LONELY

2: without companions; solitary

The last seven days have been busy: filled with the work of homeschooling, scheduling volunteers for May and June, driving my dancer daughter back and forth to rehearsals, ordering curriculum to finalize plans for next year's tutorial and scheduling everything that needs to be done in Nashville before being out of town for a month.  As I've moved through these busy days, I've tried to be aware of what I am feeling and one thing I'm noticing is how lonely I find work to be.

On Thursday, I came home from driving K to golf, A to ballet and making a quick stop at the library in preparation for World Book Night to find that B had cleaned the house in my absence.  The books that cluttered the dining room table were gone, the kitchen counters were clear, even the dishes had been magically moved from the sink to the dishwasher (isn't it always magic when that happens without your own two hands doing it?).  I nearly wept with relief at the thought that perhaps not every step of my work must be done alone.

I tried to explain to B how meaningful this was for me.  I told her how lonely my work makes me feel, that I feel the burden of people's expectations and the desire to not disappoint them.  To illustrate, I referenced the most recent Project Runway episode we had watched together.  I reminded her of how one contestant wanted to be totally in charge of her team - she wanted to own the vision, but not do all of the work.  Her own dress was 100% her creation, but her teammate's was 50-50.  Unlike this person, I don't desire to take all of the credit - if all of these jobs in process are carried through to completion, I am happy to blend into the background.  But if something goes wrong?  That's all on me.  I bear the burden for every detail that goes undone.

This is a lonely feeling.

And as I sit with my loneliness, I am realizing how lonely I am in various aspects of my life.  I spent the last hour or so typing words and erasing them.  I'm inclined to tell you about my various responsibilities and how they make me feel lonely, but I think more important to share - and see clearly for myself - is the reality that responsibilities and carrying them out make me feel lonely.  In short, I find work lonely.

I suspect this is because I feel inadequate to the tasks before me.  Since inadequacy = shame on my feelings chart, I'm sure there's an important kernel of truth for me here.  Sadly, I can't find a few simple words to convey this truth since I'm not even fully sure what it is.

What I do want to ponder further is how to do without feeling lonely.  If work makes me feel isolated from those around me, how can I use my work to connect with God?  A book I am reading talks about how when the author tries Brother Lawrence's way of finding God in the small, mundane tasks, she is able to do so, but finds she is slower and less productive.  Am I forfeiting intimacy with God because of a (self-imposed) pressure to manage all the details myself?  Or a (again, self-imposed) pressure to do everything on-time, as close to perfect as possible?  Am I still a perfectionist, not a recovering one, as I like to believe?

Or am I just in over my head?  Have I taken on too much?  Frankly, this seems like the easy way out for an Ennegram 9 like me.  I am only too willing to admit I can't do it all.  Even as I type the words, "Am I just in over my head?" my heart constricts - I do not think the solution is to start dropping responsibilities.  This might ease my loneliness short term, but I don't think it is where God is leading me right now. Instead, he is encouraging me to leave the safety of the known pasture for the intimidating freedom of the open road.

I don't know what awaits me.  I could fail miserably in any of these ventures and find myself lonely in failure instead of lonely in competency.

What I do know is that I don't want to remain the same person I have always been.  I want to find a way to work within my gifts and stay engaged.  I want a path to being present even when my mind is task oriented.  This feels like hard heart work for me.  But maybe the hardest, best work is always lonely.

JOY

1 a: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires : delight

What do you think of when you hear the word joy?  Do you have a mental picture that personifies joy? When I think of joy, I get two images.  One is of a person standing in the rain, arms stretched out, face up to catch the raindrops, laughing.  She may be wet, but her joy is not dampened.  The second image is of a person getting on in years - her hair is silver, her face creased.  But she is engaged and interested in those around her, listening intently, delighting at each new thing she sees, hears or experiences.  Laughter comes quickly to her and she nods along eagerly as others share their life and views with her.

For a while now, I've thought joy isn't really something for me.  Last fall, I went away for a weekend to hear Richard Rohr and Russ Hudson talk about Grace and the Enneagram.  As I was preparing to leave for that, I was thinking about two other women in my life that are also Enneagram Nines.  I could see some similarities between each of them and me, but they are both funny, lighthearted people in a way that I am not.  I shared this observation with a friend during the conference and was able to articulate that I feel like I'll never be able to be joyful - I'm just too scarred, too wounded to ever recover the joy you see readily flash on the faces of children.  I cried as I told her this, both out of sadness for this thing I do not have and out of fear that I am not worthy of joy.

Before Lent, I was talking with a friend who said she longs for joy.  She longs to enjoy her children more, to delight in them and alongside them.  To this end, her Lent was about learning to stop at regular intervals in her day.  She was learning to make space for joy.  

I don't actively long for joy like this friend of mine.  If anything, I long for peace and contentment, things which I suspect are vague shadows of joy.  I settle for these rather than risk seeking the real thing and falling short.  Yet I think peace and contentment are companions on the road to joy because I envision joy as more pervasive, more persistent, less mutable than happiness.  I imagine joyful people have an inner peace and contentment that their circumstances can not ruffle and can not take away.

I picture joy as something nearly tangible, something you can grab and hold on to and feel it alongside you, underneath you, beside you.  And when I think of it this way, I wonder about how closely joy and the Holy Spirit are interconnected.  Because when I think of the Holy Spirit, it's as a swirling, comforting presence all around me.

The Holy Spirit is the aspect of the Trinity that I most long to be like.  I don't want the responsibility or inspired devotion of God the Father.  Nor do I long to be the ever present teacher that Jesus is.  But a soft, encouraging presence that points others to God, to truth, to beauty?  These are traits I want to embody.

Last night as we sat around the dinner table, we discussed the transition from Lent to Eastertide.  We talked about what we learned during Lent and what we hoped to delight in during Easter.  I asked these questions before fully thinking through my own answers to them, so it wasn't until later that I realized that while my Lent did not go as expected, I did make very real progress towards beginning to identify the desires of my heart.  And if joy is evoked by the prospect of possessing what one wants, perhaps this is a good first step towards joy.

Easter day did leave me feeling oddly lighthearted - not as a result of any one experience but from thinking about a series of small truths seen together: truths like the realization that love must be very strong indeed to have defeated death and that our biggest blessings often come just from lingering near God, not from any activity on our part.

Maybe this is how joy is found - by following the trail of breadcrumbs God leaves for us, each one leading us closer and closer to the realization of how much He loves us and how immutable that love is.  Because when we grasp that His love for us cannot and will not change, joy is the only possible response.

PRESS

4 a: to exert influence on : constrain

A little over a month ago, I read a fiction book that got me asking deep theological questions.  In the world of this book, there are three gods.   When the gods go to war, one god wins by imprisoning the other two.  (Question #1: What happens to our own faith when one part of the trinity is minimized or emphasized over the other two parts?  This one's for another post.)  The main character, Yeine, meets one of the imprisoned gods and comes to know him as more than the god of chaos, he's also the god of creativity - and don't those two nearly always go hand in hand.  Yeine has been brought to the capital to be used as a sacrificial lamb and she's talking with the imprisoned god about how she can't change her reality.  He tells her:

You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe.  Accept that and be done... The future, however, is yours to make - even now.  Tell me what you want.  [As for me,] when I am free, I will choose who shapes me.

Question #2: If I get to choose what shapes me, what am I choosing?  What am I pressing in to?

Last week as I was walking one morning, I pondered this question.  In my mind, I saw myself pressing in to my enneagram nine ways of living.  For me this means withdrawing (primarily emotionally) and sitting back in the reality that this world is broken and shattered.  And it means feeling incapable of changing the inherent brokenness that I sense.  The alternative felt like a choice to press into the Holy Spirit - that whirling softness that brings comfort, yes, but also growth and uncertainty about what lies ahead.  I ended my walk that morning determined to choose growth over stasis.

Then I went on a silent retreat - those lovely weekend interludes away with God that fill up my emotional tank and recenter me.  On this retreat, I imagined myself in the cleft of a rock.  There I saw the choice of what I press in to is not so clean cut as I initially thought.  I thought I faced a simple choice between doing things my way or doing things God's way.  Instead, I think my choices are more intricate, more compelling, more fluid.

I need both the quiet darkness of my nine space and the light and space of growth.  Like a seed that needs time in the dark recesses to prepare for growth, so my soul can't be constantly exposed to the light and sun without withering.  It's hard to remember that God made me the way I am and I don't need to change myself to conform to some idea I have of what growth looks like.  Growth for me will look different than for anyone else because we are all made differently.

I'm not saying my growth will happen naturally, without me doing anything to encourage it.  My job is to press in, both to the sheltering dark and the swirling hopefulness of the unknown.

MINIMIZE

2: to underestimate intentionally : play down, soft-pedal

My family was invited to a wedding that took place last weekend.  The invitation came in the throes of selling our house, packing up and moving.  In the midst of all of that, I lost the invitation.  When the bride checked in with me on our RSVP, I told her we wouldn't be able to make it.  I briefly explained that ballet five days/week and baseball three days/week are getting to us and filling our Saturdays.  While true, the more honest explanation was that I was afraid to go.

The bride was a teacher at my daughters' former school and I was afraid of answering questions from other guests about our decision to homeschool.  Not necessarily from the teachers who would have been there, but from other families who might be there.  As I made the decision for our family not to attend, I felt OK about it.  Things were busy.  I didn't want to risk being uncomfortable.  There would surely be tons of other students there.  We wouldn't be missed.

But as the wedding approached, I began to feel differently.  Sad that we were going to miss her special day.  Regretful that I let fear keep us home.  Frustrated with myself that I am so quick to minimize my own worth.  Because this was certainly a case of me underestimating myself intentionally.  I wondered why she would want us there.  "There's nothing special about our family," I thought to myself.  I played down the impact our absence would have.  I chose to not see that this bride had invited our family for a reason.  I chose to not remember this bride walking over to my van just a few weeks after my daughters started at her school and telling me how great my daughter B was doing in her class.

Last month I met with a few women to talk about the Enneagram.  As a part of our discussion, I mentioned how much the Enneagram has helped me see my sin more clearly.  Actions that would not look like sin to an outsider, I know to be sin because I know my own heart.  Only I know the promptings from the Holy Spirit that I hear and choose to listen to or ignore.  Only I know that I declined that invitation not because of a full schedule, but because of my fear.

I'm not exactly saying it was a sin to miss that wedding.  I will tell you my heart has both swelled and ached as I've seen pictures from the wedding posted online.  The aching tells me that I was wrong and weak to be so afraid of what others might say.  The aching tells me that I really wanted to be there and I once again did not choose to follow my own heart.  The ache reminds me that there is something inside me that wanted to be there to see and celebrate this union.  And I blew it.

I am pretty good at knowing what other people want from me - at discerning what they need and even how to provide it.  This can make me an easy friend to have - and it can be exhausting.  It also means that I am so busy listening to what other people need from me that I don't hear my own soul's cries for help.  I ignore a nudge to reach out to a friend.  I pretend to not see that chair I could sit in to read and rest for a few minutes.  I push down my urge to be and insist on doing.

A few weeks ago I read a series of devotions that recommended a simple, yet profound prayer: "Who are you, God?  Who am I?"  I think if I could pray this prayer consistently, it would change my life.  If I truly knew who God is and who I am, I would no longer minimize my value, my desires, my very self.  I would instead be compelled to shed my insecurities and hesitancies and be the radiant person God thinks I am.

This is big, hard work for me.  Shedding layers of who we think we are is not easy.  But it is necessary.  People do not only want to be around me because I listen well.  They sometimes actually want to hear what I have to say.  Some lessons I learn quickly, others more slowly.  Maybe you don't struggle with minimizing yourself.  Maybe you wrestle with allowing others to see the real you.  Or with admitting you are wrong and imperfect.  Whatever the case, I hope you'll find a path to let the real you shine through the layers of accumulated selfhood.  Because you are radiant underneath it all.

FORGETTING

1 a : to lose the remembrance of : be unable to think of or recall

I keep forgetting who I am.

About four months ago, my bible study group (we call ourselves the Ish girls) began studying the Enneagram via Richard Rohr's book and audio CDs.  I took online tests - the short free one and the longer one that cost a bit.  Both said 9.  A friend who knew more about this than I suggested reading the chapter in the book about your number after taking the test.  If the chapter resonated with you, you'd know you had found your number.  I read the chapter.  Definitely a 9.

The beauty of the Enneagram as opposed to some other tests like Myers Briggs or DISC is that it helps you see how your greatest strength is also your strongest weakness.  As Richard Rohr explains, our favorite sin becomes our favorite because we are so very good at it and it serves us well for much of our life.  For a 9, this root or favorite sin is laziness or acedia. 

Since learning this, I've looked for this sin in my life and tried to avoid it.  I should have known better.  Rohr makes it clear that the only way we can fight our root sin is with our root sin.  It's the biggest weapon in our arsenal.  The only way to be truly transformed is to see who you are, open it up to God and let him change you.  Because you'll never be able to change yourself.

Yet I've tried.

I've resisted my body's desire for rest in a time of grief.  I've berated myself for not doing a better job of maintaining our home during a busy time of the year.  I've seen my desire for quiet time as selfish.  And this last one is where things start getting really dangerous.  Because my desire - dare I say need? - for quiet time alone with God is a core part of who I am.  And when I start denying that - or shaming myself for that need, it is a very short drive to feeling completely lost.

I've gone so far as to say to my spiritual director, "I'm not sure when to be gentle with myself and when to be firm with myself.  Maybe a 9 doesn't need gentleness."  The sternest I have ever seen her was when she asked me whether Jesus is firm or gentle with me.  Even so, I left her house and continued to be firm, not gentle, with myself.

I have continued to find time to do my daily readings from the Ignatian prayer cycle, but I've shamed myself for this and made it into something I have to do, instead of letting myself rest in it, soak it up and leave refreshed.  It has become one more thing to make sure I get done every day.  One more way to pass or fail, not a way to simply live.

Sunday our church celebrated Epiphany with a Christmas tree bonfire and chili cook-off.  It was great fun - relaxed, communal, friendly.  Prior to the event, I'd read about an Epiphany tradition of writing down a sin you want to let go of in the coming year and throwing it into the bonfire.  I mentioned this to J Sunday afternoon before we headed to the church.  I'd left it until the last minute, but wondered whether we could each write down a sin and tie it to our Christmas tree that he'd just loaded on the top of the car to take for the bonfire.  "Honey," he said, "that's a great idea, but unless you want your sin blown away by the wind, you might want to think of another way.  There's no way it would make it tied to the tree all the way to St. B's."

I tabled the idea, until right before the bonfire was to begin.  I still wanted to do this.  It seemed so beautifully symbolic to me and I liked the idea of my sin burning away.  So I tore off part of the sign I'd used to label my Chorizo and Black Bean Chili and asked B whether she wanted to do this with me.  Surprisingly, this most-resistant-to-all-things-church daughter of mine agreed.  We each wrote down a sin and took it out to the bonfire with us.  It quickly became clear that we were not going to be able to get close enough to throw the paper into the fire.  If you've never witnessed it, dried out fir trees go up in flames quickly.  (Water your trees, people.  I saw clearly what fire hazards these things are.)  We decided instead to use a branch to stab our paper, holding it onto a tree that was then added to the blaze.

I saw one of our sheets of paper attached to a tree as it went into the fire.  I don't know whether it was mine or B's, but I'm hoping it was mine and that it burned right to ash.  Because in some ways forgetting who I think I am is crucial to becoming who I really am.  This means being willing to let go of sins that are so much a part of me that I don't even know they are sin.

A few months ago, one of the Ish girls shared that she'd been really aware lately of her sinful tendency to think she is not enough.  She gave some examples and I listened thoughtfully as she openly shared about her struggle.  I have been pondering her words for months because the first thought that popped into my head when she spoke was, "Is that a sin?"  It's something I should ponder because thinking I am not enough is not a fleeting idea for me, it's a state of being.  I believe this is not uncommon for 9s.  I get a daily thought for 9s with tips, pointers and recommendations on ways to be more aware of what it means to be a 9.  Some days are more convicting than others.  Here's a recent one:

Today, notice if you are playing the role of "Nobody Special" or the "Invisible One"—the modest person content to stay in the background. Do you really think that holding back your presence, opinions, and involvement will have no consequences on yourself and others?

Ouch.  Yes, I have long believed that holding back my presence and opinion will have no consequence whatsoever.  So what I threw into the fire and want to let go of this year is the idea - no, the firmly held belief - that I am not enough, not valuable, not worth it.

I do keep forgetting who I am.  In bad ways, of late.  But there is value to forgetting who I think I am if that will free me to be who I was made to be.  Especially if that will free me to be radiant, without fear of what that might mean.

AUTUMN

: the season between summer and winter comprising in the northern hemisphere usually the months of September, October, and November or as reckoned astronomically extending from the September equinox to the December solstice

There are many things I love about autumn:  cooler temperatures, football, wearing boots, making soups, drinking hot tea, pumpkins, apples.  I also love what it heralds:  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Advent and Christmas.  While Halloween doesn't particularly excite me, Thanksgiving, Advent and Christmas are some of my favorite times of year.  I love the way thankfulness and looking back on a year of things to give thanks for ushers in the hushed anticipation of Advent, the waiting to celebrate our savior's birth and the waiting for his return.

Our lives have a rhythm to them, but each year our family continues to evolve.  I'd love nothing more than for fall Saturdays to be about pumpkin pancakes, raking leaves, reading books, watching football and smelling chili simmering on the stove.

Instead, our Saturdays are packed full with ballet classes, art classes and Nutcracker rehearsals.  I had somehow forgotten in the two years since A last danced in The Nutcracker just how time consuming it is.  Starting in October, she essentially dances all day on Saturdays, with an hour or two lunch break.  Mornings are for instructional classes at her regular studio near our home and afternoons are spent learning how to be a Native American Soldier (her role in this year's performance) at a studio across town.

I'm thankful A has the opportunity to participate in a ballet performed by professionals and run by a professional organization.  She has learned a great deal from previous participation and she will gladly sacrifice whatever time necessary to do it again.  Truth be told, she does not even see it as a sacrifice.

Yet I choose the word sacrifice intentionally.  The things I give up seem petty to list: time to curl up with a book on Saturday afternoons, weekend days spent at home rather than in the car, lazy days.  But I am learning a lot about myself through the Enneagram study and I recently heard Richard Rohr (on the CDs we listen to) talk about how people of my type are the most frequently occurring type in undeveloped countries.  He said when you visit Africa, you're struck by the fact that almost everyone is a 9.  Sadly, I do not live in one of those countries.  I don't live in a culture that encourages - or allows - moving at your own pace.

A friend in this study keeps reminding our group that the point of the Enneagram is to learn compassion - on ourselves and others.  So I am trying to accept that part of what is wearying about this fall is simply that I live in a world that is not set up for someone like me.  Frankly, that's a good reminder no matter your Enneagram type.  None of us are made for this world.  None of us are permanent residents here.  It is good and right that we should long for autumn to be a season that ushers in the ultimate Advent of God's kingdom come.

But how to live in the here and now?  The solution is not to give up on living our lives here - whether our lives be in their own spring, summer, fall or winter.  I think the answer lies - seemingly simply - in living in the present.  I don't mean that glibly.  I mean being fully present and not wishing away October Saturdays for January Saturdays that are colder, but less cluttered with activities.  I mean not dreaming wistfully about the good old days before Saturday ballet even existed for our family.

Tonight's dinner provided a good opportunity to practice the discipline of staying present.  J called 5ish to tell me he was heading south (away from home) for an afterwork meeting.  While he indicated he would likely be home at a normal time, I was doubtful.  I proceeded to cook our dinner of apple and pear pork tenderloin, carrot souffle, brown rice and edamame.  When everything was ready, the four of us (minus J) sat down to eat.  It felt like a lovely fall meal.  The girls were delightful.  This was their first encounter with edamame, so I'd given them very small portions.  A & B both went back for seconds.  Their willingness to try the food I put before them made the effort of cooking their dinner feel more than worth it.

Here's the thing: I could have been upset that J missed dinner with us.  He had a work event last night.  I have a contemplative prayer group tomorrow night.  But I didn't let disappointment rob me of the now.  I rested in the moment of dinner at the table with my daughters happily gathered around me.

I do love that autumn points us to what comes next.  But I want to learn to savor what it offers in and of itself.

BOOTS

1 : a fitted covering (as of leather or rubber) for the foot and usually reaching above the ankle

I love boots.

Much to my relief, this Sunday it was finally cool enough for me to wear footwear that wasn't sandals.  Saturday night, J and I went to Vanderbilt's season opening football game.  Thankfully, it was an evening game.  Even so, it was hot, humid and airless outside.  I wore supportive flip-flops, but flip-flips are still flip-flops, so the support was minimal. My feet were killing me by the time we got home.  Not from the walking, per se, but from how hot my feet were for the entire evening.  As we went to bed, I was hopeful the promised rain would arrive, bringing the temps from the 100s to the 80s - and bringing boots back into my footwear repertoire.

The rain arrived as predicted and I wore a white skirt, grey shirt and my favorite blue suede cowboy boots to church.  As J and I walked from the parking lot to the sanctuary, I remarked that I was so glad to be able to wear boots again.  "Are they more comfortable for your feet and legs because they're more supportive?" he asked in an attempt to understand.   "Yes, but it's more than that," I replied.  "They make me feel more confident, more protected - both physically and psychologically."  "Hmmm," he mumbled diplomatically.

I realize it may sound a bit crazy that boots make me feel more confident and more protected, but it's true.  In my Enneagram study, I did this week's reading for our discussion, then jumped ahead several chapters to read about type nine.  Several passages in this chapter have brought tears to my eyes.  One such passage:

NINEs have none of the defense mechanisms at their disposal that the other eight types use to try to protect their inner self from the assaults of the world outside... This defenselessness means that almost everything that approaches NINEs from the outside world is exhausting and draining.

Maybe it was having recently read this passage that made me realize that boots aren't just a fashion preference for me - they're armor.  I have to walk slower in most of the boots I own - either because they have heels or because they don't allow my ankle to bend the way other shoes do.  This can be challenging for me since I generally like to be able to slip in and out of places, unnoticed if I wish.  This side of me isn't compatible with wearing boots, but maybe my preference for them comes from a nearly hidden inner knowledge that even when I don't want to be noticed, everyone needs someone to pay attention to them.

Lots of people wear armor of some sort.  Starched shirts, ties and suits?  Armor.  Make-up?  War paint.  Short skirts, tight shirts?  A way to deflect people from knowing who you are by keeping them preoccupied with how you look.  I don't think it's inherently wrong to wear clothing (or boots) that protect you from the world - literally or metaphorically.  But I do think it's helpful to realize why we choose what we choose.

If I'm counting on boots to protect me from what people say about me, to give me defense against attacks on my inner self, to distract people from my face by making them look at my feet, I'm not really growing and maturing, am I?  Because what I really need to do is acknowledge that I'm weak - that I don't have the inner resources I need to get through life.  And then seek those resources through prayer instead of through a good pair of Ariats.

Not that I'm giving up the Ariats, mind you.

BURDEN

1 a : something that is carried : load

Starting this month, I am participating in a spiritual direction group where we read set scriptures daily using lectio divina and do the Daily Examen.  Today I read in Matthew 11.  In addition to the assigned scripture, we were given these directions from our spiritual director:

Come to Jesus, ask Him, 'What are my burdens?" Hand them over to Him one by one. As you go through your day, if you find yourself taking the burdens back, be gentle with yourself, and hand them back over to Him. This is a spiritual practice.

The scripture was touching, but following these instructions was really enlightening.  Some burdens came to mind readily enough -

the responsibility for choosing (and sometimes executing) my daughters' education,
how, when and whether my daughters will come to their own faith,
running my household,
loving my husband well,
relationships,
whether I am inherently unlovable

And then I prayed for a friend of mine whose aging parent is having health issues.  I found I couldn't give up that burden because the burden wasn't mine to give.  This was very clear to me as I prayed.  I could offer my friendship over, but I couldn't lay my friend's parent on the altar because that wasn't for me to do.  So I offered up my friend and asked Jesus to carry her.

Since then, I've been pondering whether I am unusual, crazy or even flawed to see relationships as burdens that need handing over.

It's not that I don't like people.  I do.  I love my family.  I have many friends that I dearly treasure.   Yet I have time constraints and more desire for relationship than time to pursue it.  Is there something wrong with me that I need divine intercession to be present, loving and caring to other people?  Or is that just part of knowing who I am?

In reading about my enneagram number (9), I am beginning to see myself more clearly.  Something I read today talked about how 9s don't have defenses that the other numbers have, so life just feels like too much sometimes.  That really resonated with me.

I often feel like I am the burden - that there's not enough of me, that I can't do enough or be enough for other people.

As we celebrate Labor Day, these are some of the things I'll be pondering:

What are my burdens?

Do I carry them because I think I deserve to be burdened?

When and why do I think I am a burden?

And I'll be praying for the strength to hand these burdens over, again and again.

COMPASSION

: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it

I've been thinking a lot about compassion today.  It started early this morning, when I received an e-mail from a friend.  She and I are in a bible study together and we've recently started studying the enneagram.  It is kicking my butt.  The more I learn about who I am and how deeply my sin penetrates who I am, the harder it is.  Her e-mail to me said, "the enneagram is about is a training in compassion--on yourself and others."  It brought tears to my eyes to read her words.  I need to work on having compassion - for others, yes - for myself, especially.

A few hours after this e-mail from my friend, I retreated upstairs to read a passage in Isaiah.  It said, in part, "'with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,' says the Lord your Redeemer."  It was a day when I needed compassion for myself - and my daughters. 

Monday was a rough school day.  B quite simply did not want to do school, so it was a day filled with low grade and outright conflict all day long.  This is completely exhausting for me.  So what a blessing it was for yesterday to be a good day.  A and B were attending their tutorial for the first time this year - B for the first time ever.  On Monday, B said to me, "Mom, it takes me a long time to make friends.  It could even take a whole year going only one day a week."  My heart shattered and I started praying.  All day on Tuesday, I prayed for one friend for B.  Just one child to be kind and welcoming to her.  One.  God answered with abundance.  When I arrived to pick the girls up, I asked B how her day had gone.  "Awesome!" she replied.  She spent the entire ride home telling me how well the day had gone, who she had met, what she had learned and made.  My heart overflowed with thanksgiving.

This morning, school got off to a nice start.  A and B started their work while I took K to school, but B's progress came to a screeching halt when she hit history.  The first speed bump was when I walked through the door from drop off and B said, "Have you read this book you told us to read?"  I hadn't read the book in question - I'd merely skimmed it.  She pointed out how difficult it was - with many words she didn't understand (and her vocabulary is not lacking).  I read a few paragraphs and revised the assigned reading from five pages to one page.  Then came another speed bump. 

I had asked for two paragraphs explaining what we could learn about the Egyptians based on their religion and how that compared and contrasted to our own beliefs.  She wrote two paragraphs.  I marked them up and we talked about them.  I tried to help her get closer to what I wanted.  She fought me.  She moved on to some other work, came back to history, fought me again.  Meanwhile, A was plowing through her plan for the day - or so I thought.  When I read her response to the same history assignment, I realized something: what I was asking was simply too difficult for them.  I wanted them to look at the pantheon of Egyptian gods and their myths and infer things about the Egyptian people.  I then wanted them to take those inferences and compare them to contemporary beliefs.  They didn't get it.  So instead of making them re-write their paragraphs (yet again), we talked it through.  We discussed what we might be able to tell about a culture that has a God of the Desert and so on.  Seeing that they weren't unwilling, but unable, to complete the assignment as I'd envisioned, I was able to be compassionate.

But it's far easier to be compassionate with my daughters than with myself.  Do I understand them better than I understand myself?  Or do I just think their suffering is worth alleviating and my own deserves to be borne?

Part of what the enneagram does is help you see how your greatest gift is also your deepest sin.  As the book says, "We are destroyed by our gifts because we identify too closely with what we can do well."  My inclination - in this, as in all things - is to shame myself for my sin.  To remind myself over and over of how I choose inaction over action, avoid conflict when speaking up would be the better course, get trampled on rather than stand up for myself.  I am not inclined to be compassionate or loving towards myself.

Yet if I am to learn and grown and become someone else - all of which I desperately want - I'll have to learn to be more gentle with myself.  I was able to see today that my daughters needed something - they couldn't do what was asked of them.

This evening as K was playing a game on the computer, she was talking to an imaginary friend in the chair beside her.  K kept saying over and over, in a kind and gentle voice, "Everybody makes mistakes.  It's OK.  Everybody makes mistakes."  She even started singing it at one point.  The look on her face as she played her game and said this repeatedly wasn't ashamed - it was joyful.  Boy, can I learn from this kid.  Compassion 101 - for herself and others.