she agreed that if I got into bed with her and cuddled her a bit earlier (until this morning, I did this for about five minutes before she absolutely had to get up), then she would be in a better mood in the morning, feeling less rushed.
Well, I tried it this morning, and it backfired. I went in a half hour early, but at the end of the half hour, she still fought waking up, getting dressed, and again, as has been happening far too often lately, she got breakfast but I ended up picking out her outfit, walking the dog, cleaning off the car, packing her lunch, and not getting to do anything for myself—which has become a pattern, happening far too often. She used to do these things herself, but in the last year, both because of the struggles we’ve faced and my own depression (and, honestly, laziness), she’s really been slacking. At least this a.m. I was not also struggling to get myself ready also, since I didn’t have to be anywhere.
During this stressful morning, she mentioned that she didn’t care that it was my birthday (even though she’d gone out of her way to make me a cake over the weekend and to help clean the house when I told her that was what I wanted more than anything), and also that her cat was out of food. The trouble is, the cat shouldn’t be out of food—there’s absolutely no logical explanation—and I really didn’t want to spend money on more food for her. (Another new year’s resolution involves taking better care of our finances—I don’t want to waste money on things we shouldn’t actually need). The morning ended with me telling her she had to use her own money to buy the cat more food, and her slamming the car door and stomping off, instead of turning toward me right before going in the doors and giving me the “I love you” sign in sign language that is our usual ritual.
But, to my credit, I took it in stride. As I was driving away, the snow falling thickly around me, all the branches of the trees around me heavy and white, I managed to notice how beautiful everything was, even as I was slipping and sliding down the one and only real hill in our small town. I was able to shrug off the morning, knowing that by afternoon, we would be living a different story. Everything is temporary.
And then, strangely, instead of going home, I found myself turning toward the center of town, driving to the only store in town (a combination hardware, clothing, toy, kitchen, and pet store) that carries decent cat food, and buying S a giant bag of it, $40 worth--enough to last her cat about six months (well, unless the food inexplicably disappears again, that is). I thought to myself, I’ll just need to make this up somewhere in the budget, and I went ahead with the purchase, for no reason except that I wanted to live generously and kindly today. I also bought myself a hat for less than $10 (they were 60% off, and somewhere during our holiday travels, I lost mine).
And then, I walked into the only coffee shop in town to get myself a mint mocha latte and a piece of coffee cake to take home for breakfast. This was also not in the plan or the budget (though I discovered a gift certificate I didn’t even know I had in my purse as I was paying—a gift for sure!) When I got inside, as I was stomping the snow off my boots, I noticed the place was unusually quiet. Only one person was there, and it happened to be one of the only true enemies I have in Morris. The man is a conservative minister who, in an earlier period of my time here, went head-to-head with me in the town paper over whether or not GLBT people should have the same rights as straight people, and whether or not Jesus loved and welcomed them. He is the man who started a rampage against a friend of mine who staged a children’s play about diversity issues (that did not, but in his mind, might have, mentioned GLBT people). He and his parishioners convinced many schools in the region not to send their students to the play as a field trip, and most principals agreed. He is the man who had convinced all the other ministers in town to put an ad in the newspaper condemning GLBT and single parent families. He is, in short, a person who has caused me and several people I love a lot of pain.
And, I happen to have learned through the grapevine that in the last year, his church fired him, his wife left him, and he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Admittedly, until the moment I saw him, I’d felt a kind of subdued glee about how his life was going—a “Well, what comes around goes around” kind of feeling. Never mind that my mother died of cancer when I was the age of one of his children. Never mind that I know what it’s like to be part of a broken family (though my parents never divorced, my mother’s death caused a huge rift between her family and my father, and there was another rift among the siblings in my mother’s family—all of which were healed by the time my father died). Never mind that my biggest fear is that I’ll lose my job. I even went so far as to imagine what it must have been like for him to learn that, in this time of suffering for him, I was awarded a human rights award partly because I’d been brave enough all these years to stand up to people like him—the thought of his seeing my photo on the front page of the newspaper brought me great joy, if guilty joy.
He looked up at me, then looked quickly back down at his computer. I went to the counter and chatted cheerfully with the managers, who called me by name. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that when they said my name, he looked up again. It has been some time since we had encountered each other in person, and I was, after all, draped in scarves and hat and hood and giant winter coat. And then, after I got my food, I turned to him, paused for a moment, and gave him a genuinely kind smile. I say genuinely because in that moment I felt some kind of love or sympathy or forgiveness or—something—flooding my entire body, and I acted on it. I also felt regret—regret that I’d spent so much energy hating him instead of realizing that he’d been put in my life to teach me something important about how to be a vocal advocate—as well as, maybe, how to forgive.
He smiled back. Then I made my way to the door, shouting “have a good day” to him and the managers and the one other customer who had just wandered in, another man who happens to have also shared views I didn’t exactly appreciate in the paper.
And I thought to myself, I am growing up.
I got home and took my time reading through my devotions. Below is one of them, by Wendy M. Wright. It seems such a fitting 40th birthday gift that I feel as if I need to copy it in its entirety here:
“The path of love that I walk is neither predetermined nor clear cut. It is forged in the process of walking day by day, listening deeply to the silence brooding beneath the noisy instructions issuing from without and within our own hearts. God’s will is not a puzzle to be solved but a mystery to be lived into. It is a mystery whose contours emerge as we journey on.”
Amen!
Over the weekend, S and I had some good talks about how she needed to take more responsibility around the house, to take better care of herself, her animals, and her environment. I have realized that over the last year I’ve been depressed, and that many of my expectations of her, for that reason and others, went out the window. We have talked about how I want to turn that around this year, to find a way to keep our place neat and clean, to use our time wisely, to live more healthfully. To her credit, she was on board with these new year’s resolutions, overall, and she helped me give the house a thorough cleaning over the weekend and did all her chores last night.
Mornings have also been rough in the last year. S has a lot of trouble getting up, and I have to hover over her through every step of her morning ritual. When I’m regulated—when I’ve taken the time before she gets up to do devotions and to get even 10 minutes of yoga in—I can get through this even if she’s being resistant.
But, on most days, just getting through the morning without losing it is challenging. We talked about how to make the morning routine go more smoothly, and she agreed that if I got into bed with her and cuddled her a bit earlier (until this morning, I did this for about five minutes before she absolutely had to get up), then she would be in a better mood in the morning, feeling less rushed.
Well, I tried it this morning, and it backfired. I went in a half hour early, but at the end of the half hour, she still fought waking up, getting dressed, and again, as has been happening far too often lately, she got breakfast but I ended up picking out her outfit, walking the dog, cleaning off the car, packing her lunch, and not getting to do anything for myself—which has become a pattern, happening far too often. She used to do these things herself, but in the last year, both because of the struggles we’ve faced and my own depression (and, honestly, laziness), she’s really been slacking. At least this a.m. I was not also struggling to get myself ready also, since I didn’t have to be anywhere.
During this stressful morning, she mentioned that she didn’t care that it was my birthday (even though she’d gone out of her way to make me a cake over the weekend and to help clean the house when I told her that was what I wanted more than anything), and also that her cat was out of food. The trouble is, the cat shouldn’t be out of food—there’s absolutely no logical explanation—and I really didn’t want to spend money on more food for her. (Another new year’s resolution involves taking better care of our finances—I don’t want to waste money on things we shouldn’t actually need). The morning ended with me telling her she had to use her own money to buy the cat more food, and her slamming the car door and stomping off, instead of turning toward me right before going in the doors and giving me the “I love you” sign in sign language that is our usual ritual.
But, to my credit, I took it in stride. As I was driving away, the snow falling thickly around me, all the branches of the trees around me heavy and white, I managed to notice how beautiful everything was, even as I was slipping and sliding down the one and only real hill in our small town. I was able to shrug off the morning, knowing that by afternoon, we would be living a different story. Everything is temporary.
And then, strangely, instead of going home, I found myself turning toward the center of town, driving to the only store in town (a combination hardware, clothing, toy, kitchen, and pet store) that carries decent cat food, and buying S a giant bag of it, $40 worth--enough to last her cat about six months (well, unless the food inexplicably disappears again, that is). I thought to myself, I’ll just need to make this up somewhere in the budget, and I went ahead with the purchase, for no reason except that I wanted to live generously and kindly today. I also bought myself a hat for less than $10 (they were 60% off, and somewhere during our holiday travels, I lost mine).
And then, I walked into the only coffee shop in town to get myself a mint mocha latte and a piece of coffee cake to take home for breakfast. This was also not in the plan or the budget (though I discovered a gift certificate I didn’t even know I had in my purse as I was paying—a gift for sure!) When I got inside, as I was stomping the snow off my boots, I noticed the place was unusually quiet. Only one person was there, and it happened to be one of the only true enemies I have in Morris. The man is a conservative minister who, in an earlier period of my time here, went head-to-head with me in the town paper over whether or not GLBT people should have the same rights as straight people, and whether or not Jesus loved and welcomed them. He is the man who started a rampage against a friend of mine who staged a children’s play about diversity issues (that did not, but in his mind, might have, mentioned GLBT people). He and his parishioners convinced many schools in the region not to send their students to the play as a field trip, and most principals agreed. He is the man who had convinced all the other ministers in town to put an ad in the newspaper condemning GLBT and single parent families. He is, in short, a person who has caused me and several people I love a lot of pain.
And, I happen to have learned through the grapevine that in the last year, his church fired him, his wife left him, and he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Admittedly, until the moment I saw him, I’d felt a kind of subdued glee about how his life was going—a “Well, what comes around goes around” kind of feeling. Never mind that my mother died of cancer when I was the age of one of his children. Never mind that I know what it’s like to be part of a broken family (though my parents never divorced, my mother’s death caused a huge rift between her family and my father, and there was another rift among the siblings in my mother’s family—all of which were healed by the time my father died). Never mind that my biggest fear is that I’ll lose my job. I even went so far as to imagine what it must have been like for him to learn that, in this time of suffering for him, I was awarded a human rights award partly because I’d been brave enough all these years to stand up to people like him—the thought of his seeing my photo on the front page of the newspaper brought me great joy, if guilty joy.
He looked up at me, then looked quickly back down at his computer. I went to the counter and chatted cheerfully with the managers, who called me by name. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that when they said my name, he looked up again. It has been some time since we had encountered each other in person, and I was, after all, draped in scarves and hat and hood and giant winter coat. And then, after I got my food, I turned to him, paused for a moment, and gave him a genuinely kind smile. I say genuinely because in that moment I felt some kind of love or sympathy or forgiveness or—something—flooding my entire body, and I acted on it. I also felt regret—regret that I’d spent so much energy hating him instead of realizing that he’d been put in my life to teach me something important about how to be a vocal advocate—as well as, maybe, how to forgive.
He smiled back. Then I made my way to the door, shouting “have a good day” to him and the managers and the one other customer who had just wandered in, another man who happens to have also shared views I didn’t exactly appreciate in the paper.
And I thought to myself, I am growing up.
I got home and took my time reading through my devotions. Below is one of them, by Wendy M. Wright. It seems such a fitting 40th birthday gift that I feel as if I need to copy it in its entirety here:
“The path of love that I walk is neither predetermined nor clear cut. It is forged in the process of walking day by day, listening deeply to the silence brooding beneath the noisy instructions issuing from without and within our own hearts. God’s will is not a puzzle to be solved but a mystery to be lived into. It is a mystery whose contours emerge as we journey on.”
Amen!
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