Wednesday, August 28, 2013

My Fear

"So the good boys and girls
Take the so called right track
Faded white hats
Grabbing credits and maybe transfers
They read all the books but they can't find the answers."

I went to that cookie-cutter high school John Mayer sings about, the one that teaches the equation abc=xyz, with abc being Take these classes, Get straight A's, Graduate with honors, and xyz, you will Get into the top college of your choice, Graduate summa cum laude, and Get the best job ever.  And that's it, that's the meaning of life.  But I was lucky, because my parents didn't believe in conveyor belts, and they encouraged me to chart my own course.  They never shied away from being "weird" or different.  If I wanted to take a class that went away from the mold, they said do it.  If I liked reading science fiction novels instead of the "classics" required in AP English, they said drop the class.  If I wanted to wear clothes from Goodwill or my grandma's attic, they shrugged and went on with it.  They showed me how to figure out exactly who me was, with no right answers, no strict guidelines.

Well, I never lived the dream of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I'd like to think the best of me
Is still hiding up my sleeve

Sometimes when I mention something that my parents did really well, they'll scoff and say they weren't doing it on purpose.  They were flying by the seats of their respective pants, with no map to show them where to go.  So maybe it wasn't sheer bravery that caused them to let me be weird.  Maybe they were just clueless about what they were supposed to be doing.  But isn't that courage in and of itself?  To plow ahead, not looking to the side to see where the other parents are, if they are on the right course or headed for a cliff, to push me into the wide open world instead of on a narrow path to the Ivy League?

"I think what must have frightened my parents most 
of all [about my diagnosis] was the possibility that I would
not be able to lead the "normal" life they really wanted for me.
Like many parents, they equated normality with
being happy and productive."
Daniel Tammet, Born on a Blue Day

So why then, coming out of a home that placed so much importance on individualism, have I become that parent who is constantly checking what the others are doing, wondering if my kids are missing out, not measuring up?  Because I'm afraid.  I'm scared that my kids will show up at school reeking of different, and that will lead to bullying, low self-esteem, resentment toward me.  If they haven't had swim lessons by age 5, did they miss out on important childhood memories?  If I buy their shoes for $4 at a consignment sale, will other people be able to tell?  If our idea of family fun is eating popcorn and watching movies, if I buy them Skittles or let them drink Sprite, am I setting them up for obesity and isolation?  I just want to fit in, to blend in the crowd so my kids will be safe.  But that's not good parenting.  I know it isn't.  I was taught from such an early age to do what is best for me, to clear a path if none existed, to go where I need to go.  And why should that be any different for my kids?  I confessed this to my friend, and she laughed and said, "Oh, you SO don't fit in."  Wow, and that was when I was trying.  So I decided to shut out all the noise, all the websites and commercials and statuses that made me feel like I wasn't measuring up.  I called to mind John Mayer's young adult anthem, the song I identified with so well as a 19 year old nontraditional student.  Because my boys don't fit in boxes.  They are so much more than a list of grades or accomplishments or failures.  They are little people with passions and hopes and dreams.  And I want them to learn what I learned, how to create a life of one's own choices, how to arrive at one's own destination.

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

Friday, August 16, 2013

My Heart

 "And in my heart I find a need
Of Him to be my Savior

That He would leave His place on high
And come for sinful man to die
You count it strange so once did I
Before I met my Savior"
-Aaron Shust "My Savior My God"
 
When I was very young, my dad sat with me and explained that I could ask Jesus to live in my heart.  This would make me a Christian.  It was something that Mom, Dad, and my older sister already were.  And it made sense to me at the time to do this thing which was obviously the right thing to do, but for all the wrong reasons.  So I would be like my family.  So I wouldn't go to Hell.  I lived my life as a "Christian" on the outside; I never stole, never killed anyone, got good grades and didn't have sex with any boys.  But on the inside, my heart wasn't really in it.  I hated people, like full-blown if they were injured on the side of the road I would walk right by or maybe even kick them HATRED.  And so I talked about these people with my friends, and we exaggerated things that were true about them to the point that we created almost a legend of false gossip in our high school.  And when I planned for my future, I sat God down and told him what I was going to do and where I was going to go and then gave him the green light to make it happen.

But he didn't.  My life after high school didn't look anything like what I had listed off to God in my Christmas List prayer.  And so I had to wonder, who is this guy?  What do I actually believe about God and heaven and hell and being a Christian?  And there were years when I struggled to figure it out, and I tried letting my outside match my inside and skipped church and failed a class and went to a bar and drank alcohol.  But this didn't get me any closer to feeling like I understood anything.  So my fiance (who soon became my husband) found a church for us to attend together, and we went and we sat with a pastor and we asked questions.  And week after week, he answered my questions.  I began to realize where I had gone off course before, where I had made God in my image, instead of the other way around.  When I was 23, my husband and my pastor baptized me in a lake, and I can honestly say I walked out of the water a new person.  I was now on a mission to change my heart.  I didn't know how exactly, but I realized that gossiping about people had to go.  That was a tricky one.  I borrowed some steps from AA...I stopped reading "gossip" magazines like US Weekly, I stopped hanging out with those friends who loved to talk about other people.  I focused on having conversations about Ideas and Places and Themes and went cold turkey off People.  Once I got the hang of that, I saw other things that I was doing, things that began deep in my heart and welled up out of me, things that someone following God shouldn't do.  I examined the people I hated, and found a new way to see them that was full of love and grace.  I dug deep into my heart and grabbed hold of the secret shame I carried and pulled it into the light and refused to carry it any longer.

And just last night I sat in a church, surrounded by moms who were looking for encouragement and comfort, and I remembered what my dad had taught me all those years ago, about how Jesus lived in my heart.  And maybe its because I'm really getting the hang of this homemaker stuff, but I realized that I hadn't given him a very nice place to live.  He was crowded out by anger and shame and jealousy and hatred.  But letting that go, emptying all that darkness, made room for Him.  I gave Him a place to fill with His love, His peace, His kindness and goodness.  I'd like to think that my outside matches my inside again, that all this light that fills my heart shines out.  I'd like to think that God is giving me the marching orders these days, that what I do and where I go is part of His plan, and that this world is becoming a better place to live because of it.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Driving

There's a highway that heads out of town.  I've been down it so many times, going away, off to do or see or be somewhere else.  Its the road I drove when I was a senior in high school, with special permission to visit my sister at college for the first time.  Alone.  Overnight.  I sat behind the wheel in our family's giant van, excited by the freedom and independence I was given, and a little terrified that I would get lost in the cold, dark backwoods that I had to travel once I got off the highway.  I made it, remembering the route I had driven when we dropped her off in the summer, when mom and dad decided to sit in the back and remember every special moment of my sister's life, crying and laughing, and I rolled my eyes up front.  I got to go a few times over the next couple of years, although visiting a college dorm is a little less exciting when you also live in one.  But that first visit...I still remember the excited feeling of being on my own, driving my sister and her roommate to a Mexican restaurant a few towns away for dinner, the flowery smell of a girl's dorm (who doesn't have college flashbacks when she smells that cheap air freshener they sell at the dollar store?).  It was on that road, returning from one of those visits, when I got my first (only?) speeding ticket.  The trembling fear of being pulled over, not knowing what to do or say, and of course, the sinking loss of freedom once mom and dad found out.  Except the cop gave me a ticket and a fine to pay, and I had a job and a checking account, so I mailed off the payment ($140 people, it set me back!), thinking I was free and clear from having my driving privileges suspended.  But I didn't know that the insurance company would send Mom and Dad a letter a few months later, informing them that their rate was going up because their daughter had been pulled over.  Trust me, its worse trying to explain something after many months have passed than to just fess up right away.  Because not only did I get caught, but I lost trust.

I hit the road again when my boyfriend (now husband) started college.  The first time I visited him was on September 11th.  Classes were cancelled, and I sat in my friend's dorm watching the news for about an hour, until the newscaster said, "This is a time to be with the one's you love", and I didn't think of my parents only an hour away, or my sister at her college further away, I thought of the man I loved, four hours away, and I hopped in my car and went to him.  I should mention this was right around the time that we each had gotten cell phones, but I was young and impetuous, and calling to make sure it was a good time (even calling my parents to let them know what i was doing) seemed crass and unromantic.  So I showed up at his dorm and met a cast of characters that I would grow to resent for being idiots and influencing the most important person in my life.  This was the first of many trips, each fueled by an excitement to get there, every love song playing on the radio communicating to my foot to press a little harder on the accelerator.  Each trip was also marked by a tearful goodbye in a parking lot, surrounded by people heading to the cafeteria, feeling jealous that they were so close to him, able to see him whenever they wanted, full of heartache as I drove home, the love songs causing a new wave of tears.  Eventually, we both lived in the same place, the goodbyes were short-lived, lasting only the night, until they were ended altogether by the exchange of rings and vows, the cutting of a cake and the unloading of all our possessions into the same home.

But still, I went down the road.  Because my best friend went to a college and settled into the city and married the love of her life, a native, and every few months, a trip was made to see each other.  Sometimes I had company in the car with me, my husband cracking jokes and finding the station playing Backstreet Boys so he could be cheesy and sing along, or a baby riding in the back, crying for 60 straight miles, not wanting to stop because that was just more time in transit, but also not wanting to listen to him cry.  As soon as I crossed the threshold, it was a race to speak all the words I'd stored up, share all the stories that had built up in my mind, listen to hers, laugh and be together, because its only ever a visit, the time for long discussions and silent camaraderie are over.  We are both wives and mothers who have houses to clean and relatives to spend time with, children who demand our attention, more attention than we thought we had to give, jobs and chores and errands that don't care if we are seeing each other, won't let us have a week off.  Sleep is seen as optional, and I always drive home with a caffeinated beverage in hand, slapping my cheeks and cranking the A/C, because if I've learned one thing on all these drives, its that heat makes me sleepy, so no matter what the weather, its cold air blasting through the vents.

I went there again this weekend, to see the new baby and support my friend, but I went alone.  I drove in peace and quiet, and remembered all the drives that had come before.  I noticed how the curve of the road caused an emotional reaction, how my heart remembered the signs and filled with longing at the memory of what used to wait for me at the end.  But its different now.  Because my home is actually at my home, where my family sleeps and eats, and the world beyond doesn't beckon me like it used to.  Home used to be a place to escape, a boring place where time stood still and everything I wanted required a drive down the road, out of town.  For the first time, its the drive home that makes me press a little harder on the accelerator, the image of my boys waiting at the door, ready to jump on me all at once the second I walk through the door, my husband smiling and pulling me close despite the small bodies wrapped around my legs, the house that we have made a home protecting us and keeping us together.