Destination Discipline

When I was in high school I was obsessed with horror. Horror movies and horror stories plucked a string deep inside me that throbbed like a wound. I didn’t know at the time how deep the pain went. I only knew that the words on the page and the images on the screen were irresistibly titillating. I consumed them and they became a part of me.

I stopped consuming horror in my early twenties after I began to have nightmares. The dreams were so terrifying that I would lay in bed crying and shaking before I went to sleep. I spent years being afraid of the nighttime–not because I was afraid of the dark, but because I was afraid of the darkness inside of myself. It was the beginning of what I now understand to be the failure of fantasy. What I thought was an escape was actually a dungeon from which I could not escape.

My love of fantasy began with romantic novels. I drank stories like wine–to become intoxicated by the feelings that made me feel. My 13 year old life was rather dull and so I escaped into worlds where I could pretend to be a woman being ravished by a man. I learned love from the pages of books that began with a woman having a problem and ended with a man solving it. I fell in love with “and they lived happily ever after”. Happily ever after became my doctrine.

One of the other fantasies that became deeply ingrained in my psyche was the idea that if I was thin and beautiful, I would be happy. All of the popular television programs espoused this doctrine and every movie proclaimed, “romantic love will save us!” And since all the heroines were thin and pretty, I adopted the pursuit of outward beauty. But when I lost the weight in my early twenties and learned that being thin doesn’t automatically make one happy, I despaired and quickly regained the weight. But rather than face the darkness inside–the darkness I was still unwilling to confront–I buried my head in fantasy once again. If I couldn’t be happy in myself, I would rely on stories and television and music to carry me away. Food was my constant companion in this delusion. As I grew heavier, I grew unhappier. As my clothes grew baggier to cover my frame I sank deeper and deeper into self-loathing until I finally felt so small I couldn’t imagine that anyone loved me at all. I was insignificant. Worthless. Hopeless.

Fantasy led me to believe my life had no value because I wasn’t pretty, rich, or famous. The more I “lived vicariously” in worlds other than reality, the more disillusioned I became.

In essence, fantasy made the wound worse.

I didn’t want to do the hard work required to heal and so I festered and foundered and flailed in my foolishness. The hardest thing I have ever done is too look myself in the eye and say, “Margaret, you have a problem. The second hardest thing was to do something about it.

This realization was actually a tremendous gift. I was so enamored with stories that I’m not sure anyone could have convinced me I had a problem. Since my journey to live a healthy lifestyle forced me to confront the pathos behind my eating disorder, I had to pull my head up out of the sand so-to-speak. I found that facing my 310 pound body was truly horrible. Even worse was walking around the block in it. I despaired when I considered how many steps were required to shed 100 pounds (my initial goal) and in order to get through the pain and suffering, I had to focus on something outside of myself. I chose to focus on Jesus. Each day I was tempted to eat foods that were harmful to my body and I had to make hard choices. I chose Jesus. I began to read The Bible like I had never read it before. It’s message became clear; I had hope. And nothing, not even disordered eating could quash that hope.

One of my favorite genres of story is dystopian fiction and so a few years ago when I picked up an interesting title at the library, I found myself ensconced in the story. The book was “Pure” by Julianna Baggot. The characters were so richly drawn and I could not wait for the second title. “Fuse” did not disappoint. And so when “Burn” came out I read hastily. But as I turned each page, longing for a glimmer or hope, redemption or even just the healing the main characters so desired, I found myself more than disappointed. I was angry. The story ended and my hopes for the characters with it. I credited my frustration with the writer or maybe even my understanding of what story she was trying to tell. But then I picked up another story, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” by Ransom Riggs. Again, I could not put the books down. And at the end of the third story, however, I felt the same disappointment. The stories were well written and imagined but I still wasn’t satisfied with where they landed. I was reminded this morning of my disappointment in The Hunger Games series. Same thing. In fact, I think it was the Hunger Games that finally forced me to acknowledge that the stories themselves, and not the authors, were what was disappointing me. Here is why:

Every day I was living hardship. I was facing depression and sadness and pain. I was choosing to believe that God loved me just as I was, and that He would give me the strength to overcome adversity. The hope I was learning in the gospel, that God saw my suffering and cared, was becoming deeply ingrained in my mind. So much so, one could say it was my new reality. So when I read fiction and didn’t see a redemptive story such as the one I was living in real life, I was sorely disappointed.

One of the greatest casualties of fantasy in our culture is the death of self-worth. We forge our identity via celebrities and when we don’t fit the mold, we start to believe the lie that our lives don’t have as much meaning. Now maybe you are reading this and don’t feel that you have that problem. Let me give a few practical examples of how fantasy contributes to catastrophe in every day life.

I have a friend and co-worker who was blatantly told her career was impaired because she chose not to wear makeup every day to the office. She has been passed over for promotions over and over again. Every so often I see her wearing makeup and I cringe. Why can’t she be judged by the quality of her work rather than the amount of eyeliner she applies?

My mother-in-law finally procured her masters degree but was unable to find work after she was laid off. Her age was a prohibiting factor. Why do we perceive the young as the only viable employees in the workforce? Could it be because the images on our screens don’t celebrate older people as strong contributors? Is that why I have to watch videos at work that teach me to renounce age discrimination?

If you think these examples are not indicative of the power of fantasy in our culture, I would beg to disagree with you. Why else are obese people treated so poorly and as failing at life? Those who live the “before” picture but never realize the “after” live with a painful stigma not unlike Hester Prynne in “The Scarlet Letter”.

But I think the most powerful example of fantasy and its impact on culture is indicative of the divorce rate in America. People have so come to believe that marriage is binding only so long as a couple is fond of each other that we are abandoning our marriages in droves. Why stay faithful once the feelings have fled? Every song on the radio says as much. Hearts are breaking all over town tonight because we bought the Cinderella story hook, line and sinker. “Happily ever after” is a myth and has no basis in reality. So why are we paying Disney to feed it to our children day after day?

A new incarnation of the story, “It” by Stephen King released in theaters recently and I remembered how it once haunted my imagination. I read the story and watched the original television version in the early 1990’s. Never before was a story about fearful fantasies so fully realized. The creature preys on children, feeds on hate, and deceives with images of the victim’s worst fears. Every time I see a trailer or advertisement, I cringe. A new generation is primed and ready for vicarious thrills they receive while evading true victim-hood. But I would like to suggest that they are in reality still victims. They believe the lie that the story will not harm them. They believe they are not dying; that they are safe. They believe, as I once did, that they can walk away from the theater and not be harmed. But the truth is potent; stories implant ideas and ideas have consequences.

Human beings are consumers and if we do not consume the right things, they consume us.

Christ came to set us free from fantasies, but He cannot set us free if we are still clinging to them.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of your need? Did you find that you were so lonely in your struggle that you wept silent tears in a bathroom stall at work because you were afraid of the judgmental eyes of others? Did you look at the happy people around you and struggle to remember the happy days of your youth? Do you feel the void in your heart where hope use to be?

Victor Hugo wrote the beautiful character, Fantine, in his magnum opus, Les Miserable. She was described as “The Blonde, because of her beautiful sunny hair” and her story begins when she is young and full of hope for the future. She is in love with Felix Tholomyes and in the company of beautiful friends. They go about celebrating, feasting and drinking, but at the end of the day they are abandoned by the men, and Fantine is left to care for her illegitimate child. She lives and breathes only for her daughter, and in a cruel twist of fate loses her job and is forced to become a prostitute to care for her beloved Cosette.

In the popular musical she sings, “I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell I’m living. So different now from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.” Have you ever felt like that?

How do we manage to keep hope alive when our body is failing? I have a friend who has endured more physical suffering than anyone I know and without complaint. Terri has fought breast cancer twice. She endured Sarcoidosis. Then she met bone marrow cancer and received a successful bone marrow transplant only to develop host vs. graft disease. This plague has attacked her lungs and her bones, which are literally disintegrating. She is now confined to a wheel chair and her days are spent in a small home in isolation. Sometimes we are so reduced by our puddle of pain that nothing will bring us comfort.

So it was with Job, my favorite character in the Bible. Now maybe you are reading this and thinking, “Oh, great. Margaret is talking about religion again.” And maybe you think religion is nonsense for stupid people and no more than fairy tales for the uneducated. If we were sitting in a café over a cup of coffee I would counter that with, don’t we all need a hero? And if we don’t, why are there so many heroes in modern media? (Superman, X-Men, Agents of Shield, Spock, etc.) They are so popular that people dress up like them and pretend to be them. So give me this, even if Job wasn’t real and never lived (which I believe he did), I still think there is something we can learn from him as revealed in his character via his story in the Bible.

The story goes that Satan challenged God to strike Job (a rich and prosperous man) with afflictions with the understanding that, “if you stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, he will curse you to your face.” I get the feeling that this is a familiar strategy of Satan’s. He expects people to curse God when bad things happen to them. And in an interesting twist, God took Satan up on the challenge. In one day, all of Job’s children died in a tragic accident, storms came and destroyed his livelihood, and finally he was stricken with physical sores from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. It would be easy to read all of this with little more than passing interest were it not for the recent afflictions my country of origin is currently faced with (Hurricanes, fires, floods and the obesity epidemic—you know I had to squeeze that one in there!).

Predictably, Job’s wife said, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die.” (and before you are too hard on her, please remember they were her children too). But Job said, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” I can’t imagine there was anyone on earth more deserving of reasons to curse God, but Job did not. Why?

I don’t know about my dear reader, but I have cursed God for much lesser things. Bad brakes, for instance. On my car. (You can’t see me but I’m shaking my head in shame). When I read about Job my heart lurches in my chest. Could I maintain my faith in a God I cannot see if I lost everything of value, like Job did? The honest answer is, I don’t know.

Also, I don’t know how as human beings we come to react so dispassionately to people in pain. Could it be that suffering people make us uncomfortable? Could it be that our inability to relieve their pain makes us feel helpless and so we begin to avoid them because their suffering exposes our own insecurities? Is that why suffering people end up isolated? Because we are too selfish to enter into their suffering with them? But I digress.

Job’s friends did the next reasonable thing they could think of and attacked his character. They basically said he had brought all of this suffering on himself because of his mistakes. I personally can’t think of a more hurtful thing to say to my friend Terri than, “You sure are having a rough go of things. I bet the physical suffering you are dealing with is all your fault.” No wonder Job responded with, “Such miserable comforters are you all!”

But I find immense value in Job’s responses and observations. He says of God, “Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?'” and “For He (God) is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him.” Job pleads for relief and he wants to know why these terrible things happened to him. Isn’t that the question all of us ask when we encounter physical, emotional and basically any kind of stress or pain? “God, why me?”

Whenever the sorrows and suffering in my life overwhelm me, I turn to the book of Job because interestingly, God actually answers back. And his answer (in the form of a series of questions), comforts me. (You can read starting in Job 38 if you’d like the full response). But I think the gist of what He says is, “It’s not all about you, Job. There are bigger things at play here.” And then he goes on to describe His character as revealed through nature. “Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God for help, and wander about for lack of food?” To me this passage is echoed in the words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26)

I think God’s response to Job is basically this, “I see your pain. Nothing gets by me. Now, Job, you say it’s all my fault, but do you –a mere man—really have the whole picture?” (Job 40:2)

Terri could ask God the very real question, “God, does my pain have a purpose?”

I believe it does.

Terri acknowledged the suffering that comes with spending weeks and months in a hospital bed, but instead of wallowing in her suffering, as I am prone to do, she turned her understanding into action. She formed her own little ministry called, “Pouches for Patients.” The ministry provides long term patients on a remote telemetry a way to get out of a hospital gown and into their “normal clothes”. She hand knits pouches that can be worn around the neck and then donates them to the Siteman Cancer Center. The problem is they have become so popular, Terri was not able to make enough to meet demand. So she asks her friends to help sew, crochet and knit more. Where does that kind of love come from? Terri is on oxygen and can barely move due to crushing pain, but she slowly and carefully seeks to find a way to provide relief to others. Why? She wants to give comfort to people with the comfort she has received.

Fantine died in abject misery. Jean Valjean was so moved by compassion for her that he sought out and adopted her child and raised her as his own. If you know the story, he too was helped by the hand of love and grace. We often speak of love as if it is a trifle of a gift to give, but it is the most powerful gift in the world.

We often speak of Jesus as a good man who lived on the earth many years ago. But if we read the gospel stories about him we learn that he claimed to be God. As he was being arrested, one of his friends tried to protect him and cut off the ear of one of the soldiers who sought to seize him. Jesus admonished him, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” And then he healed the guard by putting his ear back on. Can you imagine the conversations that guy had with his friends and family the next day? Jesus was called a man of sorrows and one acquainted with grief. But he didn’t have to be. He could have stayed in heaven and left human beings to their own devices.

But he did not.

Why?

How come we never ask that question?

I believe the answer is because he loves us. At least that’s what all the bumper stickers say.

We are not alone. We are not without hope. But we have something more profound than the mere fleeting happiness of youth. We have something more wonderful than a catchy tune that tells us to “clap along when we feel like a room without a roof.” We have something…no rather, some One, who saw the whole picture and came to sit with us in our pain. He didn’t tell us it was our fault (though it was) but rather took all the bad things we ever did and nailed them to a tree called Calvary and there killed death forever.

Is your husband or brother fighting cancer? Has your son cut off all contact and promised to never speak to you again? Is your body wracked with pain unmentionable? Is your child disabled in such a way that you have retreated to your home and are barely able to leave? Or did your child die? Are you Fantine? Has life killed the dream you dreamed? There is hope. All you have to do is reach out and take His hand.

Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness or the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity

Resolve: to decide firmly on a course of action.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” – Jesus, (via the writing of Matthew 7:13-14)

Stress is a trigger for many people, not the least of which is those who struggle with overeating. If food is the bullet and hunger the gun, stress is that mechanism we unintentionally trip over on the downward spiral to obesity. Stress is unavoidable, but our response to it is not. And so we must formulate a strategy to combat this nasty little byproduct of living in our all-you-can-eat buffet culture.

I was outside staring at the moon-eclipsed sun yesterday when a friend began to describe my weight-loss journey to a co-worker. She talked about how inspiring I am, even though I tried to stop her. I’m not special. I’m just Margaret. The focus of her admiration was that I manage to keep the weight off.

Friend: “Margaret lost 140 pounds.”

Co-worker: “You lost 140 pounds?!”

Me: “Yes, but I don’t consider losing 140 lbs any different than losing 10lbs. Achieving both requires the same amount of dedication and discipline.”

Friend: “Come on! Losing that much weight requires a much different level of self-control.”

Me: “Not really. You just need to learn how to eat healthy food.”

Now one must understand that I was very interested in what was happening in the sky at that moment in time and so the conversation kind-of died off after that, but as I think about our conversation through the lens of what happened after the eclipse, the subject matter take a much more complex turn.

BANG!

I was under a tight deadline to get a project done at work and finished just under the wire. I sighed deeply as I walked out at the end of the day and climbed into my vehicle. The clouds were threatening and storms were rolling across the city as I drove home. For context, my car has recently manifested a nasty case of manufacturing defect in the form of degenerative rust, and my right rear wheel is preparing to detach at any given moment. Therefore, I drove home with a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel and a thousand prayers on my lips as I navigated each bump and jostle. Every bump presents the catastrophic opportunity for the rear end of my vehicle to either break or bend or just generally fall off in the middle of the road. Yes, I know I shouldn’t be driving it, but some commitments are not so easily broken (like going to work).

After surviving the stressful ride home, I navigated another trip out with my child for an important visit to the doctor. During the 45 minute appointment I aged several years and lost a handful of hair due to the antics of said child, but I did at least get a good chuckle as my 8 year old described to another patron how he is not actually a boy who attends school, but rather a 20 year old warlock who lives under a bridge with a diamond tipped staff and menaces the nice citizens who dare pass overhead. The point is this, stress is unavoidable, but my response to it matters and laughter certainly helps.

“Mom, I think you burned the spaghetti.”

My son stuck his fork into dinner and pulled out a blackened noodle. You may ask how that happens. Well, I’ll tell you. It happens when your youngest is racing around the house like he’s being chased by a bee(but he is decidedly not), and a friend is texting with time sensitive information and needs a response right away, and Mom is frying hamburgers and zuchinni in two separate pans, and boiling noodles, and chopping salad and trying not to trip over the dog, who keeps laying down right next to her feet.

“The burnt pasta is the best part.” I said. “It’s crispy AND chewy. Anybody can make squishy pasta. It takes a special kind of cook to burn it to perfection.”

“Shut up and Eat.”

My husband told me I should have ordered “Hot and Ready” from Little Ceasar’s Pizza but I recoil at the idea of filling my children’s bodies with that garbage (and spending money I don’t have). Some people tell me I do too much, but I’m taking care of my family the best way I know how and nutrition is important to me. That is why we had salad with our pasta and hamburgers. I know I am failing as a parent and that’s okay. That is why when my special needs child kept screaming “breakfast” for no particular reason other than he liked the way it sounded, I hollered back, “Onomatopoeia!” I don’t know why, but when I reach the end of my rope that’s just what comes out sometimes. I must be a literary minded.

“Mom, you’re annoying me!”

Finally, he gets it! Saying the same word over and over again IS annoying. And maybe that is why I found his statement so incredibly hilarious. So I did what any mother at the end of her rope would do, I attacked him with the jiggly belly. This involves lifting my shirt a few inches, jiggling my previously fat–now not as fat–highly stretch-marked–flabby and will never be sexy in a bikini–belly. And when he ran screaming from the room—highly traumatized by the sight of his mother—I chased after him squealing, “Jiggly belly! Jiggly belly!”

Sometimes resilience looks like a jiggly belly.

And if the night had ended there, this blog would have a happy ending and all would walk away from their screens with the idea that laughter really is the best medicine and every bad or stressful situation calls for the crack of a joke and group hugs. Except that it doesn’t always.

Sometimes the child with special needs won’t be calm or still and the jiggly belly is not enough to salve the suffering. Sometimes tempers flare because noses are stuffy from crying, and sleep is elusive, and hives have resurged, and daddy can’t take it anymore because his back is hurty and mommy has to stand and hold the door so the walls don’t come crashing down around our tear-stained faces. This is life, my friends, and real life doesn’t have a perfect script to follow. No matter what the psychologists and psychiatrists and well-meaning Christian friends with perfect children who don’t understand mood-disordered adolescents say.

He is enough.

A friend at work recently reminded me that in the deepest trenches, in the darkest holes, in cancer, in grief, in deadly despair, in the aftermath of divorce, Christ is enough. He is always enough. Sometimes I just forget because my emotions are so big and my heart is so heavy.

“This is the message we have heard from him(Jesus) and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5

God is not malicious or malignant. There is nothing in him that strives to harm me. He does not always answer my prayers the way I want him to because his ways are not my ways. I cannot possibly understand how pain could be for my good but He is a magician that way; he allows bad things so that my heart will be healed. My body may hurt, but it’s my heart he’s most concerned with. He loves me so much that he dresses the most painful and tender wounds I have, and that’s never convenient or comfortable. But he knows it’s the only way to cure me once and for all. And importantly, when I ask the question, “Why”, he doesn’t shoo me away or disdain to answer. He simply says, “I love you. Won’t you trust me?”

This love is a mystery. It befuddles the senses. We reject it because we don’t understand it and therefore fear it. We point at the darkness and shout, “It’s your fault, God!” And He lovingly tries to cure us while we flail around and smack at his hands. But sometimes if we are really lucky, we run out of energy and lay there gasping for relief. And then He very gently leans over and touches the real wound—the unbelieving heart—and shows us just how very much He does care.

Resolve, not just a carpet cleaner!

I opened the refrigerator door and stared at my options: death by chocolate, ice cream or cookies. Sure, I know none of those are healthy options, but they will help my heart feel better after the day I’ve had. I know I shouldn’t eat them. After all, my pants will be unhappy with me and who wants to look bulgy all day while people are silently judging me?

But then I remember what I have resolved to do. I remember that food doesn’t fill the empty places in my heart—the frayed places—the hurting places. Only God can do that. And so I close the refrigerator door. God loves me. He knows where it hurts. He is present in my pain and He will not abandon me in pursuit of the prettier, more perfect child who never flashed the jiggly belly when her mind reached the end of its tether. (And believe me when I say that’s just one of the nicer examples of the ugliness that happens sometimes when my patience runs out).

We are all trying desperately to anesthetize our suffering and we are eager to pull the trigger. Whether it is food or alcohol or drugs or porn or shoe-shopping, we hold the gun and we choose which way to aim it. Our culture says, “Choose your weapon wisely”. Christ says, “I love you. Lay your weapon down and just be held.”