a stick in the sand

I'm wrestling with two sides of a coin, these days: the blessing-curse of technology. People are right to be wary of online substitutes for community, and the addictive qualities of screentime. Yet, I cannot wring my hands about it too much, having experienced deep connection and joy using the various tools of long distance communication during military deployments, for most of my life. There was a time when I found myself resisting the "powers that be" in public school, who pushed us to accept technology as a unilateral savior of our students, when we teachers (and parents) knew better. Now that I stay home part-time, I am teaching students around the world online, and my own kids in person. Both experiences continue side by side, for me, and are relatively seamless in spite of the coronavirus: Analog homeschool, online school, homeschool using digital tools... Most days we can play outside on the farm, so the only difference is finding our new normal with nowhere else to go. 

Whatever frustrations are caused by teaching online with social distancing, I'm thankful for the relative depth I experience in community with other Christians online - students, teachers, parents, family. Our local co-op that normally meets in person is now experiencing the unexpected joy of letting kids learn Latin chants, practice skip counting, use maps, and do presentations to each other online. The children's joy in seeing each other through new eyes is contagious. We as adults know the dark sides of technology, but they remind us of the light--and opportunities to connect that we take for granted. The trick is not to conflate technology with anything more than a tool... like a stick in the sand. 

This reminds me of every military training exercise I ever participated in. Among other things, we used to test plans against weaponized biological threats, using elaborate tech platforms and simulations... and not-so-elaborate paper and pen. One thing we always practiced adjusting to was the loss of technology. Cyber attack, electrical storms, or any number of issues could theoretically arise during these exercises, and while all the younger, digital natives in uniform would take a moment to bang heads against the wall, the salty, experienced "backbone" of the Army would sigh with relief... and anticipation. "Time to teach these caffeinated, bespectacled 'college grads' how to use the old grease pencil!" they'd say to themselves, each other, and anyone in earshot, while unrolling the old-school acetate layouts over each map board. Invariably, while we adjusted to the new tools, debates about the superiority of the old ways or the new ways crackled in the air. My little secret was that I loved ALL of it: the crusty, tobacco-chawing NCOs teaching us cold-war era threat templates in analog, and the cutting edge ones teaching us battle tracking with computers. I understood why people pitched their tents permanently in one camp or the other: preferences and comfort zones and drawing lines in the sand are as are human as war itself. Yet, it always felt in my gut like they were both right, and so it made sense that we always used both methods, both in training, and in war zones. 

Motherhood and schooling are a different kind of trenches, altogether. The same battle lines are drawn there, too, vs. the old and new schools and tools. Most resilient groups realize that it is, of course, a matter of how we use (and rest from) our tools. Yet, we all experience anger, fear and sadness when we feel forced to rest from our favorite tools, or try new ones. I've crafted a short prayer to share with friends and community who have a hard time celebrating technology as a tool for the Church at home, right now:

Thanks be to our Lord, who was himself a skilled worker, a tektōn (τέκτων) from which our word "technology" derives, who will empower us by His Spirit to use this tool for the good of his Body and Bride, during challenging times.

Several times this week, I taught from the cab of our truck, parked outside the brand-new (closed) local library. Our 6yo worked on reading in the backseat, so my husband had our 9yo and 2yo as he began his day, working from home. The library wifi is unmatched in this rural town: where we live, it's a big challenge, but drive down the road 5 minutes, and that fiber has been laid so that at least the public can have reliable high speed internet. It reminds me of the times I attended masters classes from the hood of my humvee, between field exercises and then briefings that were also on Adobe--the same platform we used for grad school classes. The same tool, used for both war and peace. The ability to be expeditionary, at least, is heartening. I share this with gratitude, as an antidote to the temptation to despair, becauseI really hate not being out and about, "seeing and being seen." There are more opportunities for my self-mortification there, but I am also attending to the good and holy longing underneath. We need solitude, yes, but we are made for community.

My composition class -- which was supposed to be concerned with plot structure in fiction writing -- wanted to begin with a rant against virtual art museum "field trips," plus a lament of all things "shut down." Sometimes the class has a mind of its own! Within about 5 min, we got it out of our system with an abbreviated debate. I love not having to explain why art masterworks are important, and proud of their interest in seeing specific works in person. They make so many fine connections, across classes, which was always my favorite part of school studies, anyway. 🎨

📚📖 

Here is a summary of their argument:

Thesis - virtual museums ARE a worthwhile experience because they promote access to great art with curated information and images

Antithesis - virtual museums ARE NOT a worthwhile experience because they degrade the quality of in-person viewing

Synthesis - While viewing great works in person is superior, virtual museum experiences CAN provide a "gateway" to the study of art and PREPARE US NOW for in-person museum experiences LATER

They crack me up. 😆

Our girls had fun doing piano lessons online, too. As I sat with them, helping with the tech challenges, being the camera woman, 🎥 I had the thought: I wonder if this time of slowed down everything (with some substituting of normal activities for virtual ones) is what it will take for me to finally feel like I am not chronically rushing, or lagging. I wonder if I'll be able to unhook from the need to undervalue or overvalue the quality of every waking moment with my family, friends and students?

I do wonder if life can become a rhythm dominated by I-Thou moments, with fewer I-It moments. Martin Buber defined I-Thou moments as anchored in the present, with full awareness of the sacred image of God in the other person, rather than treating them as objects, or extensions of ourselves. Yet, our many screens, our mortgages, our bills, our savings and our vacation funds -- not to mention the siren song of finding meaningful work, a sense of closure and significance at day's end -- all threaten to supplant that image. We trade God for these idols, minute to minute, day to day, and beyond. As British poet William Wordsworth said, "Little of what we see if ours. We give our lives away, a sordid boon." Henry David Thoreau echoed him on our own continent, when he said, "The price of anything is the amount of life you are willing to exchange for it." When we try the calculus of who owes whom--now that we are all confined to home, for things like childcare, income, and education--the normal models fall apart. It turns out money doesn't explain at all what things (or people, their time and energy) are really worth. I wonder if life can become less like transactional, and permanently more like sacred space all day, as a result of this extended practice we're enjoying. 

Perhaps this coronavirus, being such a physical reality, yet affords us the chance to practice greater integrity in the way we attend to the distances between us. It's simple enough to adjust our commutes, and the time and resources we spend to be with others over long distances... or is it? There is much that is normal in our culture (traffic, longer commutes) that, over time, puts us gravely out of rhythm with Sabbath rest. What is Sabbath rest? Pete Scazzero defines it as resting from our illusions that we keep the world going at all, through rest, cessation of work (paid and unpaid), delight, and contemplation, for 24 hours each week. I have heard some (modern, not Amish) people choose to refrain from driving vehicles on their personal Sabbath, because they realize life on the freeway can be just as soul-sucking as a life mediated through screens. I wonder if we can learn rhythms that help us manage our many tools (technology included) to support deeper I-Thou relationship with others, with God, and with ourselves. Can we learn to use them, and then cease periodically, before these helpful things we made with our hands become idols to which we give up our lives? If it's possible with cars, I think it has to be possible with screens, yet it's no wonder some eschew both! Each takes on a life of its own, the more we come to depend upon it. 

The mystery may be that sometimes it's in the practice of using a tool well that keeps us from idolatry, and sometimes it's in refraining from use. Put that way, the use of digital communication technology sounds a bit more like rotating crops and fallow fields, keeping animals for work and food... and therefore a bit more connected, and, well, human.

many waters

Psalm 18:16-19 

(Attributed to David, after escaping the anger of King Saul, who sought his life)

He sent from on high, He took me;

He drew me out of many waters.

He delivered me from my strong enemy,

And from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.

They confronted me in the day of my calamity,

But the Lord was my stay.

He brought me forth also into a broad place;

He rescued me, because He delighted in me.

As a child, I remember reading Madeleine L'Engle's sci-fi novel, Many Waters, and facing the impending flood in a desert-scape with Noah and his family as a great adventure. Shortly after the birth of our second daughter, I ventured out for an afternoon with a friend to see Darren Aronofsky's epic Noah in the theater, and the pathos was overwhelming. Of course I wept. What had changed? Marriage and motherhood change everything. While I have always fallen in love with the settings and characters of a great story - the myth of the Great Flood is no exception - I am far more susceptible to heartbreak over lost beauty and innocence now that I am jointly responsible for two small lives. All great myths require us to ask, "Is any of this is true?" and then, "In what sense is it true?" Of course, C.S. Lewis reminds us that we must pay close attention "when myth becomes fact", because something supernatural and deeply real is occurring. When flood waters came near us last spring, Truth was inescapable: I owe more thanks for life on a daily basis than I am accustomed to giving.

First, there is something to be said for living in an ark. It reminds that we all are vulnerable sojourners on earth, when we fancy ourselves self-made masters of our own households. Ha, the wind and the rain remind us, and we can only reply hey, ho as the Bard intended, for the rain, it raineth every day, without a nod toward our plans. We considered moving into a houseboat once, but not for long, since we dreaded the idea of scraping the hull in wetsuits. After years of scheming, we settled for a tiny house on wheels. That is a story for another post, but suffice it to say that some of our mantras came from a semi-humorous "conviction" that we should plan for the zombie apocalypse, nourished by musical, waking dreams:

Our love will sail / in this ark / the world could end outside our window / we'll find forever / and write our name in fire on each other's hearts 

(Janelle Monae, "Say You'll Go")

I wanna wake up with the rain / falling on a tin roof / while I'm safe there in your arms / so all I ask is for you / to come away with me... 

(Nora Jones, "Come Away With Me")

What did we want to leave behind? Suburbia: a place that had been good to us, but that suddenly felt cold and constraining. The romance of the open road, the hope of more time in the great outdoors, made possible by less time cleaning and maintaining square footage, keeping a yard, and amassing stuff. We traded traditional homeowner concerns for new ones, and a rising river was among them. We live in a community that stays informed, where neighbors look out for one another, and emergency evacuations are rehearsed and enacted with good result. When the river crosses the 100-year flood plain twice in a decade, we don't leave these things to chance. Our veterans predicted that we'd have six hours' warning to leave our site for higher ground. The warning came as we left Good Friday services downtown at 7:30pm, and the river crossed our road, cutting off access to our site at 2:30am the next morning. We were safely out of the area, staying the night in a church parking lot until adventuresome, hospitable, church friends could lead us to their acreage in the morning. From the time we arrived at our home to evacuate until it was hitched up and road-ready, 55 minutes were filled with packing, disconnecting, and "battening down the hatches," as my submariner father would say. Years in the Army also had taught our family how to be mobile and even expeditionary, for which we are grateful.

We had seen articles of tiny houses evading hurricanes, and as we watched the water snake its way into site-built homes and churches overnight, we were beginning to understand both the risks and the rewards of waterfront locations, as well as houses built to move. Nevermind that some may regard us as vagrants, even reckless parents placing our children at the mercy of the elements. Percieved trauma becomes traumatic, somehow. If I felt guilt that we were sleeping in a parking lot, potentially inconveniencing our friends like a couple of college kids bounding into town to "crash for a few weeks," I also felt eddies of exhilaration and deep, swift gratitude coursing through me. We closed the curtains, taking turns to keep watch that the bridge would remain passable through the night. We were home, and though they had fussed as if we'd squeezed in a grocery store trip an hour before bedtime, our children now slept serenely. 

In the morning, our cheery hosts guided us to a neighboring plot of land lent by a brother-in-arms and his family. We stayed until the water receded permanently, and the swollen waterways heaved out their flotsam. This had to be retrieved, extracted, and sometimes disposed of, as communities restored their patchwork lives. In a the purple glow of symphonic evenings cued by fireflies, we enjoyed proximity to friends, sharing meals, laundry cycles, and jokes about hauling blackwater to the sceptic port. We made ourselves less burdensome in small ways, gave tiny house tours, and tried to be charming. If nothing else, we banished boredom and solitude just long enough for our retired friends to miss these luxuries. After two weeks (our 40 days and 40 nights) we rejoined our usual neighbors, many of whom had enjoyed two weeks of collaborative feasting and fellowship. They ribbed us for being absent, for not being eyewitnesses to their feats of solidarity: they had pooled the available power, water, and daily donations from surrounding farmers on higher ground, giving new meaning to the Psalmist's "you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies."

A word about those enemies: in a tiny house, these are most certainly complacency and fear, which work in tandem to make the whole endeavor seem a joke with no punch line. I cannot count the times folk have beheld us and betrayed on their faces that they think they are seeing a modern version of Dorothea Lange's migrant workers in living color. I also live in certainty that they will be right about us - that it will be a tragedy - if we neglect that tire pressure, those bearings, those axles, that coat of weatherproof oil the siding has wanted all year and the heat tape to winterize the plumbing. They will be right about us, and we adults will be the villains, playing "kids" with our irresponsible wanderlust. 

I am learning to hold these suspicions with an open hand, because they belie a truth that we all prefer to ignore: tragedy strikes where it will. If the villain is the enemy of merriment (taking himself too seriously at the cost of life, love, and beauty) then we are all the villain when we pursue security at the cost of community, justice, and that seventh-day rest that is always engulfed by more work. If the tragic hero is blinded by hubris, then our proper sense of pride has overflowed the bounds of a proper ambition, until it becomes our ill-fated quest for an inflated American Dream, and our fatal flaw "the love of money." Living through the housing crisis and Great Recession, we sort through the mixed bag of suburbia, and our illusions are exposed. We are not alone; more people can benefit from the dose of gratitude gained by subverting suburbian norms, even in subtle ways. When neighbors share tools instead of owning one of everything, tend community gardens, and mentor young ones outside their insular families, they humanize these risks and rewards. They remember what we'd all like to forget. No one has truly earned all of the advantages or disadvantages she experiences. No way of life is immune to what insurance companies call "acts of God." Everyone is accountable for how we weigh the risks and rewards of being alive and in relationship, investing our time, our treasure and our energies. This is reassuring when we question ourselves about living in a tiny house "down by the river." We cultivate our sense of humor about our situation, because it keeps us human, and helps us avoid taking ourselves more seriously than we ought.

What the waters left behind in our neighborhood was telling. The nearby fields lost their fresh fertilizer, setting farmers back weeks and months. How food grows is a mystery worth giving thanks for. Tree trunks, picnic tables, and propane tanks bobbed in the wake of the flood until they (mostly) came to rest where people read their labels and tried to return, repurpose or discard them. Nothing is truly wasted - not even the deep sense of loss and regret in passing a soggy mattress piled into a dumpster. FEMA came to condemn and pronounce fit for living the left trailers of those who opted to stay in the flood zone. Some lost their weekend retreat, but neighbors and landlords made sure that no one was left homeless. 

Home is both strange and familiar. It defies the words we use to wall it in, escaping out into the woods and curling up under a tree or stretching out on a grassy knoll. It beckons us like the gathered-round firelight, the worn rug where we cast off shoes and cares, and the old armchair that needed to be reupholstered a decade ago. When home is on wheels, its worth is measured not in mortgage payments or resale value, but in the cherubic, sleeping faces of its smallest inhabitants. When the river steals out of bed to lap hungrily at shorelines, we keep watch, warmed by the sleepers' calm in the storm. And, we remember that there will be a luminous bow of color at the end of many waters.

her warfare is accomplished

It has not been a calm week in our house. Perhaps that is because we now live, by choice, in 350 square feet. Perhaps it is because we just brought a new baby home. One thing is for sure, our almost three-year-old, like each of us, is adjusting. Her waking exclamations of "our tiny house is finally finished!" as the sunlight streams into her loft turn into groans of "it's not time to get up yet, it's still dark!" when her little sister has a wakeful night. These are, of course, problems faced by new families regardless of the size of the home, but perhaps we are more acutely drawn into life together by being totally at the mercy of each other's rhythms in a smaller space.

This time last year, I was nearing the end of a deployment to Afghanistan, living in a 25' by 10' container,  and realizing that all of this was more possible than I'd previously thought. Just outside the wire, I'd seen semi-nomadic camps of Kuchi tribespeople, their women brightly dressed, usually with a baby on the hip and several small ones lugging fuel and water to the collapsed mud walls where they draped their tents. It occurred to me that while I could wash my face and order an omelet within minutes, these women managed many more competing urges on waking: relieving the bladder after a full night, consoling crying children, starting a fire for breakfast, keeping skirts and head coverings from tangling with everything. Under this, they often face the nagging reality of being overlooked and under appreciated for all these feats. They usually lack a voice in the family and larger society entirely. My worst mornings are still a cake walk compared with this.

When I think of the last Great Altercation between my preschooler and I over toilet training, my anger seems petty, and I realize that I am too easily overwhelmed. Before and after deployment, we have had many chances to tango over her using the toilet. (My frustration mounts because I remember a time when, at six months, she could eliminate waste predictably while held over the seat, using gentle communication techniques known throughout the world wherever there are no disposable diapers.) That we still have puddles on the floor daunts me. Weeks have gone by without incident, but this week we stepped so far back in time that it made my husband and I wonder whether the behavior isn't just regressive attention-seeking, with all the adjustments of a new addition to the family.

I have peace of mind that prior to deployment I spent every available moment with our daughter, who was 18 months when I left for dusty Kandahar. Likewise, we have been very intentional about my quality time with her during reintegration, despite the almost immediate news that we were expecting another little girl. So why all the strife? Why do I not handle it better when she disobeys, misfires, or acts out in frustration: "Mom, I don't KNOW why I'm crying right now." Her Ls and her Rs are still Ws. Her "th" sound is still a "f" most days. Why do I expect that she can always tell me why she's upset, when many adults cannot do the same? I have been ashamed to repeat to my husband what can transpire when he is gone and things go poorly. It is clear that we parent better together, and that I need a refresher course in relating to my own child, with all these changes.

Thankfully, my daughter is already a pretty good teacher. I hold to the idea that authority figures like parents and teachers, while uniquely accountable for their leadership within the learning process, are also co-learners with children and students. Recalling this is like remembering that someone hid you a key under the flowerpot when you believed you were locked out of the house for the rest of the day. It helps me unlock the clues that my daughter keeps leaving for me, and reopen that sense of wonder in parenthood as co-creation with God, when I lose it. The best clues lie in her play and make-believe.

While waiting for the labor pains to start that would bring us a baby, my daughter and I developed a ritual on those evenings when my husband was out working: dinner, an episode of "The Magic School Bus," bathtime, books, and bed. It was calming and in tune with the falling darkness outside, and she is riveted by the drama and characters in her new favorite show. Early on, she began calling me Ms. Frizzle, the zany and ebullient teacher who safely shepherds her class through nature and science while putting them in the driver's seat and urging them to "Take chances! Make mistakes! And get messy!" When I am Ms. Frizzle, my daughter dubs herself Keysha, after one of the students who tends to catastrophize when the class seems to be in peril of, for example, a fast-approaching T-Rex or meteor, saying, "Oh bad. Bad, bad, BAD!" When she repeats this to herself, there is usually no real danger, but as I eavesdrop, her imagined crises usually relate to something dropped, lost, soiled, or broken, much like in her real world. That she calls me Ms. Frizzle is a reminder of how she wants me to be - a secure base from which to explore the world, to take perceived risks, to make a mess, to get it wrong - and to do this unflappably, with a smile.

One is reminded of the Banks' children's advertisement leading to the arrival of Mary Poppins: "If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition... play games, all sorts... never be cross or cruel, never give us castor oil or gruel." While I sympathize with this desire for a self-possessed adult who always seems to know how the story ends and therefore never gets too cross, I wonder where is the place for anger, for frustration, for being at your wit's end in parenthood? Surely even God shows displeasure with us, his children. I am reminded, however, that I have more in common with Ms. Frizzle than I would like to admit. Neither of us is really omniscient, or perfect, even if a child's eyes can make us seem so. After all, as a teacher, I am accountable for incorporating my daughter's messes and mistakes as part of the learning process, to embrace them and to not come unglued. If I make a complete confession, I would have rather spent my minutes doing something other than teaching her how to clean up a mess, and I feel am owed more fun in life than that. I do not see it as the sacred task that it is, and I do not see Jesus making me more in his image as I parent. When I consider my failings, compared with Ms. Frizzle's cheery demeanor, I am reminded that perhaps there is less room for righteous anger while teaching my daughter than I'd like to admit. "In your anger do not sin," Jesus told us, and perhaps that is why I ought to be a little more like Ms. Frizzle and leave the righteous anger to God.

While I was deployed, my husband faithfully took our daughter, then a toddler, to swim lessons, preschool, and the library each once a week in a routine that both kept them sane and presented her with strange new situations to satisfy her brain's craving for anything novel. At the library, Margaret Hodges' retelling of St. George and the Dragon became a fast favorite. Our daughter styles herself as St. George, and calls me Una, the princess who leaves her realm to find and bring back a knight worthy to free it of the afflicting dragon. The elaborate illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman show Una as beautifully fragile, but also as strong, as capable of defending her people with the right help, ranging epic mountains and fearful woods on horseback, leading St. George to his quest. I am happy that my daughter sees herself as a kind of warrior - life itself affirms that this is true. I am puzzled that she sees me as her Una, and today I struggle to decipher what she is telling me that she needs in calling me this name. Perhaps she is telling me that she knows we are in the midst of a struggle, that the fiery, unpredictable dragons of anger, exhaustion and self-righteousness can strike at any time in the heart of our small realm. Perhaps she is telling me that she knows we are in this together when she says, "Una, I am very sorry I peed in my pants again," and waits for me to say, "I forgive you." Perhaps she even knows that it has been hard to switch from responsibility for only myself and a staff of adults to just two little women - that I wrestle with the need for importance and motion and the illusion of progress. Perhaps that is why sometimes I need to hear her say to me, as the wings of my retreating anger flap overhead, "Mom, I forgive you, too." 

Fictions are not just a luxury: we need them. When my daughter creates these other worlds for herself to live in, I am reminded of my own need to see past the world as it is and envision what it could be. J.R.R. Tolkien put it this way in his essay, "On Fairy Stories":

The consolation of fairy stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive’. In its fairy tale or otherworld setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophy, of sorrow and failure; the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glance of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. 

I have witnessed many homecomings in my life, growing up as a Navy kid. I have heard many stories from peers, superiors and subordinates during my Army service of brief honeymoon periods, followed by an insatiable desire to escape and bury oneself again in work after returning from deployment. Perhaps one reason reintegration with family can seem so defeating to us is that we feel a guilty kind of discontent that we spent so long missing family, and when we return, we don't remember how to enjoy what we've been pining for. It may help to be reminded that this frustration is common, and that it is part of the "anxiety of becoming" experienced by all of creation. We fall so far short of our own expectations because we live in a fallen world, and because we are still being remade: out of the distorted image of a parent who never gets angry but abdicates responsibility to correct bad behavior, or on the other hand berates a child over spilled milk. We should expect to feel futile sometimes, and when we despair of the "perfect parenthood" we imagined for ourselves, we find hope in the words of St. Paul to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.

Romans 8:18-25 

I am also reminded of the prophet Isaiah's words about the coming of Christ and his Kingdom:

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.
“Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD’S hand
Double for all her sins.”
A voice is calling,
“Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
“Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together; 
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Isaiah 40:1-5 

This passage, in rehearsals and performances during one Advent season in college, is responsible for my not abandoning the Church altogether, and for that reason continues to be a luminary for me. I keep it, like the bottled starlight given to the hobbit Frodo by the elf Galadriel: "May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out" (from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien). When I went to war, it was in my arsenal to ward off despair and the sense of futility that threatens all of us when we are far from home on an uncertain path. My husband sent me a mixed tape for our anniversary simply titled, "Her warfare is accomplished," containing a track of the "Messiah" movement containing this passage on it, wedged appropriately between the electronica and classic rock. I felt oddly reverent to be on the receiving end of a mixed tape, as we had made many recordings for my father during his deployments when I was a kid. After thanking my husband for this labor of love (mixed tapes are, I'm told, a very precise art!) I also recall wondering with him how to avoid bringing my "warfare" home with me when I left Afghanistan. We knew I would certainly bring home some kind of scar, however small. We prayed that this would be for our good and that we would heal and recover well together. At that point, we knew, even as we did not want to acknowledge, that there would be some dark days of learning how to be a family again, up close.


Military training and experience teach us to set goals and pursue excellence in all matters, personal and professional. It also teaches us to balance this with intimate knowledge of our own capabilities and those around us, helping to regulate our expectations. Sometimes the chance to wargame how badly something might go, and arm ourselves for that worst-case encounter is, oddly, comforting to us. This week, as I reflect on my recent labor to bring our baby girl into the world, on my husband's sacrifices to help us each thrive over the past three years, and on our preschooler's struggle to choose a world that revolves around our life together instead of just herself, the expectation of difficulty is comforting. We do what's hard all the time - we train for it. With a wry laugh that comes from tough, resilient joy, we remember that the struggle to become better members of a family is as epic as it seems, because our very souls - and those of our children - are at stake. It makes sense, then, that it should be tough and adrenaline-charged at the same time that it is fun and exhilarating: all of our most gratifying experiences are. 

my god and my mother

My mother was someone special. Many of us feel that way about our own maternal figure, and it's easy to see why. Mothers can fill our bellies with warm cookies, rub our weary shoulders, and spangle our memorable moments with celebration. My mother was not so great at the making of cookies--not for lack of talent, but of time--once three, four, and five daughters tumbled in to fill her days with mud pies and make-believe. She did relish the act of creation: we each have a handmade Christmas stocking from an earlier, craftmaking period, and the stitches tell that her sewing was much better than mine is. Somewhere along the way, though, it became less important that she made things for us from scratch, and more important that the household division of labor prepare us for future life on our own. Around sixth grade, we each were assigned our own weekly meal to make. Minus a few confusions of salt for sugar, everyone benefited from the experience of making and partaking together. Mom was the glue that made all the macaroni, popsicle sticks, and glitter hold together: our meals, projects, and special seasons.

Growing up in a navy family, special seasons could come at any time of year. Pictures bear witness to posters and coordinated outfits, part of our homecoming rituals for Dad's return from months on a submarine. In the parenthetical, pregnant times between his coming and going, we never seemed to lack, but enjoyed elaborate 3-dimensional cakes frosted by hand, themed birthday parties by the beach, and visits with family and friends. There were whole days spent in the water, broken only by a midday picnic. Mom at the pool those summers was my first glimpse of raw womanly power: elastic, surging, gliding through the water. She was water to me; a female foil for Poseidon, willing the oceans to give Dad safe passage, washing, bubbling, brimming and rushing to fill in the empty spaces in our days. She used water especially to fill our free time, sending us back to swim lessons until we completed all of the Red Cross swimming levels, making sure we each felt powerful and at home in the water from an early age. She was savvy enough to redouble her energies by letting our swim instructors wear us out all morning, before swimming with us all afternoon. With extra sets of eyes and arms all around, often in coordination with other mothers, the five of us sisters were far easier to keep safely busy and entertained. Even so, she never let us think that the water was inherently safe, but taught us how to keep a watchful eye on each other. I once watched her, fully-clothed, enter a friend's backyard pool (her rescue training taking control) when two of my sisters were locked in a dire, deep-end struggle past the point of hearing reason. In moments like these, she seemed to wield the power of life and death to me. 

That she brought us into the world, creatively sustained us and restored us from skinned knees, broken arms, and wounded pride is God-like and deserves reflection. But that is just the beginning. In the arc of my mother's story, it seems easy to trace the peaks and valleys. Perhaps the highest peak was when she wrote her book, Footsteps of the Faithful, about our adventures as a military family from Groton to Guam. In a sense, she was a Penelope to my father's never-ending odyssey, savvy defender of home and hearth while my father, "skilled in all ways of contending," came and went with the tides through many deployments. But my mother did more than weave tales and pine for Dad's return. To me, she became larger than life when he was away. Besides the dogged synchronization of schools and soccer, births and homecomings, she strung our days together with a sense of adventure that gave each deployment (and each new home) its own story within the story. Her narrative ability went beyond the creation of meaning: she also chose to breathe life into people through her use of language. "The tongue holds the power of death and life" she used to remind us, and exemplified speech that was "seasoned with salt" meant to encourage fellow God-followers and woo future ones (Proverbs 18:21 & Colossians 4:6). She used Scripture in song to help us "hide God's word in our hearts," and we marveled at her ability to find that "word aptly spoken" both for her family members and friends. (Psalm 119:11 & Proverbs 25:11).

She could also be like the sea in stormy weather, with unpredictable swells that threatened to capsize conversation. It seems any woman formidable enough to weather life as a navy spouse would have to have a few barnacles, too. What staggers me, looking in the mirror, is how some of her rough edges have passed on to me with the strength and the salt. I hear her in my arguments about dishes and mail-piles at the end of a long day...on ocassion, if I argue accidentally near a mirror, I see her. I stop, I breathe, and wonder. The roles are somewhat reversed: I do not wait, but come home to kiss my husband at day's end, tally the order and chaos, and am tempted to pronounce. Would I do it any better as a stay-at-home mom...could I? I am my mother's daughter, and that means strength and effervescence, but also the barnacles. "Reckless words words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing," I hear my Mom chide, and the implication is that we should speak only to give life to our fellow beings, never to take it (Proverbs 12:18). 

My mother and I are both good examples of how difficult it can be to harness the tongue, and well-meaning, purposeful women can often do the most harm to each other with their words. It's as if the pursuit of excellence in one woman's life precludes her from allowing another woman's excellence because it takes another form. One does not have to look far to find examples of this in our current political dialogue, and as a working mother who loved her stay-at-home mother, it saddens me to see women attacking and undermining each other in this way. I lost my mother the year I got married, the same year I also lost my grandmother. I often wonder what we would say to each other, my daughter bowling and beaming around on the floor during my lunch break or holiday leave. Mom usually disapproved of working motherhood, and struggled with the idea of me in harm's way when I joined the Army.  My mother and I probably would have to work hard at affirming one another's divergent paths in life, and we undoubtedly would have stepped on each other's toes at times. Even so, there are many unsaid things I wish I could share with her. I wish I could swap insights on marriage, on motherhood, on my vocational adventures. In some ways, the same iron jaw that got her through deployments on the homefront is the same one I'll rely on when I deploy: life in the trenches of childrearing and homemaking might not be so different from going to war. Both require ingenuity, endurance, and courage to face one's fears in a very fallen world. 

What to do with these inheritances? How to find just enough salt and the choicest words for the current task? How will I ensure that whether I am swimming forward or treading water, my strength will be renewed in proportion to the time and distance required? As I ask myself what she would do in my boots, I realize that my sisters and my daughter each hold clues. My daughter works at taking her first steps, and there is the furrowed brow, the brimming eyes, the hard-set jaw, the determined nostrils. My sisters compete in the rugby field, the office, the classroom and there are the flexing calves, the springing-forward torso, the long, swift arms and the fully-engaged eyebrows. And there--there--is the triumphant, overcoming grin of the struggler-turned-victor. These form a composite picture of a woman who has fully engaged her own childhood, adolescence and beyond, and is now ready to help sustain and nurture someone else--even as she herself continues to unfold. In our best moments as daughters, sisters, mothers, these are insights into very God: 

"It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
    taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
    it was I who healed them.
⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness,
    with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts
    a little child to the cheek,
    and I bent down to feed them."

--Hosea 11:3-4

At first glance, all this nurturing sounds so serene and beautiful. But it's not so idyllic when you're sweating, cleaning up the latest mess on the floor, your hair didn't quite get done and the ever-heavier baby is making excellent headway toward the stairs. Then there is the relative egocentrism of the child: "they did not realize it was I who healed them." My daughter only sees the one thing she wants us to do for her in that moment, not the stacks of other tasks that must be done, and tries to register her impatience as if she's got other places to be. In these moments we nurture her, yes, but it is not all peaches-and-cream and butterflies: it is phlegm and milk and blood and excrement, not for the faint of heart. That God's love for Israel--and for us, through Christ--is nurturing and tender and motherly should not come as a surprise, since life is full of all the toughest and most disgusting things...things mothers are always dealing with. Scripture is replete with more examples of God mothering us, but perhaps the most lasting images of God in this role start with the women we love best. Lest we make God in her image, we remember that Mother is a human creature, too. But we celebrate God's self-revelations through her in the hope that every day she is becoming more herself... more and more fit for heaven. That she always has another hand, hip, or shoulder with which to bring us along in that journey is marvelous.

the ugly-beautiful

72 hours can be brutally short, but they are, at least, more forgiving than 12, 24, or 48 hours. We measure time and expectations this way, our military minds stretching the limits of what is possible in a day. We refuse to say it can't be done, and, as a wise cross-country coach of mine used to say, "When we aim for what's impossible, we pass what is possible on the way." I feel this to be true, have seen it become true. It ennobles the gymnastics we do to "make it happen": the sense of urgency justifies the scrambling, the sleeplessness, the scribbling and furious typing and phoning. Our families, if they are sometimes agitated by the quick turnarounds, are often a little smug, too. They know they are tough. They know they are a kind of nomad. They know that they can weather things others never dream of. They hustle, take out the slack, help us through our packing lists, and all but stop the sun to get us ready to go out the door. They are a triumph of logistics, communication, intelligence and maneuver, and they keep us anchored in stormy seas, aiming steady when home is a moving target. I kiss my infant daughter and my husband on leaving, and it feels like a flip turn in the middle of a long swimming lap: I push, spring forward against my own current from a secure platform that allows me to displace the time that glides around and slips off of me.

In 72 hours, I am on an unfinished road that I have griped about many times before. The late-day trees are spectral, offering the rising tensions I used to feel when returning from vacation, back to work. Maybe, too, some regret clings to their boughs, cascading down with musty memories of things mismanaged, opportunities missed. I run, begin to revisit the site of old wounds, press them to see if they are still sore, much as I stretch travel- and workout-weary muscles, massaging them to feel the extent of the damage. Am I still that depressed person I was when last here? Am I able to trust, able to rejoice, able to abide? Can I once again push the "reset" button that had long stopped working the last time I stood outside that building near the corner, red-faced and seeing red? I retrace steps, old run routes, old commutes. Am I different enough? No one here would know to tell me: the faces all have changed. Am I resilient now, that thing that eluded me here?

Before showering, I release the pressure built up during a night of milk-making: just enough to tell my body to stop doing what I've asked it to do for ten months, to get ready instead to go to war. The war, representing so many human sacrifices--fueled by blood, sweat, sleepless months and tears. I heard this morning that it seems set back almost to day one because of one sergeant who left his base for a killing spree. I think of Afghan parents who have bloodstains where there used to be children, more collateral damage in a war difficult for anyone to understand. As a mother I am shocked again by what I have always known was possible and occurring; how anyone could be afforded or take the chance to hurt a child is beyond me. I ask what I imagine the parents ask, "God?!" and it isn't long before I have to start my shower to muffle the weeping. Crying in the shower, or in the rain, it's easier to hear that God is weeping, too.

I have clean, hot water, when so many do not. The steaming droplets catch and beam light. In the (renovated since I was here) locker room, someone has thoughtfully installed rainmaker showerheads that look artful and drizzle a steady shower that refreshes and reminds of the outdoors. The locker room is pleasant and professional, slipping me a note that someone values my time, my efforts, my missed morning at home. These are quality-of-life details I think would have appreciated when I was here before, repulsed by the chronic dankness and the hard water scum...but would I have given thanks for them? Would I have gone to work more grateful, more peaceful, able to inhabit each moment, one at a time? I have not always had eyes to see the small, good things of the everyday. I have felt entitled.

When I look at my scars through the lens of gratitude, I am staggered by how small they seem, how much healing has already occurred, how my picking at them only caused them to fester. Somewhere, in a perpetual war zone, a mother has just had her viscera ripped out: yesterday she had a child, and now in a few bloody moments, she does not. Is it the first time? Second? Third? Her child left this world in terror, helpless. It sears, it sears! And then it compels me...to thank God for my wounds. Thanks--for professional disillusionment, for personal loss and grief, for physical pain and discomfort?

Yes.

And mysteriously this does not make my problems disappear, does not make brassy idols of my work, the pursuit of happiness, or good health. All is not well, and these remain glaring, disparate, in contrast with what should be. But I am different. This is what the Psalmist was talking about:

Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
Who satisfies your years with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
The LORD performs righteous deeds
And judgments for all who are oppressed.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
Bless the LORD, all you works of His,
In all places of His dominion;
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
(Psalm 103:2-6, 8, 10-15, 22 NASB)

This calling to mind of gifts, many which we must keep open hands to receive daily, despite the clenching reactions to evil and pain in the world, is a habit that requires further cultivation, no matter what piece of earth I am standing on in the moment. I pray for the now childless woman I have known and imagined. I do not know how to pray for her, but I pray, more with molecules and electric impulses than with words. This place for me is haunted, by what was, by what could be--it is both ugly and beautiful, saturated with the anxiety of becoming and the resignation of the unchangeable past. I am the same--still ugly, still beautiful, already and not yet. I do not yet wear a habitual "crown of lovingkindness and compassion," I do not bless with all my soul. I pray that, with eyes to see the goodness of God and the creation, that my becoming will cause no collateral damage, that I will refrain from sprees of ingratitude.

"Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me;
Then I will be blameless,
And I shall be acquitted of great transgression." (Psalm 19:13 NASB)

It would be a shame unworthy of the day's goodness, stuck in the ugly, to never take part in the beautiful.

of diapers and documentaries

As I prepare for my next job, I am painfully aware that I have a lot of catching up to do: all the reading I've been doing about eco-parenting, infant pottying, child development and breastfeeding is wonderful, but it won't help me during my deployment to Afghanistan. Lately, I return home completely fried from working through lunches, endless reading and analysis, and the last thing I want to do is read anything. All I can say is: praise the Lord for the digital age.

My burgeoning Audible account is primed with audiobooks on the region for my daily commute and imminent roadtrips, and this helps me gain the needed momentum to tackle the stack of physical books I have amassed at home. It will be a miracle if I ever finish all of them, despite my customary bibliophilia. Another outlet for research on tired evenings after baby is in bed, collapsed on the couch with a plate of hot supper my husband has made and the laundry for me to fold, is our instant DVD queue. While the minimal selection for my area of interest makes me wary of biases my film sample might contain, I watch documentaries serially for perspective on what Afghans think, the balance of power in Asia and the Middle East, and the Global War on Terror. Even exploring Wild China can heighten my geopolitical awareness.  The documentaries and storytelling movies currently on my list?

National Geographic's Talibanistan
PBS's Motherland Afghanistan
Restrepo
Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan
Camp Victory, Afghanistan
PBS Frontline's Obama's War
PBS Frontline's Bush's War
PBS Frontline's Rules of Engagement
Kabul Transit
Behind Taliban Lines
Afghan Star: The Documentary
No One Knows About Persian Cats
Operation Homecoming 
The Kite Runner
The Stoning of Soraya M.
Persepolis

Please let me know if I have missed anything. I am sure there are many more of these out there to be discovered. In the meantime, I spend my evenings folding laundry and watching the documentaries I can find on Netflix. It is an odd pastime, but one that increasingly gets my mind prepared for the months ahead.

The more I watch, the more I am forced to recall how fallen our world is. I watch Motherland Afghanistan and I weep with a mother who has just lost twin babies several weeks apart for lack of neonatal intensive care equipment, proper nutrition and sanitation. As the light goes out of the obstetrician's eyes, I cry like it is my daughter I have just lost. I watch Restrepo and I put myself in the shoes of a dedicated, but culturally naive company commander whose lack of historical knowledge about the battlespace undermines his sincere efforts to fight insurgents in the Korengal Valley. I can taste the sweat and dust, my face heats up with frustration. I watch the swelling ranks of Afghan Star viewers cheer and vote for their favorite singer, even though I have only watched two episodes of American Idol and its spinoffs in my entire life. I feel the first-time thrill of democracy: texting my vote from a low-cost cell phone. I watch the story of a wealthy Pashtuni boy and his family's Hazara servant unfold through the flying of kites. It stings my eight-year-old self, way back on the playground, when the boys' friendship is threatened by violence and intolerance. I watch Soraya M. martyred by her husband's slander, and shudder as the village becomes party to his lustful pursuits of a girl half his age. I hear electric strains of underground music from Iranian musicians and I smile and think, rock on. My dinner churns in my stomach as I weigh the claims of Brave New Foundation that our actions in Afghanistan have not made the region more stable or the United States more secure from terrorism. I wonder what the history books will say about Operation Enduring Freedom at the end of my life...and after.

What C.S. Lewis famously wrote about reading great literature in his Experiment in Criticism is true of watching a good documentary for me: "...I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see." The ancient Greek playwrights would nod approvingly at my cathartic moments in watching the human drama unfold. Vague awareness that these things occur and recalling them to mind everyday are two different things, and even when I allow myself to forget about all the suffering and evil in the world, the prophet Jeremiah  (chapter 17) reminds me,

⁹ “The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick; 
Who can understand it?
¹⁰ “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind,
Even to give to each man according to his ways,
According to the results of his deeds. 

I pray that I will not be complicit in deceit or injustice. I pray for the fortitude and honesty to bear these secondhand experiences intelligently, and without being slavish to my own biases. I pray for spiritual insight beyond the purview of analysis. I am not sure how anyone can be certain of what the ground truth is in any human endeavor--especially a war against an insurgency--yet I hope for wisdom. St. Paul reminds me in 1 Corinthians 2:

¹¹ For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. ¹² Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, ¹³ which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. ¹⁴ But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. ¹⁵ But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. ¹⁶ For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ."

I fold diapers, I take deep breaths, and I watch. I pray to have the mind of Christ.

a debt of gratitude

There are a few phrases circulating throughout military senior leaders' speeches that have almost lost their meaning for me. "Train as you fight," "We need to nest our mission with higher," and "I would offer to you" all have begun to ring false in my ears as the leaders who use them often deviate wildly in action from their words, much to the harm of their subordinates and the organization. Perhaps a time will come when I can write about these experiences without bitterness or resentment. Today, however, I feel the overwhelming desire to redeem one such phrase: "we owe a debt of gratitude."

As I face the prospect of two more years in the Army, and the experience of deployed motherhood, there are days when I believe I can do it all with panache...and then there are days when I am tempted with despair. I have been fairly certain for most of my life that my true vocation lies outside the Army and in a high school class room. This keeps me looking for a light at the end of the tunnel during dark days, when the organizational culture that gives context to my task and purpose seems oppressive or futile. On brighter days, I believe that everything I do is contributing to some future endeavor, that nothing learned or experienced in uniform will go to waste.

In college I encountered the concept of Christian vocation, due to a project funded by the Lilly Endowment, expressed in the words of theologian Frederick Buechner: “Vocation is where your great joy meets the world's great need." These words rang true for me, and kindled a focused search for my personal calling. A combination of natural interest and ability, research and study, and the dire need in our educational system for good teachers have led me to conclude that teaching is my calling in the highest sense. I came into the Army both to finance that goal and to ensure that I would have experiences to draw from within my pedagogical practice. The privilege of serving my country and the joy being part of something bigger than myself were also motivators. The Army has not disappointed me in this, but the road has been fraught with disillusionment and burnout that I did not anticipate.

There was a time when my energy and enthusiasm for any task set before me were limitless, and I believed I could do "anything for two years." I used to say as much, varying the quantity of time by the commitments I faced. My boundless optimism seemed confirmed by performance evaluations and initial job satisfaction. By a severe kind of mercy, I reached total burnout during my third year of service, and this was strange because I had not yet gone to war. My frustration fed itself despite repeated attempts to reign in my angst, producing brutally candid--and at times disrespectful--communication with my superiors. Perhaps the most confusing was that my performance evaluations continued to glow with the highest praise. A part of me wanted them to lose confidence in me so that I wouldn't have to continue the sprint I'd begun as a bright-eyed lieutenant. If I couldn't have meaningful work in a synergistic command climate, I wanted to rest; to work like a mindless drone from 0600 to 1700 (from six to five) and go home. It was too painful to care about work I hated: I didn't want to be asked to lead special projects or put in any extra effort, since I had realized that a lack of boundaries at work had partly fueled my burnout. I both found the voice of advocacy for my troops and damaged their loyalty to the chain of command with my vocal feedback, and as I look back I wish I could erase the collateral damage of my learning process. 

Although the Army has currently embraced "resilience" as a watchword that nods at spiritual fitness as a factor, there has been little in the way of practical, functional advice of how to become resilient when all the odds seem against you. I find my best examples in my Soldiers and in my peers. The answers I sought for stress management, resiliency, and coping with authoritarian bosses are still emergent, but I am now grateful to have had the experience of burnout so young. I have the opportunity, in the context of Christian, family, and military community, to avoid the road to despair in future tough assignments. My next job promises to be sleepless and grueling, and I am unsure what the rewards will be while I am separated from my family. Of course, I want to do my part to ensure we all come home without violating rules of engagement, with our values and consciences intact. I want to help Afghans in a situation where it is increasingly unclear how we can have any lasting positive impact. I have few answers for how to tackle this next challenge, but there is the seed of something that I intend to cultivate more of: gratitude. I have this gut feeling that it might be the antidote to despair. 

The insight came to me while listening to Dr. Andrew Weil on the radio, and because I believe that all truth is God's truth, it was easy to appropriate what a secular source had to say about gratitude. After all, "the skies proclaim God's handiwork," so why shouldn't neurochemistry and health research do te same? Dr. Weil's latest book called Spontaneous Happiness highlighted two concepts that are staggeringly Biblical: the first is that "happiness" in the modern sense of feeling elated all the time is a misnomer that is unsupported by millennia of human experience. Instead, Dr. Weil suggested, we should focus on contentment as our goal, because it is our choice in response to a myriad of circumstances. The second was the idea that the expression of gratitude has measurable positive effects on patient health. Dr. Weil reported drastic improvements in patients who kept a gratitude journal, for example. 

Scripture is replete with verses about thanksgiving, but this morning I need one that addresses two different visions I have--one is on the other side of deployment, a triumphant and energetic overcomer in that high school classroom of my future--the other, of a dusty deployment full of tired computer-screen-eyes and the presence of real human suffering, both Afghan and Coalition. This is what I found in Psalm 69:

 ²⁹ But as for me, afflicted and in pain—
   may your salvation, God, protect me.
 ³⁰ I will praise God’s name in song
   and glorify him with thanksgiving.
³¹ This will please the LORD more than an ox,
   more than a bull with its horns and hooves.
³² The poor will see and be glad—
   you who seek God, may your hearts live!
³³ The LORD hears the needy
   and does not despise his captive people.

What I immediately notice is that God is not like a capricious boss out to make a name for himself, but takes more pleasure in our songs of thanks than in our sacrifices. This assures me that while my blood, sweat and tears do not go unnoticed, the condition of my heart is the focal point for pleasing God. If I can recall this more often, perhaps I can avoid getting on the hamster-wheel of pleasing others through my hard work and accomplishments. If my work offerings to others are really just a way to give thanks to God, I might be able to renew my best energies rather than depleting them with little to show for it. What I notice next is that this burst of hope comes in the middle of a litany of corruption, societal vice, disillusionment and failed human relationships. The psalmist knows all too well what life in a fallen world is like. It is just possible that my deployment will be different than this, but it is likely that it will be a very mixed bag.

I have decided to explore how gratitude can inoculate me against the most toxic things I might experience. Today, I will focus on the fact that I will deploy with my sister, that my daughter is healthy, that my husband is my best friend, and that as he carries out the duties of full-time dad, he will enjoy the support of our family and friends, as well a Reserve job he loves while I am gone. I will be glad that I get paid to get back in (and stay!) in shape every morning, that there are always a handful of people to really enjoy working with in every organization, and that we are going to wear the more practical and comfortable MultiCam uniforms and not the stiff Army Combat Uniform we currently endure. Today, I will start a "Gratitude Wall," where among the mail I need to answer and the ink cartridges I need to recycle, I will write or add anything that makes me glad to be alive. I will go to the wall and meditate on something to add regularly, and any time I feel defeat at my shoulder. I will let nothing be too small a cause for thanksgiving. I will see if remembering that God is on the throne and that I have much more than I need to survive will lead to thriving in difficult places.