Learning to Fly

I recently picked up The Shack after scores of recommendations from friends. Within an hour, my cerebrum escaped our cosy apartment into a landscape of lush forests and into an author's unbashfully forthright conversation with God [depicted as a "She"] about the problem of pain and its relationship to love and freedom.

"Consider our friend over here," she began. "Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around...Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly...And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place." (p. 97)

Reading this simple analogy triggered a universe of fear in loving and potentially losing again. Of unleashing 8-year old clippings on my wings. I had forgotten what it means to love without fear of death or anxiety.

After all, if I loved my mother, provider, protector and friend so dearly and couldn't change the circumstances of her death, am I willing to risk again and love this man who could devastate my heart again if he were to die?

Extreme as such thinking may appear to some, it's common, real and rooted in a fear founded on experience that can't be argued away, even by a fiance. It's the question a bride must ask herself prior to vowing "till death do us part" and it's the question she may ask every snowy night that her husband drives in a car, or every time he shows a sign of sickness.

Your thoughts, comments...?

Mother of the Bride

Would knowing the duties that a mother would traditionally fulfill during engagement and the wedding make planning easier for a motherless bride?

Yes/ no/ Possibly?

Show Me Some Love

I often speak to brides who secretly feel angry. Pinpointing a menial wedding detail or comment from someone in the wedding party may be the immediate target of the frustration...but dig a little deeper and the hurt unravels into a deep ache for having mom there to pick up the pieces of logistics, appointments, and attitudes. To reassure the apple of her eye that "everything will be alright."

Many brides spend so much time and energy compensating for her absence, never truely showing the pain. In Motherless Daughters, Hope Edelman offers a nugget of perspective that I think highlights the importance of having someone close, anyone sensitive to your situation, to know the truth of reason behind your emotions.

As women, we have few adequate models for releasing rage, and we often give in to the impulse to pretend it isn’t there. Which is really an unfortunate consequence, because anger can be our ally, at least for a while. As a first-response emotion, it can protect us from feeling intense sadness until we’ve passed through an intitial adjustment stage. But clinging to anger too long keeps us from addressing the emotions underneath, and those-resentment, desertion, confusion, guilt, love-are the ones on which true mourning is based.

Your thoughts?

Not alone

For one day in her life the average engaged woman is tranformed into a supermodel for her wedding. A cross between an allstar diva and noble princess. On that day, a slew of cameras and videos, bubbles and confetti, follow her every step. Her hair is perfectly pinned, her face adored.

A little while ago it was my birthday. Another day in the year where I secretly expect the paparazzi to show up and make me feel like I'm the most important person to mother earth. In reality, it's usually not mother earth's snapshot of my life I seek, its my mother's gloating over it that I miss.

The emails came in, phonecalls abounded, my husband's card made me cry from joy. For eight years I had practiced choosing to enjoy this day without my mom recieving the credit for making me happen. The plan for the day was laid out, my favorite comfort foods in the fridge, a slew of social events would keep me busy enough to not really think about it. But this year another curve ball came my way.

My father forgot.

Sometimes it doesn't matter how many people remember, it's hard to get over the one person who seemingly forgets, the one person who's absent. An eternal optimist, this was hard to accept at my wedding. Didn't matter how many cameras were clicking or faces smiling, there was one woman in the world I wanted there more than emotions could express. More than my feelings could contain.

In that moment, and in other life moments, I think about my Creator. I listen to that part of my heart that knows there is more to my existence than biological forces shaping atoms and equalizing ions. When I feel surrounded by people yet empty within, longing for my mother's presence, I think about a verse in the Bible that says "When my father and my mother are turned away from me, then the Lord will be my support." (Psalm 27)

On days like these I miss her and I smile and in my heart I kiss her and I realize, God is with me. I am not alone.