Archive for the The Journey Category

Some days are duds. Let’s just call it like it is. The alarm doesn’t go off. Your child misses the bus. Your special needs child is more interested in dancing in his underwear than eating his breakfast. These are the kinds of days when a nice long mope(or grumble) come in really handy. You know what I’m talking about. You put on the sad face or the grumpy face. You march out into the world. You wave your middle finger at the slow driver in front of you and blame it all on bad karma. If you can’t be happy, no one should be happy.

So when I crawled out of bed this morning and looked out the window at the gray and colorless world, I made a decision. I could proceed with option number one(listed above) or I could pretend like it was my last day on earth and celebrate. For me, celebration means changing my thought patterns. Instead of focusing on all the things I can’t do, I decided to focus on the things I can. So I put on my running shoes and opened the front door.

I like to solve all of the world’s problems when I exercise. My brain is busier than a herd of cats on a can of tuna. I’ve got problems and worries and heartaches, enough for at least 2 other people, but alas, I have to deal with them on my own. At the bottom of the first hill I realized that my first problem was climbing the hill and I decided to put all of my energy into that. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but it was steep and I was crabby. Still, I didn’t die so I feel like problem #1 was solved. So after I prayed my standard prayer, “God help me!” (sorry it’s not fancy) I started punching the air with my fists. I am an excellent air boxer. I punch up. I punch down. Then I flop my arms at the side like a chicken. All this flopping serves a purpose. It raises my heart rate AND reminds criminals that want to harm me that I am not sane and I will go all MC Hammer on them if they try to grab me, but I digress.

As you can imagine, I get quite a few stares on these excursions. I laugh with them, of course. I am not above laughing at myself. So after the first walker I encountered smiled at me, I got a little spunky and decided to jog. I must say, I thought I looked very cool running downhill. I was all “look at me in my spandex!” Until I remembered I was wearing spandex. And it wasn’t new. And it wasn’t very supportive. And I’ve born three children from my loins. Oy. I happened to see myself in the reflection of a building I passed and realized something incredible, I look quite a bit like a floppy fish.

And that’s when I started to laugh.

For me, exercise has never been about looking cool or being better than everyone else. It started as a torturous endeavor aimed at shrinking my waistline. Then it turned into a mood enhancing activity. Now, I exercise because I like to entertain my neighbors. Yes, that’s Margaret climbing a steep hill on her bicycle in her culottes. Don’t know what culottes are? Wonder no more. Only I don’t have her body so mine are tight around the middle and not so flowy. Some people call them yoga pants, but on me they look like culottes.

So when my second born child called to say he had overslept and missed the bus, I did not panic. It’s hard to panic when you’re laughing. Instead, I found a quick solution, told him he was awesome, and went right on flopping down the hill. By the time I got home I was in a pretty decent mood and was fully vested in celebration mode. So when my youngest wanted to dance in his underwear, I just joined right in. Well, sort of. That’s what it looks like when I’m hopping up and down as I try to put my pants on.

The life of a full-time working mother is interesting. Improvisation helps. Tenacity is encouraged. Laughter is key. Celebrate your life today by laughing at this floppy fish!

This world can be a very dark place. Our expectations meet reality and produce bitter tears. From the distasteful gaze of a co-worker to the bleating headlines in the newspaper, tragedy knows no boundaries. It bleeds over the lines and into our lives no matter how high our dam. It reminds me of a saying I used to shout at my brother and sister as a child, “You can run but you can’t hide!” The poor dears suffered immensely under my reign of terror. To this day my sister can’t climb the stairs without looking behind her to make sure someone isn’t goosing her rump. We may run. We may even try to hide, but pain will find us.

Pain is the great equalizer. It reminds us we are fragile, both psychologically and physically. Be it loneliness or injury, death or the careless insult, our hearts remind us we are soft and tender. This weekend our family tried to escape the world and the harsh reality of pain for a few days. We took advantage of the holiday weekend and fled to the country. My expectations are never so high as when I am fleeing the city. I exhale the polluted air and inhale sunshine in the great splendor of the outdoors. When the first crackle of the leaves under my boots collides with the errant ray of light cascading through the pine needles, I shrug off the dead skin that covers my heart and sigh. The forest is a shield from the sadness that permeates my regular days. As such I am able to bathe in the glory of spider webs, spring-fed river water, and a crackling fire.

We were there thirty minutes when we realized we forgot one of the tents. I opened my mouth to speak when my husband(who packed the truck) said, “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. We still need a tent.” He knows me so well. When pain interrupts our best laid plans, our first inclination is to point a self-righteous finger at the person we deem responsible and—if possible—poke them in the eye. The nearest store was a 20 minute drive away and sunset a mere hour away. Knowing my family as I do(I am the cook), I was instantly aware that I would be making our dinner in the dark. I knelt down and picked up that coat of stress I had just schluffed off and wrapped it back around my shoulders. Then off to the store I went.

After our bellies were full and all the children were dutifully shouted at for tormenting each other, we climbed into our sleeping bags to (lay awake all night)sleep. My youngest boy(6) adores frogs. He loves to chase them, man-handle them, and love them near to death. What he does not like, is when they take their revenge by singing in a loud chorus while he is trying to sleep. We tried in vain to fit ear plugs into his tender ears. He even tried shouting at them, “Shut up you stupid frogs!” The frogs were too engrossed in their bliss of sound to hear him. There was nothing to be done about making them be quiet and he began to cry. The frog song was truly painful to his delicate senses. So it is with pain. Sometimes we have no power to make it stop and all we can do is cry.

I felt so powerless in that moment. Who could have imagined that the chorus of nature would be so disruptive to my little boy? The sounds that fill me with awe were like a hammer against his ear drums. I didn’t know what to do, so I offered to sing. I sang the words I have sung to my little boy since he emerged from the womb, “Weak and wounded sinner, lost and left to die, raise your head for love is passing by… “(Chris Rice, “Come to Jesus”) His cries diminished as he focused on my voice. I should note that the frogs did not cease their activity, but as he focused on the sure and steady love of his mother, he found comfort and, eventually, sleep.

Yesterday I emerged back into the real world and instantly all its shards of glass penetrated my tender heart. The terrible suffering of my neighbors in Syria and down the street came crashing in like an unexpected wave. As I lay panting on the shore, I heard the voices of my co-workers chattering over lunch about—what seemed to me at the time—the most trivial things. As I considered the physical hunger of those refugees fleeing their homes, and the desperation that drove them to commit crimes in the name of self-preservation, I looked down at my lunch and despaired. I had refused the cookie, the bread, and the soda that came with my free lunch in an effort to maintaining my waistline, and I’m still a white, fat, American. I wanted to scream at myself, “Hypocrite!” But all I could do was sit there and ponder my helplessness.

It is no different as I speak to my friend Joyce. She recently lost her son and is drowning in a sea of sorrow. There are no answers to the questions she and her family desperately seek. They grasp at the air and water the grass with their tears. The world doesn’t bear up to their cries for help. She told me a recent phone call to local authorities was met with callous indifference. My words are inadequate for such pain. I feel like a sheet of paper flapping in the wind as I speak to her. But there is One who will comfort her and those she holds dear. He is the maker of the universe. His love bends low and takes our sorrows in His hands. So when I fail to say the right things, when my arms cannot fight the sting of death, when my care won’t ease the suffering, I know that He can. He is enough. His name is Jesus.

Many years ago He said to me, “For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger, for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer.” God is the great redeemer of pain. He is the great physician who will one day wipe the tears from our eyes. He will take the loneliness, the disappointment, the great cacophony of frog sound, and wrap us in His great arms of love. I am confident of this and I cling to it, like Princess Leia to Obi-Wan Kinobe, “Help me! You’re my only hope!”

I didn’t exercise this morning. Instead, I got up early and made peanut butter and chocolate chip muffins for my boys. It is a small thing, an act of love they completely take for granted. Their mother’s muffins are boring. So is her homemade bread. But of this I am glad! My children take the love I offer in small doses. My love is imperfect and ordinary, but it is real and hearty too. So while I cannot erase the pain that comes into their lives, I will continue to sing as loudly as I can over it. It is a song I learned from my Savior. He sings it to me daily, even while I water the grass with my tears.

This morning I decided that when I grow up, I want to be a pelican. Maybe it’s all the cartoons I watched as a child that show the brave and mighty pelican scooping up water and dumping it on people that annoy them. Maybe I love pelicans because when I see one I know the ocean is not far away. In case you weren’t aware, pelicans are not indigenous to Missouri. They migrate through here, but they don’t tend to hang around. Either way, pelicans are awesome, and somewhat ridiculous.

I am well acquainted with the ridiculous. I hate to wear makeup. I love Brussels sprouts. I collected cicada shells as a child and hid them so no one would steal them from me. I adore toads because they are cute. If that’s not enough to convince the reader that I embrace the ridiculous, this just might… I gave CPR to a dead squirrel on Sunday after it died in our live trap, when just a few weeks ago I swore a blood oath against the squirrels—to maim and murder every one—because they are tomato thieves.

Margaret Ridiculous Wolfinbarger. That’s me! So when I found myself sobbing in the back yard this weekend after someone I loved hurt me, my first instinct was not to forgive them. Actually, I wanted to punch them in the stomach and stomp on their head. Instead, I stood in the dirt—in the midst of my rock-strewn yard—and wailed like a baby. Yes, the men putting a roof on the house two doors down stopped their banal chatter. Yes, my children huddled around me and tried to comfort me and yes, I decided to forgive the emotional terrorist who chose to torment me.

Emotional pain is agonizing. Ask anyone who’s been through a painful divorce or lost a loved one. Even as we try to heal, excruciating reminders prick us relentlessly. A song. A television program. The smell of a specific after-shave. They induce us to ask questions we never considered before, like, how can people be so mean? Why does evil exist? Is there a god? If so, why would he allow such horror? Is he cruel? Is he uncaring? And finally, will the pain ever go away? I have asked these questions and more. Many times have I raged at the earth and sky when the pain was unbearable, and—after much consideration—I have come to the conclusion that forbearance, forgiveness, and pressing forward are the best responses.

Forgive someone who took the life of my child? That’s ridiculous! Forgive my cheating spouse? Absurd! Forgive the relative who took my innocence? Margaret, you must be out of your mind! Maybe. I’ve never claimed to be completely sane. But I will explain how I came to this conclusion.

Several years ago a dear friend caused me great emotional turmoil by walking away from our friendship. To this day I don’t understand the logic behind it. I only know that the rift was irrevocable. The relationship was forever torn asunder, though I tried desperately to reconcile it. The psalmist, King David experienced something similar. He said, “Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me.” (Psalm 41:9) This was a friend who knew my innermost secrets, with whom I had shared joys beyond measure and great sorrow, someone I thought would love me forever. One day, they simply didn’t love me anymore. It was excruciating and I didn’t understand it. Each day as I drove to work I would cry. Then I would cry on the drive home. Thoughts of this person consumed me and I could not handle the grief. So I took my grief to the only one I knew who could, Jesus. I know. It’s 2015 and I sound like a wacky eighteenth century fundamentalist parroting some religious rhetoric. But until one has experienced the devastation of betrayal by the person they love most in the world, don’t expect anything I say here to make sense. Pain isn’t supposed to make sense. It just hurts. And I needed someone to heal it.

I began to adjust to my new reality but the ache didn’t diminish. I began to realize that I needed to forgive this person. But even forgiving them didn’t stop the hurt. In fact, for a while it seemed to hurt more. Forgiveness meant peeling away the calluses and exposing the deepest of wounds in my heart. Each day I would lay my heart in front of my savior and pray for Him to heal it. I learned that healing is sometimes messy business. For me, it meant addressing wrongs that I had done and wrongs that had been done to me. It meant letting go of grudges I felt were justified, and clinging to the hope that one day reconciliation would come, but without putting my life on hold in the meantime. It also meant preparing my heart for the moment my friend would return so that I could offer grace instead of a slap in the face. All the while I kept asking Jesus to heal my heart, and measure by measure, He did.

If forgiveness is a radical idea in our culture, grace is a complete mystery. The elderly couple who stood in line before me today were frustrated when their gift card wouldn’t work. It was obvious they were on a budget and didn’t have the money to pay for their food without it. They apologized to me for making me wait. I smiled and said I wasn’t in a hurry. After they left the cashier expressed his confusion over my behavior. I explained to him that so often we rush through life and in our carelessness, we wound people with our haste. I said, “Think about when someone honks at you for an inadvertent traffic incident. It can ruin your whole day.” He nodded and stared at me in amazement. In response I said, “Why propagate frustration and meanness when we can extend grace?”

Living with a tender heart sometimes feels ridiculous. The arrows people aim in my direction hurt terribly when they hit their mark. Forgiving those who persecute me can be very challenging. For that reason, many people in this world build emotional walls and develop calluses to protect themselves. It just makes sense. Except that when we build walls and calluses, we miss out on the joy that comes from loving and being loved, from wounding and finding forgiveness, from noticing the pain of the people around us and offering comfort.

Sunday morning I woke up and grabbed my roller-skates. I drove to the park, laced up and took off. It wasn’t long before people were chuckling at me. It’s not very often people see a woman with white roller-derby skates zooming around. I could see it in their eyes. “She looks ridiculous!” I smiled and laughed with them. Sometimes being ridiculous is great fun. And great fun is not a far step from providing joy. That’s why I want to be a pelican when I grow up. Yes, pelicans can carry water and dump it on the heads of people who annoy them, but they can also use their mighty beak to sprinkle grace onto the dry and barren hearts of this world.