Today is my birthday. A few hours from now, I will go to a church filled with people who love me, and give thanks in "Joys and Concerns" that on this day 56 years ago, my family had the stupendously good fortune to be introduced to me! Later, I'll read Psalm 139 and remind myself that I am "fearfully and wonderfully made." For this one day, I'll ignore the questions that raises about my having been made with cerebral palsy. I'll remember that God celebrates my birth, as God celebrates every birth, which means God spends a lot of time celebrating. He's just a partying kind of God! I give thanks--today and every day--that I know my birth is worth celebrating.
My mother died almost a year ago. She was beautiful, wise, and loved--and never really believed she was any of those things. I hope God has spent the last year healing her. She needed healing more than I ever have. The inability to know you are loved is the worst disability I can imagine; far worse than having cp. My father lies in a nursing home. The last time I talked to him, he was in pain. I hope he wasn't in pain today. Sometimes his words make no sense and all I can hear is fear. It breaks my heart.
I spent yesterday afternoon at Starbucks, drinking lattes and reading my sister Leslie's recently published book; admiring her words and her persistence in writing them. The latter is not a trait I possess.
To miss my mother deeply, to grieve for my father's pain, to love and admire my sister, and to know that I am loved-- It's all a gift. The gift of a lifetime. Happy Birthday me.
Happy Birthday, indeed. To love and feel loved -- well, it can't get better than that. Happy in my heart, for you.
ReplyDelete(BTW, been thinking about something you said late this afternoon, and it occurred to be that some of the folks you spent time with earlier in the day didn't recognize the humor in your second sentence.
Expressing thanks to G-d is a swell thing, without doubt. But I think it's probably harder -- and maybe even more important -- to express "thanks" to the real, live people we stand next to, in whom G-d is also made manifest. I think saying "thanks" to people we know (or don't know) is the same thing as saying "thanks" to G-d. Same goes for "please."
It's devilishly hard to navigate both healthy acknowledgment of needs with health appreciation of those who help meet those needs -- especially for an empowered person who happens to be living with a chronic illness. The "rules" get muddled up, and the process of asking for and receiving love and appreciation can get tangled up, but good.
It's hard to ask for -- and especially, acknowledge -- help and appreciation; and what should be most simple ("his yoke is easy, his burden is light,") often gets screwed up somehow, with messy expectations and embarrassment on both sides. If folks feel they're not appreciated, not included in the Universal "thanks," then it gets harder to for them to express love and warmth in what feels like a kind of void.
Hope that makes sense. Well, James Taylor said it better than I can. "Shower the people you love with love. Show them the way that you feel."
Happy Birthday, Mary.
I love that quote from James Taylor. And I do think that much of the time God is incarnate in the people who help us, so thanking them CAN be the same as thanking God. Somehow I think it's also important to thank God specifically though . One of the most difficult parts of being an empowered person who often needs assistance is for me the art of saying thank you enough without feeling like I'll be judged negatively if I forget to say it.
DeleteMary, this touched me deeply. I have a photo of me with my mom and dad in happy times as my screensaver now...and I had opened my computer this morning and just started balling over missing them so much...so much. (I had been listening to Natalie Cole sing her father's songs--so maybe that's what started my emotion) And yet, life was so sweet back then--and of course that's what makes the present bitter-sweet without them. It is beautiful to hear about your mother and how you adore her, and your grief for your father is real and precious. I choose like you to acknowledge however, that God is a partying kind of God, and the reality that we shared a life with people we loved and that deserves, too, to be celebrated.
ReplyDeleteWhat you said, Marlee.
DeleteWe are kindred spirits, Marlee. All I can say is Amen
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