Darkness

Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

-Henry David Thoreau

I have been thinking a lot about the nature of waiting.  Thumbing through a few things tucked away from a year ago, I stumbled upon a self-portrait drawn by WJ at school.  It is hard for me to look at this sketch.  His teachers told me that when they asked him why he was covering his face in black, WJ said that he was drawing long hair that covered his face, all but one of his eyes.  They believed maybe he was imagining one of his Rock Star fantasies; many Rockers do have long hair.

But when I looked at this drawing, I recognized the image right away. That great darkness, broken only by an empty place. 

What WJ sketched as his own face that day in school a year ago was his memory of the image he had seen on the screen of the ultrasound machine at my midwife’s office a few weeks before.  Darkness.  Lots of it.  And in the midst of the darkness an emptiness where a baby was expected to be.

In the weeks that followed that ultrasound appointment last year, during the weeks of waiting for the inevitable miscarriage to come, WJ crept beside me when we were alone and asked me the kinds of questions I had imagined we might not face until his teenage years.  How could God have known the baby if the baby didn’t have a name? Why wasn’t God taking care of our baby? 

Other times he made quiet declarations.  It is dark inside your body where the baby was. Yes, I replied, it is dark inside of me. 

There comes a great darkness when you realize the extreme powerlessness of your inability to keep your children safe, even when held within yourself, even when tucked so perfectly away from the world. 

In a way our family all followed the baby into the darkness this year.  While in the first days this darkness was deep and black like a nightmare, our eyes slowly adjusted to it and I have been able to see the wisdom in WJ’s soft pronouncement to me. 

I can see now that this particular darkness is less like that of the deep of the night and more like the dark of the depth of the womb.  We have been encompassed in these weeks and months, encompassed within the love of family and friends, held tight by the prayers of those same and others.  We have been able to hear the world beating on around us.  We have been sustained.  In this darkness we have been growing. And changing.  Waiting to come out into the light and see newness and all that has been prepared.

In the first few weeks of school, WJ’s teachers focus on Creation and tell this story again and again.  In the beginning there was a great darkness. And then the Word spoke light.  But the darkness was not gone.  It was called Night and it was called Good.  Days passed and then darkness was broken, but not by emptiness.  It was dotted instead by heavenly lights.

Waiting implies lack.  But it also hints at hope. We are indeed ready to wait.  And I hope our waiting reveals humility—an understanding that we are not in control but instead held safe, a trust that the darkness is eternally dotted with heavenly lights.

There is a prayer prayed at our school and at bedtime tonight here in our home:

God is light.

In him there is no darkness at all.

God is not far from any one of us.

In Him we live, and move, and have our being.

Amen.

Family game night

I have a lot of goals for this year of slowing down but at the heart of it all, I am finding, is a desire to enjoy my family.  Sometimes it feels impossible to squeeze in family time, but it doesn’t take much, just a few moments spent together having fun, to boost my energy and attitude. I think we all would agree as well that there is little more important than this in the life of a young child.

We have discovered in recent weeks that a quick card game or board game played right after dinner, before bath and bed for WJ, is an easy way to have a family moment of slowness.  It is especially nice from my point of view on a Sunday evening to stretch out the togetherness of our meal and put off for a few more minutes the shuffle of getting ready for the new week.

Our current favorite is UNO. UNO is a perfect preschooler game, easy to adapt it for various levels of ability.  WJ is five but we have been playing UNO together for at least a year.  In the beginning, we removed all of the “special action” cards like Draw Two, Skip, and Reverse.  He was then able to focus only on matching numbers and colors. 

Holding and managing the cards in his hand is still difficult for WJ, so we taught him how to spread the cards out on the table.  As his opponents, Dave and I can see what he has in his hand but that is fine for now.  We are not exactly trying to grind him into dust when we play, not just yet.

As WJ gets older, he is beginning to develop an understanding of strategy, so we have started to introduce those special action cards back into the game.  He loves to be able to change the color for his advantage or make one of us Draw Four.  We don’t enforce the “say UNO or draw 400 new cards” rule yet.  That will come next.

Last week, WJ slipped away while helping to clear the dinner table and Captain Hook returned in his place to join us for the evening’s match.  As you can see, it is difficult to pick up cards with your hook. Of course, this suction cup clip is not actually a prirate's hook.  It is actually, according to WJ, a toy breastpump left here by one of his Two Best Friends. But that is a story for another day.

I challenge you to fit something playful into your weekend.  Let me know how it goes.

The gondola

“One of the important keys in understanding the remarkable smoothness of a Five-year-old is that he has an almost uncanny ability to judge what he can and cannot do… With tremendous accuracy he judges what things are and what are not within his ability, and he tries only what he is sure of.”

-Louise Bates Ames, Your Five-Year-Old

I have been reading my book about 5 year-olds and was struck by this statement.  What a lovely quality, to know yourself and live in this truth.

Normally, I would say that the years of my life have brought me to a place where others might describe me with these same words.  I know myself and live comfortably within my limitations.  As I was reading this statement and thinking about WJ, I found a deep pleasure in knowing that this time in his childhood would be characterized by such peace.  I was thinking about how I would need to be certain to trust him in these coming months as he declared his limitations.  I had noticed already a new bravery in some instances and also his matter-of-fact rationale for passing over an opportunity.

But then we saw the gondolas and I forgot to trust him, and even worse, I forgot to trust myself.

We had set out for one last summer getaway out at a discounted off-season ski resort.  Everything was perfect.  As we batted around ideas for our final morning, sipping hot coffee out in the Adirondack chairs and enjoying the cool morning and the view of the mountain, Dave noticed that the gondola lift was running.  It was carrying mountain bikers up the hill to their treacherous trails.  Dave had read that one could purchase a ticket to ride on the gondola lift.  For fun. 

I know myself.  I know that there is no way such a ride would be fun. Nevertheless, we wandered over to the bottom of the hill to investigate.  I think maybe I thought that we would find it was only for the bikers.  Or maybe that there would be an exorbitant fee that would offend the frugal sensibilities of my Dutch husband.

But I think mostly I was just trying very hard to honor my husband, to respect his ideas for our plans, to participate in one of the things that he finds enjoyable.  There are wonderful benefits reaped from our opposites-attract kind of relationship.  But sometimes it just gets us in trouble.

Looking up the mountain at the gondola cars waggling up and down on the limp wires, I mumbled that I didn’t think I could do that.  And WJ echoed.  No.  Not fun.  Not for us.  But Dave was talking to the operator, who had lifted his eyes begrudgingly from a book, and had taken out his wallet.  Four dollars for all three of us.  What a bargain. Dave was stepping on.

WJ and I followed aboard.  The doors closed.  There were no seats and no window panes.  The floor was a grill and the green whizzed by underneath.  I held on with both hands and Dave lifted WJ up so that he could have a better view.  Dave asked me something, something like, “Isn’t this fun?”

I began to chuckle but it turned immediately into the hysterical laughing of an up-too-late junior high sleepover.  I couldn’t stop; I gasped for breath; tears streamed down my cheeks.  The laughing lasted only a moment, though.  It quickly changed to outright sobbing.  I called out the name of the Lord, and not in vain, as the gondola car swayed. 

WJ was worried too.  I tried to comfort him.  “We are almost at the top!” I exclaimed with false composure, “When we get to the top we will be halfway finished!” 

“But going down is more scary!” he replied.

As if he had to tell me.

When WJ began to sob too, I pulled myself together.  “Do you think there is a way to walk down?” I asked Dave hopefully.  Maybe, was his reply.  As the gondola slowed into the station at the top of the mountain, Dave called out to the teenagers supervising to learn that we could probably walk down.  Probably was enough.  We stepped off of the ride.

It took forty-five minutes to climb down from the top of the mountain to the valley resort.  It was a steep, rocky fire road, littered and overgrown.  Have I mentioned yet that WJ was wearing Crocs?  It felt like we were searching unprepared through the wilderness for help after abandoning a broken car.  Our hike felt somehow desperate. 

But my feet were on the ground and I became myself again.

Slowly WJ became himself again too.  He spotted a frog and chased it.  Then a moth and a very fuzzy caterpillar.  In one of the happier moments of the walk, he took my hand and said, “I wish I could be like Daddy.  I wish I could like the gondola ride.”

I wish that too. 

Sometimes a five-year-old knows himself and his abilities but, for the love of the one he admires, he pretends as best he can to be someone braver.  It can happen to you when you are thirty-six as well.  Sometimes you can pretend hard enough.  But sometimes you have to walk back down the mountain.