The wee small hours

It is three o’clock in the morning. I hate being awake in the middle of the night. These deep hours don’t always feel to me to quite belong to God. It feels as if the darkness is allowed to encroach upon one a little more than usual.

It didn’t always used to be this way. When I was younger I remember waking up and feeling cozy. I had a sense of who I was, what I was about, that all was as it should be or would at least work out. I would thank God for my bed, dig a little deeper into the covers and fall back to sleep.

Now when I wake up I screw up my eyes and try really hard not to think. My thoughts feel like a cloud of fear hovering just above my head. For a few seconds I think, “Just go back to sleep, everything is all right- you are safe, your family is safe.” But if I do not the battle begins with images of horrible things that have happened or are currently happening. School children attacked with meat cleavers in China, terrorist attacks, serial murder cases, kidnappings, sexual exploitations of young children, earthquakes, animal cruelty.

Then the “what ifs” make their attack. What if my children are kidnapped? What if my son has to go to war? What if my daughter’s heart is broken beyond repair? How can I protect them when I feel so weak? What if I get sick? What if I die? What if Eric dies? What if my children die?

If I allow the “what ifs” to take over, like I did tonight, I might as well get up. Only the routine of everyday things like dishes in the sink, the dog going outside and the hum of home electronics can make these demons retreat.

When I was younger I was fearless. I lived in dangerous neighborhoods, offered rides to strangers. I walked the streets at night- and slept well. Was I truly brave, or merely stupid? One does after all; feel invincible in one’s 20s.

It seems to me that maybe real bravery is knowing exactly what truly awful things the world is capable of throwing at you and going forth anyway. Choosing to believe that you are not alone, no matter how alone you feel.

I know that God is in the middle of all this somewhere. I don’t doubt that. But I truly don’t know where. At 3 AM I can’t feel Him, and praying doesn’t stop the bombardment of fear that pummels me into a pathetic mess. I have been looking for Him in the middle of the night for a long time. And I wonder how real my faith is if I can believe during the day and be so lost at night.

Something that wearies me about Christianity is all the “someday” stuff. Jesus will come back someday. All will be made right. Someday.

I don’t know. I guess I am not brave. I want life to be safe, to feel safe. Now. I want my children to have magical childhoods. I want anything that threatens them to be cast into hell. Now. I want assurance that all is well. Right now.

Is that so wrong? Maybe I just need more sleep.

I have been reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair for the third time. I am enjoying looking back over my old college notes and highlights. What I was moved by at the ripe old age of 21 is so different from what I notice about the novel now. All I could see then was the consequences of adultery and the stunning self-sacrifice Sarah displayed after her dramatic conversion. She prays,

Dear God, I've tried to love and I have made such a hash of it. If I could love you, I'd know how to love...I believe the legend, I believe you were born. I believe you died for us. I believe you are God. Teach me to love. I don't mind my pain. It's [her husband's and ex-lover's] pain I can't stand. Let my pain go on and on, but stop theirs. Dear God, if you could only come down from the cross for a little while and let me get up there instead. If I could suffer like you, I could heal like you.

This quote reminds me a lot of John Donne's sonnet XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God: for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like a usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It has been a long time since I have been able to pray like this; with such passion and abandon. Getting older means experiencing life at its best and worst, and the worst of it leaves scars. For many 21 year-olds pain is dramatic and overwhelming, but that is because it is new. The blood is let for the first time and it leaves the wounded wide-eyed and wondering. But suffering in one's 30's is different. The wounds have multiplied, gone deeper, left scars. If not careful, the wounded can develop a habit of flinching and shutting eyes tight. Hardheartedness and a quiet distrust can become the bandages.

So what I am saying is that this time I am relating a lot to Bendrix. It is so easy to excuse his cynicism & bitterness- his cruelty. I wonder what his childhood must have been like... He doesn't know how to love... He is lost in his own hellish imagination and can't find his way out.

I have wondered sometimes whether eternity might not after all exist
as the endless prolongation of the moment of death...

I feel so sorry for him! And feel akin to him, and I realize that in feeling sorry for him I am feeling sorry for myself!
Sort of pathetic, really.
The thing is, at 21 I had no idea what love really was or what it would demand. Marriage vows and children take self-sacrifice to a whole new level and I am often overwhelmed. So the kind of prayers that Sarah and John Dunne prayed make me afraid. I am afraid that I cannot handle that kind of love, that I will cease to exist.

But these fears are lies of course. It is in self-sacrificial love that one is reborn. The End of the Affair begins with this quote by Leon Bloy,

Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters
suffering in order that they may have existence.

God give me courage.

The glory of God?

I don't know what I am doing most of the time. This has always been true. I am not really great at anything obvious. This is not self-degradation, it's just honest. I watch the Olympics and Miss America pageants wondering where these people find all their energy. I watch the moms I meet in my community make their own organic baby food, sew cloth diapers with love in every stitch and parent as if a six figure salary depended on it. I am lucky if my laundry is done and most of the time my floor needs to be swept. Too often I just want to watch TV.

It's cool. Good for those athletes and aspiring princesses and CEO moms. It's just not my thing. I stopped working a year ago to take care of my first child. In the following hours and minutes that spawned boredom and a lifetime of self-doubt I have been asking myself this question, "what exactly is my thing?" I am not lazy. I like all the normal things to people tend to like... music, reading, art, camping, fashion, my family. So what? What makes life worth getting out of bed for? I am a Christian, and other Christians say I should read about purpose filled lives and jazz that is blue and velvet elvises. Good stuff. They tell me I should "live for the glory of God". But I really don't know what the hell that means.

In "Franny and Zooey", JD Salinger confronts a quarter life-crisis head on. In order to inspire his sister (Franny) to come back to the land of the living, her brother (Zooey) says the following...

...I'll tell you a terrible secret-Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady...There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that g-damn secret yet? And don't you know-listen to me, now-don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?...Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself , buddy.

When I first read this passage in Franny and Zooey in my early 20's I thought I had found the secret to an inspired life. Well I have learned a lot through the years about idealism, but I find that in my mid-thirties it still has a powerful affect on me. It is not a new concept to find the "divine spark" in humanity-but Salinger seems to put a spin on it. He seems to imply that your life is your art, and that Christ is always there- in a friend, a homeless man, a rude neighbor- watching whether or not you are squandering your joy and creativity.

St. Irenaeus says that"the glory of God is man fully alive." Jesus says that He came to give life abundantly. Well, I think that's my thing. To live my life with art, abundance, love- to be fully alive. Honestly, that is as far as I have gotten. I am hoping to figure how to live with "art" amidst a naughty Weimaraner, the imperfect church, a gorgeous baby girl and another on the way.

I know it won't be easy. It is so much easier to be depressed and detached. It really is. I am beginning to think that being depressed (chemical and hormonal deficiencies aside) is lazy. At least, it is for me. It's not making the effort to be engaged, not forgiving life for not living up to my expectations. How self-absorbed is that? So, I'll get out of bed every morning for the Fat Lady- and see how it goes.