Wouldn’t it be a huge relief, a way out of a perennial problem, if we—the healthy, the functional, the ones who seem un-sick, the un-needy—had times during the week when people knew ahead of time we want them to come visit? Their presence would be balm and buoy for us. We would be edified by their very selves and by their perspectives on a world we are cut off from. We would certainly feel appreciated because of their visits. We might even feel loved.
Then, during overlapping visits from a variety of friends, we could watch the intertwining of our lives, different pods of community intersecting in un-orchestrated ways. Even better would be not having to ask for help. The magnetic “Visiting Hours” broadcast would round up all the people who genuinely care. And I know they are there; I will always benefit from seeing them. The sincere and engaged friends and associates—they care even if they don’t visit, it’s true. Often enough, I fail to drop by friends’ homes just for love, especially on my own initiative. I say I am respecting their privacy. But I know how difficult it is to ask for needed reassurance or a healthy distraction from worries and woes. It requires willingness to reach out and admit, friend by friend, “I need time with you.” This is difficult to say. The temptation to not want to impose on folks by asking them to come over is as compelling as the feeling I don’t want to impose on others by coming around unannounced. An exhausting, fruitless hypervigilance can arise on either side. I don’t like admitting need. It exacerbates a vulnerability I already feel from being needy. Calling friends with a plea to come visit risks discovering I might be even more vulnerable than I know. One horrible blessing of being physically injured or ill is that people can tell we need them, even if we hate to admit it with all the vehemence of psychic protest we can muster. Need is not ours to manage when it’s visible. But what about invisible suffering? What about losses and grievances and existential doubts and grief? These are troubles which can lay me up for days plastered to the couch, heavy as sand in a blanket. It’s obvious to me I don’t feel well. Under these circumstances, reaching out to the people who would visit if they only knew seems impossible. Needing to express my needs simply adds more sand to my blanket, pressing me ever more firmly into the couch. So, what if I had visiting hours? Let’s make them 9:00-11:00 on Mondays and Wednesdays, and alternate weekend afternoons. What a relief! Karen Jessee
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The prompt for my Tuesday writing group greets us from the table as we enter the room—a pile of shells from the North Carolina shore. I sit down where sand has spread out like fairy dust to bless us, full of the kind of magic we all long for. Carol invites us to choose a shell to sit with, to write about. I know instantly which one I’ll pick. It’s the one she adjusted at the very last moment. Quirky and charismatic, it smiles at me, mouth open wide in a full-faced grin. I smile back, then see its swollen upper lip. The wound protrudes, puffed and shiny, in a prominent bulb of white. I can’t help but worry. Was my shell in a fight? Has it been through some trauma? Has it been bullied? Rejected by a lover? I hate that person! The one who cost this smile its perfection, the one who dared to slam a simple soul to the ocean floor. The audacity! I resent them. My shell shrugs the insult off with a casual spirit of “Live and Let Live.” I’m not so still, so calcium and calm about it. I have been hurt, haven’t I? I’ve been bullied! I’ve been rejected! My lip blooms hot and red like a carnation, at least it has when I’ve walked straight into a doorjamb, as close to hit as I’ve ever been, thank God. Still, the door, like those people who’ve deigned to dis me, truly disappoints me and offends—an opening not at all wide enough for me to enter into and be. How clumsy I am trying to walk through a door that’s so narrow! After slamming into the trim, it’s best to turn around. After rejection, too, it’s best to turn around. “There’s more fish in the sea!”, I’ve heard all my life. My reply? But, I like this fish! It goes well with a split lip. My shell gazes up at me from the table, its mouth open in silent conversation spilling fairy dust words into my notebook. It seems to say, even unwanted parts of us—whatever’s left of a broken heart, a diminished dream of fulfillment in adulthood—even those parts can speak a salty magic, words which bring savor to life, which prompt us, and each other, to turn around and smile. Karen Jessee If you would like to receive notice of new posts by email, please write me at searchandknow@mindspring.com.
I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life. . , the great temptation [is] self-rejection. —Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved Yesterday evening, I felt particularly grumpy preparing dinner for my kids. I was hungry. They weren’t helping. My husband and I had a date, and I didn’t want to be home fussing over pasta—a real biblical Martha. I suspect Martha didn’t want to feel resentful. I didn’t want to feel resentful, either. I hate myself for resenting my children! Hating my experience and resenting the people involved? A real lose-lose situation even if the children do get fed. Another mealtime devolved, which isn’t unusual. Eventually, it was my turn to eat. My husband and I went out to our favorite haunt and, for once, I decided to order dessert. “I’ll feel better if I eat something sweet,” I thought. Instead, I felt guilty, stupid, a failure for indulging myself—a line of reasoning which, sadly, isn’t unusual either, at least not in my corner of America. Worrying about eating is its own kind of indulgence, a gnawing compulsion. The shame and mental distraction deprive me of enjoying the gift of food, “fruit of the vine and work of human hands.” I suppose we are intent upon torturing ourselves. Or at least some of us are. I suppose that’s why I seek God, make the choice to focus intentionally on the Power Which Heals, the Power Which Brings Peace. Evidently, I could use some healing. I could stand some peace—release from the seemingly ceaseless barrage of negative thoughts that so often make me feel terrible. For example, there are my unnecessary and often unrealistic ambitions, signs of grandiosity. Chronic shame, which convinces me I am less than other people, is just as bad. Both are untrue, the result of inflated estimations of myself. What is true? I AM. I exist. I am here, now. What do I do with that? When Jesus went about healing folks, he addressed demons by name and touched people’s eyes, took their hands in his and lifted them onto their feet, back into life. He met them in their homes and on the roads where they normally walked, or where they sat stuck in the delusion of helplessness. This strategy on Jesus’ part was neither flashy nor casual. It was attentive, focused, and personal. It suggests intimate relationships have the power to heal. They have the power to heal me if I will settle into my one-on-one encounters as deeply as I can. My conscious participation in relationships with people—not tasks, self-concepts, or things—dispels false understanding and alienation. It can happen with my children. But I have to want healing. I have to want to be lifted back into life. “Your faith has made you well,” Jesus says over and over to the people who seek him. Maybe it’s true. Maybe my choice to draw close to God brings its own corrective to self-negating thoughts and behaviors, to obsessions, addictions—any interior plague. My decision to seek the truth about myself in relationship to love reveals my true size and restores peace in me a little bit at a time. I am neither too big, nor too small. As Goldilocks declares, I seem to be just right. One on one, I can try to carry a message of dignity to whomever I meet, the people I know already and those I seek out, those who suffer—human beings, all of them—like I do. Who doesn’t want to be truer, realer, awakened to life and authentically themselves? I suppose there are some people who don’t. But, among those who do, their desire for peace turns out to be a hammock into which I can fall when I lose my grip—when frustration and disappointment leave me weak with hopelessness or drunk with raw emotion. I often wonder if I can withstand life, survive the occasional sense of accomplishment alongside being a disappointment to myself, and all those other feelings each of us can name for ourselves. Truth tells me I can: by the faith which heals, relationships born of communion, and the Spirit which is God, which is infinite—neither big nor small, high nor low, but all things right. “Let us not fall into temptation,” reads the new English translation of the Lord’s prayer. I can meaningfully ask for that—even on my best days. Karen Jessee |
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