Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Aromatherapy

It's the largest bottle I can find – the good stuff. Name brand and chemically altered to smell like fresh laundry on the line. “Linen Fresh,” the label promises.

I only hope it does the trick.

Weaving through the pews, I empty my can of air freshener in the fashion of a deacon swinging his golden censer. The fragrance scatters and settles, along with my whispered prayers for the people who'd sat there that morning. Lord, rescue Carmen. Have compassion on her. Bring peace to her home. Bless Lilly, dear God. Give her new hope and a reason to go on. Help Jermaine. Oh Jesus, help him. Free him from the chains of addiction.

It had been a full house that Monday morning, like most. Over a hundred people had packed out the sanctuary for a worship service they were not obligated to attend. My neighbors could have easily sat outside and basked in the cool April weather, but they chose to come indoors, to sing hymns together, to read the Word, to hear it proclaimed.

Immediately following the service the numbers on their tickets were called. In groups of five they filed down to the church basement for a special rendition of the Lord's Supper: plastic bags filled with expired bread items, dented soup cans, unlabeled jars of applesauce, and last week's fried chicken. These are the items a small church can afford to purchase by palate from a food “recycling” center. They are piled high on greasy tables, sorted and bagged by the lucky few who had arrived at daybreak that morning to be handpicked from a queue. Tubs of lunch meat and a few extra rolls of toilet paper posed as a paycheck for their labor.

Before the crowd dispersed, the pastor held her hand to the sky in benedictory fashion, calling out, “... 67, 18, 43, 38 ...” as a lucky few were randomly chosen to receive a “sweet-box.” Inside this special box, one might find stale doughnuts or boxes of cupcakes too crushed for any store to sell. Today a grinning woman named Miss Penny had rushed to the door, her winning ticket raised in the air, and asked if there might possibly be a birthday cake in one of those boxes. Her grandson was turning three, she explained, and she wanted to throw him a party. When a drippy-iced cake was placed in her hands, Miss Penny oozed with gratitude.

By noon the entire service is over. The sanctuary is cleared of bodies, but left behind is a stench that hangs low in the air and pierces the soul. It is the smell of alcohol and marijuana and cheap cigarettes. It is the smell of stale urine, soiled diapers, unwashed hair. It is the smell of sweaty children whose homes do not have running water. Of men who house all their belongings in duffel bags. Of teenage girls who sell sex so their pimps can have cash to buy drugs to lure more teenage girls.

It is the smell of old scabs that refuse to heal over.

The product in my hand promises to eliminate the most powerful of odors, but that's not exactly what I hope to do with it. Like the women who woke up early to perfume the broken, crucified body of Jesus, I see my work of spraying down the sanctuary as an act of worship. In the same way brightly colored banners adorn the walls, and the harmony of piano music fills the air, and the carpets are kept vacuumed and the pews freshly oiled, I want the air in this holy place to be soaked in beauty, in cleanliness, in hope. When my neighbors step into the church next week, I want them to inhale something besides the odor that clings to their bodies. I want them to sense a resurrected Savior, even through their noses.

I've completely emptied my can of air freshener today, so I will go to the store this afternoon. Maybe I will choose a new scent this time: Vanilla-Lavender Comfort or Springtime Renewal. Maybe Rainy Meadows to match the weather outside. Whatever the scent, I'm okay with paying a few extra dollars for the name-brand, big bottle.

As long as it's the good stuff.

How to be less-than-perfect without really trying

She had four – count FOUR – young sons.

I’d brought along just the two daughters.

She was splashing amongst the toddlers in the kiddie pool, pretending to be a quacking duck and a spinning windmill.

I was hiding amidst the lounge chairs with a Reader's Digest, wishing my girls would stop inviting me to play.

She kept a perfectly sweet pitch to her voice at all times.

I was having trouble not rolling my eyes when my younger pled for the tenth time, “Look at me, Mom!” while jumping in the water.

Then this random stranger really outdid herself. She turned and gave her full attention to my daughter and said, “Well, look at you!” with a huge, warm smile.

Suddenly, I wasn't annoyed with Happy Homeschooling Mom-of-Four anymore. I wasn't thinking about her at all. I was thinking about me. What's wrong with me? Why can't I just drag myself out there and play with my kids? Why don't I have the energy and patience to be present with them in this special moment? Why am I such a loser?

Fortunately, before the flood of guilt totally engulfed all sense of reason, I was rescued by the truth. Which is this: I usually am that perky lady in the pool. Most days I'm the energetic one, the one who plays on the floor with her kids, the one who draws other people's kids into our games. Perhaps I’m even the perfect mom other moms find annoying.

But today I wasn't. I was a second-rate, maybe even third-rate, mother. I was lazy, tense, and a wee bit selfish with my time. On this particular overcast day at the pool, I just wanted ten minutes to myself. Was that too much to ask?

Every good mom is a bad mom sometimes. We might prefer to spend our bad-mom days at home, out of the keenly observant public eye, but we don’t always get to make that choice. Days like these seem to choose us. And while calling a sitter or huddling the kiddies in front of the TV is perfectly understandable, there are a few other ways to ease the scorch of a bad-mom day. They will require some will power and a little bit of work, but thankfully, these options involve no regrets.

Stop Comparing Yourself

If you spend time looking for her, there will always be a mom out there better than yourself. But keep in mind that you – and only you – are the one your kids adore, and nothing will change that (except, I am told, adolescence). Know that your perfection doesn't teach your kids much about how the real world works. However, when they witness you struggle through your imperfection, and make right choices anyway, you give your children a real-life example to learn from.

Be Honest

Clearly and calmly explain to your kids that you really need some quiet time today. Older kids will especially appreciate your transparency and may even take the lead on entertaining the younger ones. Children yearn to show you how responsible they are, but rarely get the chance when they have Miss Perfect for a mom, toiling and fretting to make life equally perfect for them. If being honest doesn’t work …

Wait ‘Em Out

Your kids will eventually get the idea that you aren't a playmate today, and, crazy as it may seem, your absence won’t kill them. Remember that the reason they're begging you to play is because you're usually so attentive and present with them. So hey, take their annoying-ness as a compliment to your parenting!

Dip Your Toes in the Pool

When all other options are exhausted, you may have to make this choice – like I did, quite literally. I couldn’t snap my fingers and change my mood, nor could I avoid being disappointed in the change of plans. Instead, I had to take things one step at a time, one task at a time, one big toe grazing the surface of the cold water before I could ease in my whole tired body. Sometimes bad moods can suck us into a place that is hard to crawl out of, but our little ones give us the perfect reason to try.

And here's the beauty behind these small hurdles overcome: sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes the very act of making a few small, right choices is enough to change the trajectory of an entire day. And before we realize a change has taken place, we have become our whole selves again – the selves we like. We are wading and splashing and singing and laughing – maybe even spinning like a windmill – and the sun finally peeks out from behind the clouds.

Your Beauty is so God

Great Friend, we haven’t talked in so long and I can feel it in my core.

I’m a piece of rotting fruit without you, a decaying corpse without you,

A compost pile that isn’t composting into anything except brittle little bones.

But when we talk, when we swap stories and share laughs, but mostly

When I sit enamored by your beauty and breathe deep your bare-earth smells,

And when you allow me to nestle into you and just linger there, warmly,

I become new again. Free and New. Loveable – to myself and to others.

When I sit still and buckle my butt to the seat, I find that I’m flying –

Not just drifting – but quite in control of my direction.

When you speak to me I am somehow able to hear more completely

the words of others, my own included, with clarity and compassion.

When I see you dancing in the shadows of maple leaves, resting your

Magnificent self on the cloud-lined shelves between the sky and sea,

Or lifting off the earth on the wings of a dozen Canadian geese,

I am stilled. I am renewed by a sense of wholeness, of oneness with you,

Of how very precious these moments are.

Pretty, Pretty Please

I have two daughters. One is self-motivated, eager to please, and rarely needs discipline. The other is self-absorbed, free-spirited, and spends a good part of each day in time-out.

I can identify with the plights of both my daughters. In high school my biggest concern was how to fit in, how to draw the least attention to myself, how to make the right people like me. I didn't need to be told to do my homework; I did it because I didn't want to be part of the dumb crowd, and of only slightly more importance, I wanted my parents to be proud of me. But there's a part of me I've more recently grown into: the I-don't-take-crap-from-nobody self. Perhaps because I've been hardened by the trials of life, or maybe because I'm all the more wiser for them, I'm much more prone to do the things I want to do unencumbered by others' expectations of me. I tend to think of me first, and therefore spend a good part of each day in time-out.

So as I strive to purposefully mother my children, keeping in mind their personalities and inclinations, I struggle. I struggle because I don't know how to keep my eager-to-please daughter from idolizing others, from pinning her heart to her sleeve, from feeling guilty and being driven by shame. I'm equally clueless about how to make my self-pleasing daughter notice other people and their feelings. While she's much less likely to be somebody's doormat someday, I'm concerned that Little Miss Free Spirit is fueled by what feels good at the moment, regardless of the consequences.

But it occurs to me that the people my daughters want to please – namely, others or themselves – are only, after all, people. And if I've learned anything in my twenty-nine years of life, it's that people always, always, always let us down. People are cruel, they tell lies, they break promises. And if we're really honest with ourselves, the cruelest, most lie-telling promise-breaker is the boy or girl in the mirror.

As a general rule, people cannot be trusted with our hearts.

But the other thing I’ve learned in the last twenty-nine years is that my heart is safe with the one who molded it and shaped it in my mother’s womb. My earthly mom may not have been able to prevent my every heartbreak, but my Heavenly Mom is able to pick up the pieces with me, to completely deliver me from the stuff life throws at me… or I throw at myself.

Yes, this Mother can be trusted, and She is so worth the time and trouble I spend trying to please Her. This is the wisdom and knowledge I want to impart to my daughters: don’t waste your life on you. Don’t waste it on others. You’ll be so much happier trying to please a God who is thrilled by the mere fact that you want to please Her.

I love how Thomas Merton puts it. He prays:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

I can’t save my daughters from their personalities. I can’t save them from wanting something that might hurt them. I can’t even save them from seriously screwing up their lives. So my goal is this: to introduce them to someone who will not only save them, but will perfectly love them despite their faults in a way I cannot. I pray with my daughters, and read them Bible picture books, and sing songs with them that are old and kitschy – I do all this to place them in the lap of the Mother I cannot ever be. I want them to know Her: a God who will love them always, always, always.