Destination Discipline

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

I was lied to as a child. The lies are innumerable, of course. Adults would say, “You can be anything you want to be.” What if I wanted to be a bird or a fish? Flying and breathing under water appealed to me as a child. I realize adults want to motivate children to think beyond their boundaries or perceived limitations but why not use speak the truth? Words can and do hurt. Misused words by people have caused many people to guard their hearts and minds. Why? Because people fear pain.

This week at work I dared to share my frustrations with one of the leaders in my department. I could not get my daily work done because the big bosses kept handing down “small tasks” (their words) that took much longer than they said they would. It was causing me a lot of anxiety because I had real deadlines and I was afraid I couldn’t meet them. I say “dared” because I have been afraid to share anything like my real thoughts or feelings to the leaders in my area for a long time. Sharing my real thoughts caused me a lot of problems last year, but this year silence has kept me safe. The boss I spoke with about my frustrations listened and acted like they cared. I felt heard, cared for, and valued. I was even able to sleep well that night. But the next day I had an email “encouraging me” to work with a business coach. The suggestion felt like a command. It implied my frustrations in the workplace had more to do with me being a bad employee than leaders leading poorly.

Everything is fine.

Santa Claus is real.

Coke Zero is good for you.

The universe has a plan for me

I have been listening to some interesting podcasts recently and one big takeaway is people have a lot of faith in the universe. One filmmaker I follow says what you put out into the universe will come back to you. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Do the words I use have so much power that when I speak they come to life? This seems to be a belief many people have–especially Christian people. Words of affirmation are pretty popular. Is the universe a benevolent entity that cares for me as it does all of nature? Is everything connected in such a way that peace and harmony flow after we say positive words? I am curiouser and curiouser.

When I stand under the night sky and stare up at the stars, I feel very small. When I consider the vastness of space, I wonder about my place in it. Jiminy Cricket was the minstrel of my childhood and sang, “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you.” The words are pretty enough and when accompanied by a melancholy tune, they really tug at the heartstrings. It feels good to think this way, to wish this way, to hope this way. I can be lulled to sleep by this, wishing upon a star that all my dreams will come true. But Jiminy Cricket was a liar too.

“Well, Margaret, that’s because when you said your words of affirmation, you didn’t have enough faith. It’s your fault.”

Is there anything more painful than a friend who tells me things aren’t well in my life because I don’t have enough faith? Worse, the friend who says, “I can’t be around you anymore because your negativity is bringing me down.” Maybe it’s time I stopped being friends with people and start being friends with the universe.

The universe is filled with glorious sunrises and sunsets. It produces shooting stars and gaseous, glowing planets. The universe is big and therefore friendly. It doesn’t chide or coerce. I really kind-of like this idea of the universe. And since I am in awe of this wonderful universe, I have decided to pray to it for something very small. I have asked the universe to make the sweetgum tree in my backyard stop producing gumballs. After all, the gumballs don’t really serve any purpose other than pain. They collect in the yard and make walking treacherous. I could break my ankle, for Pete’s sake! Surely the universe will hear my prayer and urge the tree to surrender to my will. “No more gumballs.” I will pray this five times a day for a week and certainly the universe will hear all 35 statements and honor my request. If I place my faith in the universe, it will not disappoint.

And you know why? Because all the successful people I listen to on podcasts claim the universe helped them to be successful. Therefore, it must be true! Because the all-powerful universe is wonderful! Their success had nothing to do with talent, or luck, or hard work, or intelligence or common grace. Because people are always, you know, honest. Especially when they say things like, “You can be anything you want to be.” It only takes one audition on American Idol to prove this theory false. Just ask Simon Cowell.

I prefer a terrible truth to a beautiful lie any day.

Or what about this one, “Honestly is always the best policy.” Not really. If you tell your boss he is bossing badly, it will not end well for you. The best policy is to shut up and suck it up or find another job.

But that’s not really the point. The point is, often times lies are really convenient. We believe them because we want to. They stop us from asking the real questions. Parents use them to stop children from asking pesky questions they prefer not to answer. Bosses use them to defer employees from holding them accountable to lead well. But what’s really terrible is that when people tell us beautiful lies, they stop us from getting answers to the real questions. Because do you want to know what I really think when I wonder if the universe has a beautiful plan for my life? I think if I entrust myself to the universe, I’m about as safe as a deer drinking out of an alligator infested pond.

What we carry is sometimes much too heavy to bear. But to set it down is to feel something even heavier, the weight of failure. The path to discipline has required rigor; to stay the course, to maintain healthy habits, to push through pain and adversity. And I suppose if I weren’t so gall-darn stubborn, I would have given up long ago. But the reason I have maintained this course is because I am looking forward to future joy. It’s not pain for pain’s sake. The reward is actually very simple.

I love beauty. I love to look out on an early spring morning and see crocus pushing their petals through thawing dirt. I love when the robins arrive in their flocks mid-February to pick the darkened husks of berries from dogwoods. I love their run-and-stop, run-and-stop rhythm. And if they are lucky, the worms are waking up too.

And that is why I found myself with a box, shovel, and a digging bar on a cool Fall afternoon at the farm we are making near Salem, Missouri. For now, it is only 19 acres of land with the remnants of an old pig pen, a dog kennel, and a platform where a trailer home used to sit. I don’t know what that used to look like. It burned down before we bought it. And frankly, I’ve spent more hours picking up burned trash and aluminum cans than I have building anything, but I have a vision for what it could be. That is why I decided it was time to plant something.

It hasn’t rained in a while and the earth is nearly as hard as pavement. I know from experience the landscape is so rocky it’s pointless to dig with a shovel. One must use a digging bar or pick axe to break ground. I wouldn’t even call it dirt. The crust is clay and sandstone with flint rocks thrown in for good measure – as tough and unforgiving as the hide of an alligator. The process involves lifting the digging bar, jabbing it into the earth, and pulling back to pry. The bar weighs about 14 pounds so it takes a good heft to lift and jab. The rhythm is, LIFT-JAB-PRY, LIFT-JAB-PRY. One must do this over and over to loosen the dirt enough to pull out a shovel full. Then one stoops to pull out the rocks and throw them into one pile while the dirt goes in another. I tried to find a less rocky place to plant, but in the Ozarks that’s like saying I was looking for a less salty ocean in which to swim.

My father recently gave me a great treasure; a box full of iris that had been thinned from their flower beds. I suppose in my mind there is nothing that holds more promise than a box of old bulbs. When I looked into that box, I didn’t see cruddy, brown tubers with little green fringes of growth, I saw majestic purple iris with white frills unfurling. I saw little splashes of yellow on velvety tongues. But more than all that, I could almost smell the sweet aroma of impossible flowers made possible by the mighty hand of an invisible God.

If he could make all that, I suppose I could forge a flower bed from some rocky dirt.

It took about 2 hours to pick out a 4×3 flower bed and another hour to move and scatter dry, rotten wood from an old wood pile into the hole. Only then did I feel the iris had a chance of surviving. I scattered them around in the bed, turned their green edges up, and pushed the pulverized clay back on top. To complete the display, I moved some large rocks around the bed. Then I stood back with pride and began to hope the flowers would grow.

To be honest, I don’t always enjoy this type of work, but I love beautiful flowers more than I hate back-breaking labor.

Why do I share all of this?

I love Jesus but I struggle to love His church. I have encountered some people there that are just as tough and unforgiving as the ground on my farm. From careless words spoken to callous platitudes intended to force me to submit, those sinners have caused some mighty deep wounds. Worse, in my fury I’ve sinned right back at them. I am both perpetrator and victim. But while I know plenty of people who’ve given up on attending a local church, I’m not one of them. The church is the bride of Christ and heaven forbid He return and not find me among its members because I was nursing wounds over something I should have forgiven and let Him heal.

That is why the day after my rock picking frenzy I found myself sitting at the table of a Fall Festival at the local Baptist church. I’ve been attending there for a few months and trying hard to find Christian community. I was there because my teenage son has plugged into the youth group and was out rough housing with a group of boys on the football field, as happy as I’ve ever seen him. But I was uncomfortable and lonely. I knew hardly a soul. And for all the friendly faces, many refused to meet my gaze and instead moved on to their familiar friends. I thought to myself that it took a lot of courage for me to attend, but that didn’t make me feel any less lonely or sad. A few people said hello and one woman stopped to compliment me on my flowery hat, but after years of being at churches where I knew almost everyone, it was hard to stare into a sea of strangers.

Don’t read me wrong, they weren’t rude or unfriendly. And to my credit, I did try to strike up conversations with a few people. It’s just that I don’t know them, and they don’t know me. Relationships take time and work. And if there’s anything I’ve come to realize over the years of attending church, it’s that finding a real friend in a group of Christian people is no different than finding a friend anywhere else in the world. It takes vulnerability on both sides and some kind of conventional commonality. Older people like me, people with old rusty wounds, are much too guarded, which is probably why none of the elderly people at the church would even look at me. It was only the younger women who dared to ask my name.

I remember the adage, “One must be a friend to have a friend.” Making new acquaintances takes time and energy. So why am I wondering if it’s worth the effort? Talking to people I don’t know feels like LIFT-JAB-PRY, LIFT-JAB-PRY. If I plant the seeds of kindness, will the flower of friendship grow?

By the grace of God, it will.

And when I look at it that way, the better question seems to be, “Does anything good happen outside the grace of God?”

I am looking forward to a reward I can’t see. Right now, I see drought. I feel hard ground beneath my feet. I see leaves falls and trees preparing for a cold winter. I smell the smoke from a wood burning fire and I know snow will be here soon. But with my inner eyes I smell the thaw, I hear the robin song, I see the red bud in bloom. The signs of the seasons remind me that the rhythms of discipline, perseverance, and fortitude are the LIFT-JAB-PRY of forbearance. And I know the reward is worth the wait.

“I love to movie-cry. It’s so cathartic. I love that heartache when something is so moving, you see yourself in the movie, but it’s not your pain. You empathize so much there is a well of emotion.” – Zach Braff

I was watching a video recently about a family who rescued a young crow. Darling touched the hearts of this family after they rescued her, and she adopted them. You can watch the video here.

The reason the story touched me is because of my own experience. I rescued a baby bird, and she has had an incredible impact on me. When I watched the video of the crow playing with this woman and her dog, I was so delighted. I find so much wonder in watching the birds out of my kitchen window and to see a creature so in love with humans is truly beautiful. Over the years I have formed bonds with the birds at my feeder, but nothing is as special as having a sparrow that loves me and lives in my house. It is a special gift.

“Wonder is a gift that makes the mundane extraordinary.”

I recently stumbled across a podcast that I really enjoy called, “Inside of You” with Michael Rosenbaum. I didn’t realize who he was at first. After a few episodes he mentioned Smallville, and I remembered him as Lex Luthor. I don’t remember him as particularly remarkable in that role (probably because I don’t like bad guys) but his podcast is.

Mr. Rosenbaum has a gift for bringing out the vulnerability in his guests. Maybe that is because he is quite vulnerable himself. This doesn’t make him seem weak or feminine or [insert other negative adjectives here]. He is simply real, and with a gift for generosity of spirit, he asks questions of his guests in a way that suggest they really are his friends, and he really does care for them. It doesn’t hurt that he also asks good questions and listens to the answers.

I always liked Zach Braff as an actor, so I listened with interest to his interview with Mr. Rosenbaum. He said many things that resonated with me, but what struck me the most was his humility–something rare in Hollywood. He too has a generosity of spirit for his fellow actors and directors. But there was a moment in the podcast that struck a chord in my own heart. The men were discussing Mr. Braff’s newest movie, “A Good Person,” which Mr. Rosenbaum couldn’t recommend strongly enough. When discussing why he wrote the movie, Mr. Braff said, “I wanted to write something for her (Florence Pugh) because I was so in awe of her.” The way he said it made me believe he was very much in love with her. Unfortunately, the relationship did not last.

It takes a great deal of time, stamina and perseverance to write a story and execute it well. Mr. Braff did that with “A Good Person”, which in itself is a moving portrayal of the aftermath of an accident and how the people involved rebound and evolve. They were discussing how natural Morgan Freeman was for his role when Mr. Rosenbaum asked Mr. Braff the question, “Do you think if you and Florence had broken up before you made the movie it would have been just as easy?”

Mr. Braff said something very authentic. “No. That would have been hard. I don’t recommend directing someone you’ve just broken up with. I think that would be tricky because it’s so emotional. I mean, it’s so hard and stressful period directing a movie in 25 days. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Then the idea of folding an emotional hurricane on top of that would have been impossible.” And then Mr. Rosenbaum asked Mr. Braff about also losing his father. Mr. Braff related how dear his father was to him and how he influenced his love of theatre which has resulted in a passion for acting, storytelling, and directing. As I watched it, I ached with Mr. Braff. He had been dealt several terrible blows by grief in a very short period of time.

You can see the interview here.

While telling their stories, both Mr. Rosenbaum and Mr. Braff seemed so raw. I found myself forgetting they are popular actors famous for the roles they played in television and movies. They are just people who have experienced sorrow and grief and walked through it with courage. The candor they offer is a gift that helps others continue to walk when the path seems too hard or too steep. They inspire me, in part, because their stories are stories of hope.

The crow video and Mr. Braff’s personal story have something in common. In both stories, something beautiful has died. And I have so many questions.

How do they recover from such loss? How do they get up the next day and move forward? How do they let go of what was and embrace what is? And most importantly, why?

I have been through devastating break-ups and lost beloved pets, but I have yet to lose a parent so I am wondering how I will get through it. Still, I hope I will remember my faith in God who holds the power over life and death, wonder and beauty. I hope I will trust Jesus to comfort me and give me spiritual and physical peace to grieve and let go. And I hope I will fight forward and tell the stories in such a way as to inspire others not to give up.

I am thankful for Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Braff and Caolaidhe. They bravely shared their stories, fostered empathy, and reminded me I’m not alone when I grieve. If you are reading this and feeling sad over a painful loss, neither are you.

Darling